Teaching with the Brain in Mind
My Goals for Teaching
Schools Change Brains
The educational experience is changing student brains for the better or worse. It is up to educators, administrators, communities, and policy makers to decide how we want them changed. Below are three goals I will strive to accomplish to make a positive difference in how my students are affected by their learning.
Goal #1 Add More Social Emotional Skill-Building
It is easier to teach students life skills and social emotional skills at earlier ages. Student need to be able to regulate their emotion states to a degree even at a young age. Emotional IQ is an important part of becoming a productive part of society. Taking the time to incorporate social skills and emotional growth into daily planning will produce a big payout for the students and for the teacher. A morning meeting with short lessons and the opportunity to express their feelings safely will be the starting point for this goal.
Goal #2 Create Lessons and Assessments that Connect to the Learning
Much of what is learned for the standardized testing does not transfer to real-life situations or problems. Creating lessons and assessments that foster the importance of learning how to learn should be my focus. I will create lessons and assessments that are open ended and allow for investigation and exploration. After a student learns how to learn and can think critically the rest will fall into place for them. They will be successful when performing on standardized testing or in real-life.
Goal #3 Continue to Teach Deferred Gratification and Remember Input Limitations
Teaching my students to become patient, withhold judgement until getting all the facts, and going without a reward is an important part of developing strong students. I will continue to enhance this practice in my classroom. I will also strive to reduce the amount of input I place on students daily. I will focus on quality over quantity. As I shift my focus to learning how to learn this should help in the area of over load to my students.