After inspiration from my ICT professor last term I have decided to join the blogging world! I will admit that I am not the most tech-savvy person, but its a start! There are a few reasons why I decided to start this blog...
1 ) After being in the Faculty of Education for only one semester I've learned and appreciated the importance of sharing with our colleagues! There are many of you out there that have helped me so much by posting your ideas online and for that I say, thank you! I hope that this blog will not only help me by allowing me to reflect and get feedback, but that it will help others as well.
2 ) After discovering Whole Brain Teaching during my student teaching placement in October/November I am addicted! See more about this in my "About Miss L" page. Since this discovery I have found the WBT community incredibly supportive and welcoming. The stories shared by other Whole Brain Teachers on forums and other blogs have assisted me so much; I couldn't help but want to be a part of this!
Ok so now you know why I have chosen to start this blog, so here is my first question: is WBT seen as an interruption to student's daily schedule if they are only exposed to it in one class?
We just started our second semester today and I shared the idea of WBT with one of my professors. I found his reaction to be incredibly disappointing (but I must admit, I am very enthusiastic about the subject so I couldn't expect him to be quite as excited as I am!) He pointed out that, as a student teacher, I am a guest in my cooperating teacher's classroom and to incorporate a strategy as radical as WBT would be an interruption to the classroom environment and would leave my cooperating teacher to "pick up the pieces" once I left. I completely agree that I am a guest in the classroom and would never attempt to overstep my boundaries as a student teacher but I don't know if I necessarily agree with him.
My cooperating teacher during my first student teaching placement had no problem with me incorporating WBT in his classroom. I will tell you that it was DEFINITELY not his style but he encouraged me to try it out and to go with it if it fit my style. I loved it and the student's loved it! They liked the change of style and understood that my teaching style was different than that of my cooperating teacher.
So what I am wondering is:
1 ) If you had a student teacher in your classroom, would you be ok with them experimenting with different classroom management strategies?
2 ) If you use WBT and your colleagues don't, do they view your use of WBT as an interruption to the student's schedule?
I have the same question as your #2. I teach EIP (Early Intervention) at the elementary level and I pull students out of their classroom for 20 minutes to an hour daily. So I am wondering how my students will respond to WBT for such a short period of the day. How will they act once back in class. I guess my schedule is more of a middle school environment where students have several teachers a day.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the work you do on your blog... it is very helpful. : )
Thanks for your kind words Sharon! The more that I have used WBT and thought about it, the more I have realized that ALL teachers have different ways of doing things; different routines, procedures, personalities, etc. So of course students have different routines from one classroom to the next. What may be the norm in one classroom (example: gym class) may be completely different in another (example: computer/tech class).
DeleteWBT should be no different. If teachers commit to using it than students will get used to doing certain practices in our classrooms the same way they learn the practices of any of their other classes.
I would love to hear how your WBT use ends up going. I hope to hear back from you with an update :)