Tessa's thoughts for the night

Class Intro: It is very reassuring to confirm that the teaching methods I find valuable are also valuable to others as.   I have an overwhelming desire to facilitate learning for my students through their own curiosity.  Many times in my years of teaching I forget my passion for this approach because of all the stipulations placed on results.  Standards, common core, product over process, test scores and failing schools play such a roll in our drive for results we forget about facilitating passion for learning.  Technology is a resource that we can utilize both in our execution of teaching our students, but as a tool for students to demonstrate what they have learned. It can be a wonderful resource of information to better prepare our lessons and excite student learning.

Twitter: I have been a twitter member for years and until today I never saw the potential for the information I could obtain by other users who have already done the research.  I still need to explore how to get the information I need and better understand hash tags.

100 voices: I absolutely love the Reggio Emilio approach to learning.  Children will get more out of their learning if they are a part of the learning experience.  .  This Chinese proverb taken from http://www.reggiokids.com/our_perspective.html  some’s it up.

"Tell me and I'll forget, show me and I may remember, involve me and I'll understand." Chinese Proverb

Dan Meyer video: The Dan Meyer video hits the nail on the head for me and my approach to teaching art.  Many of my students come to kindergarten with an open mind to exploring artwork, the creating of art, and all the materials it has to offer.    Usually between 2^nd and 3^rd grade I begin to hear students say “I am not good at art”, “I can’t do that” or “I don’t like art”.  Students learn to conform to traditional assessment approaches of good/bad, right /wrong, like/dislike and any art expectation that does not have clear expectations seems to be devalued.  I also often hear “is this good enough”?  My goal for all students is to understand they get out what they put in to their work.  Asking if this is good enough tells me two things.  A student wants to please the teacher and will push themselves only to the expectation of the teacher or the student only wants to do what is expected and no more.  Problem solving, creative thinking, and thinking outside the box are higher level thinking skills that will not always have a right or wrong answer, but may require a student to form an opinion based on what they have learned.  Sometimes students choose wisely and meet success and other times students are not successful, however, I have learned far more from my failures than I have from my successes.  It gives me something to motivate myself.  Giving students the opportunity to be excited by posing questions that stimulate their drive to seek more knowledge is what I want to do as an educator.  Facilitating this learning format will motivate student learning and drive for learning.