Dionne Wong - Week 12 - Classroom Settings
Teachers have a lot of influence. On the surface, people would notice that they have the ability to control your grades, your workload, and the difficulty or pace of your course material. These powers are pretty common across all learning environments, and they allow for an adequately functional educational system.
However, because school plays such a big role in our lives, even the smallest steps taken by teachers can have a huge impact on our school days, our learning experience in the class, and, in some cases, the overall tolerability of our entire high school careers.
For instance, some teachers like to assign seats, and the frequency of seating rearrangements throughout the school year varies depending on the teacher. Something as simple as the seat your teacher chooses for you could determine the course of your entire learning experience. If you’re closer to the teacher, you’ll likely be compelled to pay more attention to lectures, and if you sit next to people you aren’t already familiar with, you’ll have to adapt to new working styles in group projects.
Students often discuss the minor settings teachers establish in the classroom—permitting or prohibiting Airpods, taking volunteers or randomly calling on people for participation, or having a cold or hot classroom. I’ve heard that some teachers don’t allow you to drink water in class.
Although these specific details are fun to observe and joke about, what is most powerful about their abilities is how unique their methods of transferring information are. They not only teach you things that could alter the course of your life but also choose how they execute their lessons. I’ve always found it interesting how you can learn so much about a teacher’s personality just by seeing if they prefer teaching through a whiteboard, a piece of paper displayed on a projector, or a pre-made presentation.
I’ve realized I’m really grateful we’re forced to adapt to all these teaching styles because every preference we develop allows us to discover more about ourselves. Do we prefer writing our notes on paper or typing them out? Do we like listening to lectures more or working on hands-on activities? Would we rather take tests or give presentations? All of these tiny choices teachers require us to explore provide us with small bits of information about ourselves to help us design our futures. Although we’ve warped perceptions of teachers to be much more complicated than what they teach, their inherent abilities to push people in the direction of genuine awareness still remain the most memorable to me.
Petricic, Dusan. “A Teacher’s Influence.” LatAm ARTE, www.latamarte.com/en/artists/kmDw/.
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Hello Dionne! Your Blog is really interesting and unique, and I liked how you went into extreme depths on the relations between classroom students and students themselves. I agree with the points you addressed, especially that our seating position in the classroom heavily determines how our learning journey is throughout the school year. Personally, I have always liked my seating arrangements in the classrooms. I feel like I am able to adapt to my new surroundings and the thought of having a new experience is really intriguing to me. You also mentioned that students are able to better understand themselves and what techniques they like to implement into their daily routines. For me, writing notes on paper is much easier as I am able to retain more information and it makes it easier to memorize things as well. I would also much rather give presentations than take tests, preferably if they both go in the same category.
ReplyDeleteDionne, this blog is very insightful, and does a good job of highlighting the subtle but powerful ways in which teachers shape not just our academic experiences but also our self-awareness as students. Your discussion movies beyond the obvious aspects of a teacher’s influence, but explored the even the smallest class settings can have long-term effects. Your point about how different instructional methods reveal a teacher’s personality is specifically very interesting. It would be cool to push this point further—do certain teaching styles correlate with how engaging or effective a class feels? Does a teacher’s personality influence their students’ attitudes toward the subject? I find myself answering yes to these questions, and I never thought about how it can change how someone can be towards one subject. Your blog was really fun to read!
ReplyDeleteHey, Dionne. I appreciate how you spoke about classroom setups and how teachers can make a difference in student learning, and even the vibe of an entire period or class in a school year in some cases. Something this overlooked and simple-sounding in the never-ending and hectic workweek to me, makes all the difference when it comes to stopping to realize the smaller details that once weren’t overshadowed.
ReplyDeleteThe way you lightly touch on our “perceptions” and “awareness” of both classroom details and class material only stands to reinforce this idea and sentiment I’ve been realizing over the past year. Ever since I started AP English and the awareness it’s taught me, I started realizing what I had been told: "You never know what you have until it’s gone.” All the times when school was less hectic and classes were lighter are pointed out to me now. I had thought of them as pure boredom. Compared to now, I had much more space for extracurriculars and fun. These days, I find spacing out to music or simply gazing off into space to be much more relaxing than what video games or movies I had found enjoyable before. Even if I’m frequently busy or between deadlines, I still feel I’ve matured more in the past year than the last two years combined. APENG truly did and continues to help me learn and continue to realize the privileges and responsibilities I have. Thanks, Dionne. See you tomorrow. - Rafael Montes Barrera
Hi Dionne! I think your choice for your blog this week was really clever and interesting. I like how you dissected how different things in a class can completely change that class and your life. The importance of teachers can really be a blessing, but at the same time it is like a curse. Like you mentioned in your blog, it is nice how we were able to adapt to all our different teacher’s teaching styles. I realized that most teachers who try to adapt to the student rather than the other way around are Spanish classes. Teachers for Spanish teach in numerous different ways to help all types of learners, whether it be reading/writing, visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learners. I wish teachers for other classes would also put in that effort for their students but I understand that it would be a lot harder and many do not want to put in all that work for hundreds of students.
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