Lots of Ideas Floating Around

There have been a lot of talks about witness learners, metaphors, and learning in an online community. First, let me say, "My name is Terasita and I am a witness learner." Even in f2f courses I was the student that stayed quiet as long as possible. However, many of my teachers would not let me stay this way becuase they felt my voice needed to be heard. I thank them for this encouragement. However, now, I feel like I need to be quiet to be able to understand and absorb the information. I try to get a gauge of the entire course prior to participating. Unfortunately, this means I miss the bus, a lot. Its not as though I think that I am going to learn through some type of osmosis, that just logging in will provide me with the information that I need from the course.

On another note, the instructor has the class looking at metaphors a lot. Metaphors are a hard thing to explain and to create. But this allowed me to think outside of myself and see what my experience is in the course.

Theories

In a reading this week, there was a lot of the mention of theories and how they can aid in teaching. I remember when I first started teaching and I was left alone in the classroom to do what was expected of me. Amazingly enough, I just relied on how I was taught. I did not look into theories, I did not study the best techniques, I just taught. Thank goodness for administrators and in-services. Of course while I was there, I hated having to sit through these tortuous events, but now I see the benefit of this. They were actually helping me by explaining theories in a way that I could relate to them.



Although I was not able to talk the talk while teaching, while I am studying I am finally able to understand the concepts that I was being told to apply in the classroom. I think that were I actually in a classroom now, I would understand what was going on. I would be able to reflect on how I was teaching and what my students were actually getting from the lesson.