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Increasing engagement in the classroom
The importance of student engagement in learning
The importance of student engagement in learning
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In Marty Nemko’s essay, “We Send Too Many Students to College,” I thought he presented his argument about how a college degree does not necessarily mean that you will succeed in life in a subtle yet smart way by utilizing a personal connection with the subject of his essay. Or as Aristotle explained in The Art of Rhetoric, the appeal to authority (Ethos). Additionally, I thought his incorporation of the two stories about the individuals who obtained their degrees, but could find a job with their aforementioned degrees was a very honest way of descripting what I believe is happening in today’s educational institution.
However, where the achievements of the whole class matter more than the individual. Schuman shares her personal experience of teaching and dealing with different kinds of students in hope that her intended audience will learn a lesson of the importance of class participation. Her views are very instructive, truthful, and encouraging to all college students. The article was elegantly well written by Schuman, who directed college student how to take part in the course and benefit from it.
Cutterham’s essay, Students are Anything but Coddled, is effective because it uses classroom dynamics and university protests. Cutterham uses examples of how students are changing the dynamic in clasrooms and on campuses through social media and protests and argues that students are not soft and pampered. In his essay, Cutterham uses the example of protesting students to show that today’s students are not “coddled”. He uses an example of Naimh McIntyre.
While reading Gerald Graffs, “Hidden Intellectualism,” I have come to appreciate his ideals and views between both,” book smarts,” and,” street smarts.” In this article he puts into perspective the relevance of intellectualism among less traditional academic views by considering a student’s environment and common interests. By walking through his adolescent experiences, he explains his personal development of skills and intelligence to bring light of a new conceptual way of teaching and engaging the students interest in a classroom. In,” Hidden Intellectualism,” Graff points out how many people associate street smarts with anti-intellectual concerns. For example, ones personal interest as opposed to traditional academic teachings, such as Shakespeare.
Prior to reading these two articles, I had never heard of Dorothy Allison. After reading them, I do not think I will forget her. “A Question of Class” and “Don’t Tell Me You Don’t Know” grabbed my attention, but I could relate to “A Question of Class” more. Thankfully, I did not live in poverty the first eighteen years of my life like Dorothy Allison did. Also, I never experienced any kind of sexual abuse.
Gatton tells about his experiences with students about how they were bored in school. When he ask the student why they
Alfred Lubrano the author of “the shock of Education: How college Corrupts” explains the differences and difficulties of what students can go through while they are in college. Lubrano says that when a student arrives at college, they lose their connection to their families. This is due to the extreme workload put on the student by the professors they don’t have the time to really chat with their parents like they used to when they lived at home. Also if there is an enormous distance gap where the students go to college and where their parents live it may create that sense like they don’t know each other anymore. I agree do with Alfred that college students change once they go to college they start grow apart from their families.
What this essay is saying about students and education is there is no student who doesn’t want to learn or what’s to get an education. Everybody is capable of learning, but the problem is sometimes the education are given by people who don’t care if you are learning or not. In this essay, we learned that the author was put in classes where the teachers didn’t care too much about their students and because of this he become a mediocre student. Not because he didn’t like school or he was lazy, but because there was no inspiration in learning. Luckily, Mike Rose the author of I Just Wanna Be Average found someone that wants him to start learning someone that make him change his mind.
The pain and agony due to the fact that I might not be prepared for college class was on my shoulders. Since day one of highschool, my biggest desire throughout school was to be engaged in learning while being well prepared for the next step in life: college. What class was the answer to this class desired? It was in a meeting with my guidance counselor in eighth grade that struck me and sparked the interest in my heart to do well. All of my highschool career I have never known what it actually meant to do well and be ¨successful.¨
As I was reading Melissa Duffy’s “Inspiration, and Craig Vetter’s “Bonehead Writing,” I found myself connecting with Vetter’s paper more than Duffy’s. I found that the presentation in “Bonehead Writing” to capture my attention, and that Vetter’s feelings about writing was similar to my opinion on writing. Through his wording and humor, I think Craig Vetter wrote the best essay. I find that the wording and presentation of an article or essay influences my opinion of the writer, and it affects how I receive the idea they are trying to present to me. Craig Vetter uses a blunt approach to convey his idea that writing is nearly impossible to teach, and describes writing as “A blood sport, a walk in the garden of agony every time out.”
In the option essay of “The Trouble with Online Education” Mark Edmundson started with question about what people are thinking that the lawyers learn from their clients and the patient's teaches the doctor about the medicine. He also talk about how the teacher are also need to learn from the students and how they can improve their teaching so it would be best fit for all the students in the classroom. He talk about how a president was dismissed because she was not moving forward fast enough on the internet learning. He gave himself and his student as an example of how the teacher should learned from the students and at the same time the students also learn from the teacher. Edmundson also compare the online teacher to a school teacher.
Education can be explained as the process of acquiring knowledge, skills, values, beliefs and habits, and is the most valuable resource that one could have in life as, firstly, education facilitates learning and critical thinking, secondly, it allows for dreams of the future in terms of success to become a reality and lastly, it prevents the children of today from risking their future due to the influence of environmental hazards (Brooks, 2006). After studying the points discussed, it can be said that education plays an important role in the development of each and every human being and is not on categorized under scholarly education but rather any experience that allows an individual to broaden his/her knowledge. Amy Gutmann, an American political theorist proposed a theory surrounded around the democratic state of education requiring parents and states - to surrender some educational authority to professional education staffs’, also indicating that the children of today do not just benefit from freedom of choice, or identification with and participation in the positive aspects of their family and political aspects of the society. Amy’s theory is based on the characterisation of the three models of educational control namely Locke’s Theory of Parental control,
Reda (2015) states “If we want to see the world as a just and fair place where everyone is given equal opportunities, education is what we require. Education is a must if we want to do away with the existing differences between different social classes and genders. It opens a whole world of opportunities for the poor so that they may have an equal shot at well-paying jobs.” Creating education in a democratic state has been aimed by many states, theorists, philosophers and so on. Countries in this era have succeeded is aiming for a democratic education, some are getting there and other countries fail in creating a democratic education.
Teaching philosophy is described by Sadker and Sadker as, “Behind every school and every teacher is a set of related beliefs - a philosophy of education – that influences what and how students are taught. A philosophy of education represents answers to questions about the purpose of schooling, a teacher’s role and what should be taught and by what methods.” (Teacher, Schools and Society. 2005). With this definition in consideration, my teaching philosophy is “I believe that children learn best when they are given the chance to choose, discuss and explore what they want to learn, when they want to learn and how they want to learn.
As we can notice traditional classroom cannot longer satisfy the needs of education in the 21st- century. So we have to make radical changes in order to create the classroom that will motivate students to learn. Teachers today teach using different pedagogical approaches and various instructional methods. According to fact that our educational system is changed with the help of technology the 21st -century classroom should be a productive environment where students can develop the skills they will need in workplace. The modern 21st-century classrooms should encourage students to develop their high order thinking skills.
