Class Reflection

Now that the semester is winding down, I am going to devote this last blog as a reflection of my educational psychology experience. I really have very few negative things to say about the class. The things I have enjoyed the most have been the focus on discussion, the content, and the different kinds of assessments.
The class discussion has been the thing that really makes me enjoy coming to class every time. It has had a very comfortable environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing their opinions and thoughts on different issues. We debated NCLB and appropriate student assessments. We also talked a lot about what makes an exceptional teacher and the best course of action to get the below par teachers out of the profession and get more qualified educators into the system. By using the text, articles, and student/teacher experiences and stories we were able to find support for many different sides of the issue. I really liked Prof. Langholz’s willingness to talk about these different issues and not simply stick exactly to the curriculum. In doing so, I think that I learned many more valuable lessons that I would have simply through lectures and reading the text. Although these things can be helpful, the class discussions really brought to light some important issues. There are many topics that have stayed in my mind and I have been able to have many informed conversations with other education majors/minors and my mom, who is a teacher. The concepts and ideas brought up in this class have been really helped me to become even more interested in teaching that I was before.
Moreover, the content of the class was extremely interesting. It was fascinating to learn more about student development. This topic of the psychological growth of students is crucial for teachers. Learning how to teach to these different stages of cognitive learning, social interaction, and biological factors is helpful for managing classrooms effectively and differentiating instruction. I enjoyed learning the most about social interaction among students. It’s interesting to learn about how much the interaction between peers is just as important if not more important than student-teacher relationships. I think part of being a good teacher is learning to facilitate and create classroom experiences that cultivate constructive and healthy student relationships. \
Lastly, I felt that the assessments and homework assignments were appropriate and effective. Many education classes become laden with busy work and sometimes I feel like the goals of the class get lost in all of the little projects, worksheets, and reflections. Being responsible for your own learning to a certain extent really gave some freedom. We were expected to be reading the text and doing a few outside of class assignments, but I felt like every assignment was purposeful with clear goals. It was also nice to have some choice. For instance, I was much more interested and engaged as my study group and I were able to pick what book we wanted to present on instead of simply being assigned a topic. Additionally, I thought it was appropriate to have a traditional sort of assessment at the midterm, but then to create different choices for students to choose from for the final. This way everyone was able to explore a topic more in-depth about something that was personally stimulating.
Overall, this class has been one of my favorites since being at Luther College. There was freedom and choice is assignments, yet there were clear goals and needed to be met. The stimulating class discussion really helped me to retain the knowledge that I gained through reading and lecture. Also, the curriculum and content were very interesting. I felt the topic of educational psychology to be relevant and interesting. I think in the future I am really going to miss this class.

Freedom Writers iMovie Project

I really enjoyed doing this iMovie project. I thought it was a lot of fun to learn how to use the iMovie program and then to see all of our ideas come alive in the form of a movie. Our group worked together very well. I think that everyone's ideas and input was used throughout the course of the project.

The book itself was very interesting and a fast-read. The book is a compilation of student diary entries written by students in a first year enlgish class taught by Erin Gruwell. She began her career by teaching at a school in California full of previously deemed “throw-away students.” As a first year teacher she was given the most troubled underclassmen. No one, especially her students, thought that she would make it through the semester. But Erin Gruwell was not the average teacher. She showed that caring, patience, and respect trumps experience. She motivated her students to make changes that conformed them into hard-working students who have hopes and dreams of a successful future away from “the streets”. Reading this book through the lens of a teacher nade me really appreciate all of Erin's experiences and stories from the mouths of students. It wasn’t like reading a textbook, but I think I learned a lot about “textbook terms” like how she improved student self-efficacy. She also used extrinsic motivators at the beginning of the school year to motivate students, but by the end of the year these tangible items were unnecessary because students were motivated by intrinsic values. She also used flexible grouping and had extreme aptitude for classroom management. After talking about these concepts in class, it was interesting and educational to read about them being put into practice in Erin’s classroom.

Overall, this project was very time consuming but also very worthwhile. It took a long time to put together a concept for the video, do the filming, and then finally cut and edit clips for the iMovie. But I feel like I learned a lot from the experience. I think using technology like an iMovie in my classroom could be very beneficial for the students. I definitely need a little more practice working with the program, but as a teacher in the future I could see this kind of technology being a real asset to the classroom.