T2P Week Four

How do the Big 3 (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) fit into your vision of using clear guidelines and frameworks to guide your students learning?

By providing clear guidelines and frameworks to guide my students learning I will provide my students with a sense of autonomy. This will allow my students to work on their self-direction. By viewing the rubrics, the students will have the choice of whether or not they want to exceed the expectations and how they will be able to do so. On the other hand, they will have the choice to doing the minimum amount of work. This will allow my students to work on their own abilities and focus on their self-drive and to realize the potential that they want to reach and how to go about it. Rubrics and guidelines will allow the student to take the knowledge and understand what is expected. The student will be able to access their previous knowledge and show the educator that they are competent in the subject matter by structuring assignment according to the rubric. Lastly, students will sense a feeling of relatedness. They will be able to discuss the task at hand with their classmates and develop thoughts and ideas on how to go about completing the assignment before starting it. Students will also realize that they are all doing this together and are all relatively in the same situation and are all being held to the same expectations.

The most exhilarating aspect of today's class session was the discussion that took place on Nodding's pedagogy. Noddings believes that a trusting and care student to teacher relationship is key for learning to take place within the classroom. There are two types of caring that Noddings discusses which are, relational and idealized caring. Relational caring mainly applies to the whole person whereas idealized caring refers to a belief of some sort but with a lack of back up. In order to deciper whether or not a teacher is truly developing a caring relationship the teacher needs an observable outcome provided by the student. Teachers must take the time to be able to develop a deeper relationship with his or her students. While doing so, teachers must be able to recognize the student's interests and talents and then try to include those aspects into the learning environment. Once the teacher and student have developed a caring and nuturing relationship, the teacher also benefits from this process and in turn increases his or her own competency.
In order to create such relationships in my future classroom, it believe that it will be important for me to become knowledgeable about youth popular culture. Duncan Andrade stresses the importance of teachers who are educating students through youth culture. Duncan is has similar views as Noddings. He also believes that you must learn about your students on a personal level and get to know some of their interests. However, Duncan goes about this in a somewhat different manner. He makes a point to focus on the youth culture that is constantly changing. It is noted that he is not afraid to spend a lot of time with his students and continues to be active in the young community. It is vital to remember that teachers must be knowledgeable with this culture and the changes that are continually occurring but it is also crucial to be extremely important to be competent in your subject area. In my future classroom, I plan on using both Noddings and Duncan's pedagogy's. I believe it is crucial for educators to develop an understanding of their students and to show them that they do care. While permanent subbing, I always made a point to content with my students in the beginning of each class. For example, on Monday's I would generate classroom discussion about what they did over the weekend, using the target language. On Fridays, I would initiate discussion about weekend plans. Throughout the week, I would make a point to ask students about their baseball game or perhaps what they were going to do after school. I believe that this is huge aspect of learning and it is important to try to touch base with each and every student.
I also plan on using Duncan's pedagogy. I believe that youth culture has a tremendous amount of influence over students and I feel that because it is constantly changing it is hard to keep up. Within my class discussions, if I was unfamiliar with a new trend I would ask them to expand on it and inform me about it. I also would incorporate films and television shows that were popular with the students while introducing new material such as television programs and movies. I would allow them to discuss some of their favorites and some of their least favorites and why they categorized them as so. I hope that throughout my teaching endeavors that I will be able to stay up to date with the latest youth popular culture and find many new and exciting ways to allow my students to use their critical analysis skills with their interests while still in the classroom setting.