Ashley Tam's EDUC 450 Blog

I always felt like confidence in learning was one of the most important factors in a student's ability to learn. With confidence students could believe they were capable. As teachers I feel it is our job to encourage student confidence and make them feel good about small achievements,ultimately helping them feel closer to success. This continued support and praise  is what I feel keeps students engaged and helps them enjoy learning. When they feel they are good at something they continue to enjoy it. So I definitely think praise is necessary in learning, however, I think it all depends on how you approach praise. If praise of one student comes at the expense of another then I no longer feel it is constructive praise and defeats the purpose, to build student confidence. By building one student's confidence you should not diminish another's. So by calling one student a "genius" you make others feel like they aren't also geniuses. I think a different way to appro...

Reading this article gave me much grief as a teacher candidate. It really highlighted the sensitivity that teachers must have when approaching students. Any single word could be misconstrued by students or parents or colleagues. The job of a teacher requires constantly assessing situational cues and realizing the effect of each and every action or word they utter. Knowing this, I wondered how it would be possible to do this in action in a classroom. Specifically in the article they mention a situation in which a teacher asks Jeff to come to the board and solve a problem. Jeff does so successfully, then the teacher exclaims "aren't we lucky to have a genius among us!" This is a good example of praising a student for well deserved merit, however I feel the teacher somewhat lacked tact in this situation. Although he wanted to praise Jeff, he could have done so in a manner which would not make the rest of the students feel self conscious or that Jeff was a "show-off...

I feel like the flipped classroom is an extremely valuable tool for teachers to enhance student learning and make more productive use of classroom time. I have seen this method of teaching done in the classroom and I feel like this method really worked because it gave students the chance to learn at their own pace. I remember as a student I often got lost in lectures because the teacher went to fast or perhaps I missed one point. Once I missed something, that hole would continue to haunt me throughout the entire class and it would make it difficult for me to move forward in the lecture, so I would often continue to miss more and more information ultimately leaving me with a poor understanding and learning experience. I think the fact that students have the power to pause and rewind lectures is super convenient. For example in a math class it gives students the opportunity to pause the lecture and try a problem themselves to make sure they understand the concept. I think this also makes...

Grant and Zeichner's article spoke to me in some ways, but lost me in others. Although I am a teacher candidate in Vancouver in 2017, I found this article extremely relevant to what we are currently learning in most of our classes. A lot of what we have learned in classes is to be accepting of all student differences and in turn we should strive to use their life experiences to bring relevance to what they are learning. I feel this is truly valuable since it helps students make connections and build engagement in learning. I also related to the idea that it is difficult to come into a school environment with pre-existing norms and challenge them in support of being a reflective and open-minded teacher. Idealistically I would want to do this, but doing so as a teacher candidate or new teacher can make you vulnerable at such an early stage. However, I do feel like sometimes presenting alternative viewpoints to affect change is necessary. I feel like if no one were to ever challenge a...

I feel Frank McCourt viewed teacher and student inquiry as two vessels that moved as one. He had to inquire about being a good teacher in order to help his students make their own inquiries in life and education. He felt that if teachers were not learning they were not teaching. I really appreciated this because I feel as teachers we are trying to teach life long learning to our students, so if we are not continuing to embrace learning ourselves, how can we expect our students to be motivated to learn as well. He also believed that it was important to be open and honest with students, "take the mask off". He felt that by being transparent, students could learn to trust and relate to teachers as interesting human beings, which could hopeful aid in facilitating their learning and inquiry. Combining these two ideas, I feel that if we are honest and open with our students and display our own learning during classes, we can set an example for our students. Show them that even as t...

Here are 3 things I am either passionate about or curious about in education: 1) Memorization in learning - often students memorize formulas or facts, but never take the time to understand. There is also the argument that it is necessary to memorize certain foundation level things in order to advance towards more complex ideas. However, I wonder if there is a different teaching strategy or learning method/strategy to aid students in remembering basics without pure memorization. I worry there is no value or true learning in memorization, although I know it is important in many disciplines, specifically mathematics (multiplication, formulas etc.) or even some sciences where there is no solving required (purely facts and content, less calculation ie. Biology). Is there a line between memorization and learning? Are memory aids like visuals, songs or neumonics considered memorization? How useful can these (memorization, memory aids) be in long term learning? 2) The importance of co...

During our class discussion of Rafaella Borasi’s “Six Controversial Statements About (Mathematics) Education” my group discussed the fourth statement remarking that “formal mathematics is just a frill”. After discussing this with my group and even the rest of the class my thoughts expanded and changed a great deal. Originally I viewed this statement as completely incorrect and almost insulting as I feel formal mathematics is an important foundation to have in order to truly understand a problem. I believed this foundation should be important and relevant to all students. However, I realized that, I, as a science and math teacher candidate, have a biased opinion. I enjoy mathematics and find proofs and other formal mathematics very valuable as they help me reach a deeper understanding. From the discussion at my own table I realized that this may not be the case for all students. Students in other unrelated fields may find this additional information useless and simply time consuming. D...