Project 1: Comprehensive theory about personal learning



Project 1: Comprehensive theory about personal learning

By Leanna Wright

After taking this class I have made a change of heart about the way feel about brain physiology and its regards to learning. The readings from the class had given me a new perspective on education and how to make students more successful within my class with considering this brain physiology for educating them.

I would like to take a minute to input some work from my undergrad studies. The work is from my Philosophy of Education class within the education program. I wanted to reread my past views on my own personal philosophy of education. The reflection was interesting. Two excerpts from the paper are as follows. I hope it gives you an idea what I believed in before I had my own class. Taking into consideration, I have even different views since then but before this class. They were the two sections I thought would be beneficial to talk about for the remainder of the paper with regards to my personal learning and reflection.

“The Existentialist, such as Soderquist or Sartre, allows freedom to students to make their own choices and create their purposes for existence. They want students to ask questions, suggest answers and engage in creative dialogue in life, love and death. They use art as a tool to develop emotions, feelings and insights. In my philosophy you will see the pieces of the puzzle that relate to these philosophers or schools of philosophy.”

In this section I realized my thoughts about why students learn, is different then I perceive it now. Existentialists have parallel beliefs as Zull. The difference is that Zull gives a more scientific view of how the brain takes in the choices and purpose of existence through questions, engagement of dialogue, with emotions. As Zull would say, anger is even an emotion and an emotion is a part of learning. So here we are with so many people learning even out of anger.

He describes the motion of learning as a circle of steps. The brain is trying to learn something like juggling. It takes all the information it had prior to the initial stimulation of action. We begin by using our sensory input. We look at the example either by watching or listening. It now takes this information into the integrative cortex and begins to formulate some pictures, ideas, thoughts, etc. Once it is through that it is sent to the frontal integrative cortex and creates abstract thoughts about juggling. And finally, it is sent to the pre-motor and motor part of the brain. Here is where the cycle is wrapped up and the motion is put into play. The cycle is free to start over at any time to adjust to any experience or thought that could adjust the persons learning of a task such as juggling.

“How does one learn? All in all, I believe a person learns through their heredity and environment. It is the things around us that we learn from. Our parents teach us our morals, where we take or reject them is our own decision, but they originally taught us the importance of morals. Our teachers teach us to read and write. If we don’t like to do it we will make a decision not to, but they taught us. So as you can see, everything we have learned was originated from our hereditary or environment. Ideas that contradict this idea say a student learns only though strict and solid instruction.”

The beginning of the excerpt is personal to my beliefs and philosophy now and then. I truly believe that we learn from our heredity and environment. It was very validating to see that my belief has not changed much from then to now.

Our past experiences and future events of learning are based from where we come from. I see this in my everyday life as a teacher. When it comes to parent teacher conferences, I hear parents say things like, “I was not good at math when I was in school.” The part of this comment that bothers me is that they say it in front of their child and they are instilling this in their minds about being bad at math too. It gives them a negative perception of math to begin. I can only imagine what doing math homework is like with the parents. I can see the lack of knowledge or fear of failure sitting in their brains and leaking onto their children. Thus, giving them the impression that math is something not worthy of investing time.

Zull says the learner takes in the information via sensory input (mom and dads frustration of the problem), integrates it (how did I see this problem solved before? How is mom doing it? Frustrations?), abstracts the knowledge (what if I did it this way? Frustrated?), and finally apply it to the motor movement. (Act out, don’t like this, it is too hard.)

So as you can see, my philosophy was not off from the thoughts of Zull. A lot of our learning is based from our heredity and environment in our lives.

Now that there is a bit about where I have come from and where I am going, I think we can take a look at the personal learning and growth within my philosophy of education since this class. The way that I would like to do this is to look at some of the things I wrote about already in the class and also answer some of the questions I asked at the end of the papers to reflect on my personal philosophy.

First let’s look at some of the reflections I had made about my profession while in this class. We studied two writers in particular along with many others. Palmer was one of the two. He talked a lot about how we teach to individual students.

“The way we teacher is based off our soul and who we are. He calls it teaching from within. We teach who we are. The kids begin to see who we are and how we work throughout the day and they begin to take those experiences into their own actions through their learning cycles. The paths he talks about are intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. These paths are for teachers to explore and give thought to teach soul within the class. These paths are to be taught altogether, not leaving one out. “

Looking back at how we learn, you can see this from my reflection from Palmer. We learn from our hereditary and environment. Noting again that the learners are gaining knowledge from the teacher. The teacher would be considered the environment. Teachers are only teaching what they know and what the experience. So the kids can only get what their teachers give them. That is who they are and what they know.

“Teachers are given the expectation to really stay focused on the curriculum and the timeline for learning objectives. The problem is that we are so caught up in that nonsense, that we forget about our soul within the class. The soul that comes out with enthusiasm and excitement within a lesson.

There are many people in our lives that have influenced us into doing what we do for a living. We can pinpoint some things they did that were, in our point of view, spectacular. These things we know we are lacking within out classes we teach. The reflection part would tell us that we would need new connections through the sensory part of the brain and help us train a new way of teaching outside our daily routines.”

My questions related to my philosophy and the following information was as follows:

How do we put our soul into the classroom after the required curriculum is taught with so little time left over?

Is my soul showing up in my classroom to my children?

Am I the teacher who will later be remembered as an influential person in students’ lives?

To answer my own questions regarding my philosophy in education is yes. I can put soul into my classroom by making sure that I am thinking about each individual student and taking all their experiences and tendencies into perspective as I am being an engaged teacher. With this in my mind, if I am not one of those teachers, who get a returning child explaining their successes based on the education I gave them, at least I will know in my heart that I will touch each child’s heart and soul to making a lasting impression throughout their lives.

“As Zull points out, they were not using all four sections of their brain to input knowledge. This makes a great connection for me. As I was reading the chapter, I was looking at it like great information, but no connections. Once he put it into teacher term, application to students, I was able to see what that would look like. Made it more clearly for me to see it more personally involved.

I think it was eye opening for me to actually find a scientific method as to why some of my kids would be the way they are in class. And more importantly I begin to think about my daughter and what types of things I am doing with her. I find myself like Ham’s parents; doing the teacher things with her. I hope that I will be able to mold her to be a social butterfly, yet able to be a great student at the same time. I want to make sure my students and baby girl are suing all four sections of their brain through their growing years.

Who is to blame? It is the question we all ask as teachers. We are quick to blame others, but not quick to find a solution. We are looking for the easy fix rather than taking the time to get the underlying issue that comes from within. If we were able to look at the bigger picture more thoroughly and sophisticatedly we would find a deeper meaning to what it means to be “learning disabled.”

Chapter two of Palmer talks about fear. Fear of the teachers and fear from the teachers. This ties it to education and the stories above with Ham and my daughter. Students are walking into class with the fear of not knowing knowledge or being prepared for the learning about to take place in front of them. They are lacking the experiences and their confidence to be successful; same for the teachers. They are fearful of not being a good teacher. Not good enough for state standards and not good enough for the content. This is truly leaning to a classroom setting that is not welcoming and forgiving. Without the presence of safety in a class family, there is little learning that will ever take place. I have found some sort of balance of that in my class and with my daughter. I enjoyed reading these chapters because it was validating of what we as teachers experience all the time.”

My questions related to my philosophy and the following information was as follows:

Am I presenting fear within my classroom which prevents some students form opening up to me and their learning?

Am I allowing the doors of all four sections of the brain to take place within my class?

I believe I am presenting fear in my class by trying to make it through the curriculum and that is laving out some key times for reflection and integration. Children may feel rushed in their learning that they are hesitant to participate because they are not following along quick enough to grasp onto the concept. With this rushing feeling within my class, I am closing the door to my kids who need to find someone to rely on for help. They may already have a hard time relying on their guardians for support and I am their only hope. If that is true, I am already failing them and immediately losing their trust in education and teachers in general.

“Zull really defines the wants of the brain. This is something, as I am reading; I can relate right back to Vygotsky and Skinner with the stimulus and response model. Our brain tells us we want something and then we go and get it or figure out a way to get it. This is an uncontrollable force that is something that is explained as “naturally occurring.”

Our brains are based on stimulus and response. We want it, we go get it. This comes into education. We want to learn something we go through the motions of learning. All four cortex of the brain are used and we get results. The same goes vise versa. If one does not want to learn something, they won’t.

“Pulling it altogether form Zull and Palmer with the rest following, we really have to look at the big picture to see the whole child. We have to take numerous variables into account about every aspect of their life before we judge and put a block on giving each child an equal opportunity to education.”

Noticing that all kids are different and know that all kids learn differently we have a lot to think about when we are teaching. How we teach in our philosophy of education is more needed to be student centered to each individual child.

My questions related to my philosophy and the following information was as follows:

Am I giving the kids a safe environment to the kids that is adaptive to their personal and professional needs?

Should I be reading more than I am now or continue to read after the masters program to enhance my education?

Learning new information on academic achievement and the way people learn is something that is necessary for teachers to grow in their profession and be life long learners of children and education. I believe that I have learned so much about education in the masters program about my own personal philosophy independently than I ever learned anything in my undergrad studies. Here I was able to actively engage myself in what I was doing in my classroom and participate with that knowledge to apply it in a way that was conducive to me as a teacher.

“In Zull chapter five and six, he begins to explain the emotional side of learning. The key words that he used that switched the light on for me was that knowing is a feeling. Once I pondered this for a bit and continued to read, I began to believe. Same as the first chapter I read in this book. I read and quickly began to believe. So if there is so much emotion involved in teaching and learning, we have to be more sensitive.

Even after sitting in class, we ask reflective questions of ourselves. For instance, after we finished juggling yesterday we began talking about the task. Lori immediately began talking about how she connected it to her childhood. Her dancing experience she had helped her learn to count steps out. With this, she applied to juggling. Now if she had a bad experience with learning dance, she would have most likely had a bad feeling about juggling and quick to quit.”

Knowing is a feeling. This is a last impression to me as a teacher. I see this in my class with my students. Some kids get things easily and some kids don’t. Some children experience happiness and others experience fear. Knowing is a feeling. Knowing or not knowing can make you experience different emotions.

My questions related to my philosophy and the following information was as follows:

How does my classroom represent Palmer’s classroom?

Does the atmosphere give the kids a happy and enduring classroom lifestyle?

My classroom atmosphere is a warm and welcoming zone. We talk about safety in our class and we also discuss that we are a class family and we have to honor each others thoughts and feelings. I have also taken some measures to remodeling the room to be less cluttered and more open. This way they would not be disturbed with outside stimulants within the classroom environment. Palmer would agree to the space fillers within my class. I have reduced the amount of objects within the class which were not necessary to the children for the subject matter at hand. The school has accepted the thoughts of ITI (Integrated Thematic Instruction) now known as Highly Effective Teaching. They revolve a lot around the atmosphere of the class that would be conducive for student learning.

“Getting connected with the students is the theme of Zull’s chapters seven and eight. He is very clear about the need for connection through all eyes in a variety of different ways. He talks about humans all being alike no matter how different we all appear. With all that being said, he know that our genetic making tells us that our brains are all constructed similar in that they have wiring that sends messages from one to another. These connections are and can be used different ways; they can stop working, work fast or slow, as well. We really elaborate on the concept of these snaps being sent through the brain as a signal in our sensory input.”

“In chapter nine, Zull is more interested in the sensory to help people learn. So looking outside the box, we find 5 different senses that we use everyday. These senses are input into our brains and used to learn new information throughout our lives. So we cannot only use vision, which is what we lean towards in an educational setting. We need to look at all five. Even when you think there is no way to input sensory by another mean, it is not true. There is something I can do everyday to help the students input that information into their brains to help them make that connection.”

When we think about what kids need to learn, we need to consider what it is their brain is going to accept within their snaps of the brain. It may take a few times of hearing something or even a different approach to teaching something to connect to all students in the class of learners. This means that integration and meeting varying developmental needs is something that is included in our daily lesson plans throughout the year for all kids.

My questions related to my philosophy and the following information was as follows:

Are the silly things I am doing in class with the kids making those connections?

Can I implement those techniques and questions to enhance the connections children make in my class?

I believe the silly things I do in class is giving the kids another way of trying to make the connections to learning from their past experiences into the future education. I believe the curriculum we have for math, science, reading and health is repetitively intriguing but I do know that the way I implement fun games and outside sensory experiences helps kids make the connections needed to enhance their learning experience. I also know that with time and experience for me the teacher will give me more tools to implement different sensory input for the kid to use in their education.

Overall, this class has completely changed my philosophy of education that is more representative of me as an individual teacher, rather than what the college of education has taught me to be. I see myself change in the views I have for the methods I have used and plan to change some of the theories in my teaching style for my future classroom.

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