Week 15 Readings – Clint Henderson

The two readings I read this week had to do with time management in the classroom and the architecture of learning, which I found to be very interesting. Both of these gave new ways to learn and new ways to teach, but I really enjoyed the breakdown of learning from the website. It was short, but it was very informative.

The article “Architecture of Learning” talks about how frustrating it can be for teachers to teach and then grade exams and see that our students are not getting it. However, almost directly after discussing how frustrating it is, the article reminds us that learning is about creating change, and if we haven’t created change in our students, they aren’t learning. The article then goes on to discuss how learning is a process, and that different students learn at different speeds. For example, while skipping steps or using shortcuts in a lesson may benefit certain students that are above average intelligence, it will hurt that student struggling with a concept that much more. I think this breakdown of learning just really hit me, because learning is not how many fact we can cram into our students heads and then testing them on it. Learning is changing the way they think and how they go about taking on a new topic or idea. Learning is critical thinking skills that they will carry past your class. Those are the things that are important.

The other article dealing with time management is a true self-evaluation for me. I struggle more than anybody with time management, and it’s gotten worse because of this pandemic. However, this chapter gives several helpful ideas, concepts, and strategies to help a teacher with time management. One of the things that stuck out to me the most in this article was the idea to rely on other teachers who are teaching the subject, to use each other for help and support. I have already begun doing this, as I was pretty close with my high school history teacher. We worked together outside of the school after I graduated, and he has helped me tremendously since I began my journey as a future teacher. I know he will help me a lot once I get a job and tackle my own classroom as well. This just really struck me from the article because it is something I have already kind of began doing without ever realizing it, asking him for advice and pointers and clearing up ideas.

I liked how the readings from this week were simple, yet very informative. They got the job done, gave me knowledge and understandings to take with me, yet were very simple to read and very straight forward.