Within this chapter, one quote caught my attention the most. Jerome Bruner said that, “I have come increasingly to recognize that learning in most settings is a communal activity, a sharing of culture.” This thought really made me think and I have to say I agree with it. It seems everything we are reading and learning about in these last couple of weeks has promoted cooperative and collaborative learning (which can share strengths and culture). I have always been the introverted student that individual learning was a better approach for. Looking back I did not appreciate group work and cooperative learning, but I strongly feel that if a teacher would have addressed how to effectively work with one another and did check on progress that I would have benefited from it more. That wasn’t the case and the teachers never seemed to check up on the groups; which made it easy for one or two people to take over and make the rest of us feel useless (I had this feeling all too often and because of that I still doubt myself when working in groups). I know I am going to strive to not let any of my students feel how I felt and I feel with regards to this topic. Through this program I have seen the benefit of successful group work and I would never want a student to miss out on that opportunity.
The subject of civic values brought back memories from my fifth grade year. I had a teacher who had a comment box in the classroom. We would write down any problems we had and then after lunch/recess we would sit in a circle and discuss it. Looking back I think it was a great way to make the classroom feel more like a community. I really admire her for what she did because no other teacher addressed issues this way and because of that many feelings were internalized and never worked out.
I thought the information regarding peer influence was interesting. It brought me back to the movie, Dangerous Minds. Clearly this knowledge is nothing new, that peers can control what others want to do in regards to learning. This would be why in the movie the teacher finds the student that all others look up to and they try to reach them. If they can get him/her to think school is important, then maybe others will follow. It also reminded me of Welcome Back Kotter and Vinnie Barbarino.
The author also discussed how being a “brain” wasn’t a good image and I reflected on my friend’s daughter’s words. She had told her mom that she had no friends, that nobody liked her. My friend asked her daughter why she thought that and she proceeded to say, “because I am good at math and I am smart. I am a nerd.” This was coming from a second grader. I think it is so tragic that this image of a “nerd” starts as early as second grade, if not sooner. No wonder so many students prefer to not learn, they don’t want to fall into that category at such an early age and due to that not have any friends. It saddens me because this girl is so creative and smart, yet she is missing out on all of the social interactions she deserves (such as birthday parties).
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