Take-Away Messages from TE 150

My first spring semester at Michigan State has just flown by so fast! I took my first teacher education class this year in the spring- TE 150. This class has been my gateway into the Education program and I have learned many important lessons and major themes from TE 150.

I think that the lesson that is the most important perhaps is the notion that all children are different. There is not one set formula that teachers learn and that engages, and successfully conveys concepts to children. Furthermore, all students come from different backgrounds and it is important for teachers to realize this. There are multiple possible explanations as to why a child is how they are. Life is a succession of multi-causal events: the interaction and existence of many different experiences shape who we are as people. Learning history is influenced by a number of factors ranging from memories and past social interactions to cultural identities and families. As teachers, it is very important to understand this seemingly simple, yet often overlooked, concept so that each child is viewed as a fresh case. It is all to easy to revert to a simplistic teaching method that works for the pre-concieved model of what a student should be in the teacher's own schema. These differences must be acknowledged and different approaches must be utilized as well as back-up plans if a child cannot learn in the way the teacher is presenting the material.

Next, I think that another important message that I took away from TE 150 is the lessons that we learned about cognitive load and memory/attention control. Our future job as a teacher will be centered on these principles. We will be faced with the daunting task of helping students learn. It is important to understand the principle of cognitive load so we can know when a pupil is overloaded and needs assistance. It is also handy to have an understanding of memory techniques to pass on to students to enable them to succeed. Going along with this, the importance of attention is emphasized. Attention is crucial to the learning process and teachers need to do all that they can to ensure that they capture their childrens' focus on the task at hand so that they can actually learn it. This is another concept that is seemingly obvious but it is good to emphasize this as a reminder.

These were the two main messages that I feel are the most important for future teachers. TE 150 did a great job at educating me about these two concepts so that I will (hopefully) never forget to implicate them in my teaching strategies and lesson plans.