C4T Post #2

"What Ed Said" Blog

Post #1

In this post, I completely agreed with the way Edna was talking about the difference words make when we constructively talk to our students. We want them to learn and understand the material more than we want to justify their learning with standardized tests and grades. As the years pass, I imagine many teachers forget that this is a learning process and not a working process. When teachers talk to students about their homework, they tend to tell them to work on it or to do the work. "Work" is a negative connotation for them already, but "learn" seems to have a positive and uplifting side to it. With just a switch of vocabulary, the students' minds are turned on to possibilities and not focused (as much) on something they consider boring. This is especially important for math professors to incorporate, so I hope to change my vocabulary from now on.


Post #2

This post was a general post about how students relate their ideas and concepts to generalize them. She (Edna) related this to an avocado model which translated how we have many concepts that form around a concrete idea, and even when all the concepts have fallen away, ideas still can spring from the concrete idea (the pit of the avocado) to bring us new and inventive ideas. I didn't have much to say, because it was a shorter post, so I only said that I would practice preaching this in my future classrooms, but to be honest I wonder how I will. Math is something we use to a certain point, but other than that, John Bennett wonderfully points out this is harder than it seems. This is something that will probably plague my educational career as a math teacher, but I'll work on making math a relate-able course.