Cyberbulling: Teaching in the 21st century

Since the introduction of the internet, there have been many productive creations that have advanced our view on technology.  We have answers at our fingertips via smart phones, tutorials and how-to video’s on YouTube, which essentially can teach you anything you want to learn from shaving to driving a manual, and social media outlets that create interactions over a virtual interface.  Of course, we can’t leave out the introduction of online video games, one of of my personal favorites(: But like just like a coin, the internet has two sides.

We now live in a generation where people are capable of communicating behind a computer screen, and unfortunately there are people out there who have abused this technology via cyberbullying.  Cyberbullying is best described as “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices” (Patchin, 2015).   There are many criteria within the description that are needed to be met in order for a certain circumstance to be described as “cyberbullying”.  Within the website http://cyberbullying.org/what-is-cyberbullying, the author describes these criteria.  They emphasize the importance of these acts being carried out with intent, the victim must FEEL harmed, the harassment must be administered with the use of technology (cell phones, ipads, laptops, etc), and it has to occur outside of just one instance, meaning it must be repetitive.

Now that we have a clear definition on what cyberbullying entails, why should we be concerned with this issue?  The reason that we should be aware and conscientious of this phenomenon is because it is a growing problem that affects education.  “Mobile technologies such as wireless telephones, tablet devices, and personal computers accessing the Internet and communications systems provide the bully with the ability to contact the victim without having a face-to-face encounter” (Washington, 2015).  Many studies have been conducted on the effects of bullying on students academic performance, suffer from anxiety/depression, as well as feel uncomfortable or unsafe in a school.  As educators, we have constantly been told we are mandated reporters of incidents…but what is the point of reporting something if you aren’t trying your best to show your empathy for a student and help them in a troubling situation?  We are held accountable for the safety of our students and to provide everyone with equal opportunities to be educated, and if our students are suffering from harassment, whether it’s on school grounds or not, we should do whatever we can to help our students feel safe.  Some may argue that because this takes place over the internet, teachers have no right to get involved.  To some degree, I can agree to that.  HOWEVER, the problem with that is it tends to trickle over into the physical world, meaning the school itself, so to some extent I can see both sides of this argument.

So what is the solution?

One way to solve this problem is to bring awareness to students on what cyberbullying is, then follow it up with intervention and prevention.  I remember when I was growing up in elementary school, we often had programs within our school to deter us from bullying/hurting other students, but I cannot recall a time where I was taught about cyber bullying.

Here is a video that does a great job about spreading awareness

There’s a program on intervention and prevention known as “Cyberprogram 2.0 on ‘face to face’ bullying, cyberbulling, and empathy” (Martinez-Valderrey, 2015).  The cyberprogram was designed to prevent/reduce cyberbullying, and in turn reduce the effects it has.  A study was performed with a control and experimental group that took pre/post tests that attempted to find four outcomes within students; victimization, observation, perpetration, and agressive-victimization.  The program consisted of 19 one hour sessions that were implemented throughout a school semester.  The results of this study were quite interesting.

There were two outcomes of this program, in which both have outstanding results that are hard to re-feud/disagree that the impacts of this program are beneficial to students/schools.  The first result was that it “significantly stimulated a decrease in the amount of bullying and cyberbullying” (Martinez-Valderrey, 2015).  Not only did that catch my interest, but the second result was what really shocked me.  Aside from deterring bullying altogether, this program also increased the ability of a student to show empathy.  Why is this important?  This is speculation, but if students can show empathy towards another student who may be getting bullied/cyberbullied, this person is more likely to jump in and say something/defend the victim, rather than suffer from the infamous “bystander effect”.  This act in of itself could deter the harassment alone!  My question is that this was a result from understanding cyberbulling, or is it a separate outcome of the test?  Ponder these thoughts.

The last thing I want to touch on is this: Who are the bullies…and who are they targeting?

In one of the articles I read, I found a lot of interesting information around this question that I have just posed to all of you.  The first thing I would to mention is gender differences.  Although both of the sexes equally share the role of the victim, studies show that males are more numerous in this role of the bully in a physical sense, this is partly due to their physical dispositions of strength.  However, “some studies find girls more often carrying out indirect and relational bullying and cyberbullying, bound up with friendships and exclusion, especially now through social networking” (Smith, 2016).  Something else I found to be educational, but less surprising, was that a huge victim group for this bullying was students with disabilities.  Some of the reasons why this particular group is victimized is due to the lack of friendships, negative perceptions, social rejection, and the obvious factor being they are an easy target.  The last part of victimization in this particular reading had to many subcategories to go deep into, but the umbrella term was “group identity”.  This covered sexuality, race, individual deficits, …the list goes on.

All in all, the main takeaway of this post would be to educate the public on the effects of cyberbullying as well as implementing a curriculum into public education so that we can intervene early on, as well as have a secondary informational course later on in a students life before graduation.  The main purpose of this idea is so that students don’t just “brush it off” like it’s meaningless.  I believe that the most important piece is just educating them, which isn’t too much to ask of schools.  This is proven to be preventable, so let’s make a change.

Outside of Yesterday’s class, I can honestly say I really don’t remember going over what it meant to “be a good teacher” during the first few weeks of class.  However, I loved the concept of the whole “before and after” experience.  Essentially what we did, is collectively discussed as a class what it meant to be a good teacher before the course really kicked off.  A lot of what we said was pretty good, but it lacked depth.  On our last day of class, we were asked to add to the list of what it meant to be a good teacher, and I noticed the difference in the first few responses.

A lot of our answers in the beginning were things like knowing the content your teaching, being organized, listens, patient…you get the idea.  While these things are all good qualities in a teacher, they are indeed pretty superficial responses.  After going through an entire semester of our course, I can tell you a lot more about what it means to be a good teacher.

Being a culturally competent teacher is one of the most important things I’d like to go over first.  The whole idea of “reach and teach” all students really goes a long way.  Recognizing diversity in your class and knowing how to be less egocentric/step outside of your own shoes is more important than you know.  Knowing your students, where they are coming from, what home life is like…of of these things can change the way an individual’s needs are met, as well as how you give punishment in class. This leads into my next point.

Make sure that your rewards and punishments are appropriate for the behavior.  Classroom management is another way to become an excellent teacher.  We mentioned a lot of about positive and negative reinforcement/punishment and how it can be used to manipulate certain behavior.  Knowing how and when to apply each one to a certain situation can make all the difference.  Another thing I would like to touch upon is the fact that screaming at your students, publicly humiliating them, and sending them out of the class are all horrible ways to manage a classroom.  Pre-teaching a class via classical or operant conditioning is one way to set the standards for classroom expectations in order to prevent poor behavior from happening in the first place.  Another way to manage a class is using things like direct instruction vs student centered teaching styles.  Mixing things up rather than spewing information at your students every single day is a great way to retain the attention of your students.

As far as teacher standards go, the first one I would like to talk about is standard  number 6, involving using technology as a way to foster inquiry.  My professor did an excellent job of using the blog posts as a way to create discussions within our class and outside via commenting on other peer’s blogs.  Alongside that, using the online module activities was another great way to implement technology into our curriculum.  Also, our professor did a great job of hitting number 4 on the list of teacher standards, which is using a variety of instructional methods.  Between working in groups, using kahoots, online classwork, direct instruction, and providing video’s for the class to watch, she was a very diverse teacher when it came to providing information to us.  I think the fact that she didn’t use direct instruction the entire year was fairly beneficial.

Lastly, if I had to pick one thing that I learned from class that I will carry onto my professional career, it would be the concept of what makes a good teacher.  As I have just mentioned the whole before and after activity, I think this was probably one of my biggest takeaways.  The main reason why would be that we touched on almost everything we have covered throughout the semester within that discussion alone.  I think knowing/actively thinking about what makes a good teacher is critical to my professional career.  Keeping in mind all the things I talked about will help guide me through my everyday teachings.  Overall, I have a lot of things I can implement in MY teachings that I’ve learned in this class.

As my future career will be a Physical Education/Health teacher, a lot of this blog post will be centered around those specific ideas.  While being a coach might be easier to motivate my athletes, since they signed up for it and WANT to be there, instilling interest in them won’t be much of a challenge at all.  However, after being at college for 2 years, I have learned one simple truth.  Not all kids enjoy phy ed class.   This truly was a shock to me since I always truly enjoyed phy ed class.  I’ve come to learn this ratio, which is the 15/85 ratio.  About 15% of your class will be the all star athletes and try really hard and do well, and the are the ones who get most of the spot light.  The other 85%, however, don’t.  This is my targeted group of students I want to motivate.

One of my philosophy statements is based on my value orientation on “self-actualization”.  “Value orientations play an important role in secondary physical education curriculum decision making by influencing the teacher’s curriculum content priorities relative to student needs and interests, school context, and subject matter goals” (Ennis, 2012). The whole concept behind this idea is helping students find their “thing”…in other words…their passion.  My goal is to help students find a passion in SOMETHING related to PE, whether it is inside our curriculum or not.  I want students to find something like a club, extracurricular, hobbie, talent, or something they can use/do for the rest of their lives.

“Teacher Strength: Giving up absolute control” (Powell, 2017).  I really like this concept when it comes to learner-centered methods.  In most of my classes, since I am working on becoming a PE teacher, we practice this every time we give a lesson to the class by creating a lesson plan, and then presenting to the class.  I would love to adopt this to the PE curriculum, since we should be educating the youth on a variety of forms/concepts behind PE.  I personally feel the best way to learn something is by teaching.  I figure what I would do is split up the class into groups to present their assigned lesson plans each unit, that way everybody gets a chance at teaching the class a lesson/create a lesson plan.

“Backward design is simply a planning methods by which teachers set goals BEFORE choosing instructional methods and assessments” (Hart, 2017).  I honestly don’t see a huge difference between this and how I construct my lesson plans, but I do like the idea of creating the outcomes/SWBAT concepts BEFORE mapping out a lesson, for those teachers who do not do that.  That is probably why I enjoyed doing the “Backwards Design Template” so much, due to the fact it was a new and interesting way to construct a lesson/unit plan.

I chose table tennis for the lesson to be taught seeing as I had never formally conducted a lesson plan fit around table tennis, so I figured this would be a good way to start!!  The way that I designed this was just like any other lesson plan I would do, I start with asking myself, “What do I want my students to be able to do?” and, “How do I check for understanding?”.  After I had decided what I wanted them to learn how to do throughout the whole unit, the rest was pretty easy to be honest.

For assessment, I made one of the tasks with informal observation, and I also had written down taking a written test.  One of the tests on this test would be about them on the outside looking in on a rally, then deciding which player would win the point, based on the description given.  There are a lot of rules that could affect the point, and this would be easy to manipulate on paper, and it was actually a really good thought I had on the spot, which I’ve never heard of before.  I am pretty sure I just invented something that is going to help me in the future for tests.  As far as the informal observation, checking a round robin tourney style of doubles, to see if people are serving cross court correctly, rotating the right way, and things in that nature.

As far as learner-centered or student-centered teaching, I added something into my lesson plan, which is something I had briefly mentioned early in this post.  I decided to add the “presenting a lesson” to the summary of learning activities.  The main reason being that it really does change the learning environment, as well as helps those students learn from their peers instead of just me, as well as the students teaching will have a better understanding.

References

Ennis, Catherine. “The Influence Of Value Orientations In Curriculum Decision Making: Quest: Vol 44, No 3”. Tandfonline.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 25 Apr. 2017.

I chose this link do to it’s relevance about value orientations in relation to designing a curriculum/lesson plan, and how different value orientations can change how you frame your lessons.

Hart, Aaron, and Aaron Hart. “Standards, Outcomes, And Fun!”. OPEN Physical Education Curriculum. N.p., 2017. Web. 25 Apr. 2017.

This website brought a clear definition of backwards design to explain to those who may not know/understand it, and the author had a colorful way of wording it in a way I would be unable to.  This reinforced the drive of the whole blog post, so I would hope to include a definition so that the reader can understand the blog post as a whole.

Powell, Marcia. “5 Ways To Make Your Classroom Student-Centered”. Education Week Teacher. N.p., 2017. Web. 25 Apr. 2017.

This particular site spoke volumes to me.  I truly believe the idea of implementing “teaching” into my PE classes, it’s not like it would be overly challenging to plan for.  I think that there could be room for “student-centered” instruction, and this author did a great job of explaining the idea of giving up some control so that students may strive.

This is the golden question as far as education goes, is it not?  How do we get over these obstacles/hurdles that prevent us from reaching certain students in the classroom?  Throughout this module we have talked about many differences between the teacher and the student.  Cultural, economical, social, behavioral, mental, and physical differences can always occur between the two.  Our job as educators is to find ways to get over these elusive barriers in order to educate these students as best as we can.

In the case of Jane Elliott’s “Brown vs Blue Eyes” experiment, I have a recent and applicable story that ties well into this topic.  On what I remember as the 3rd day of my pre-block classes, my Intro to Ed teacher, Prof King, did an experiment/lesson extremely similar to that of Jane Elliott’s.  King had instructed us, as well as emailed us, to wear any Packer-like clothing to class that day.  For those who did, when she took attendance, she praised them and awarded them with a treat.  However, those who did not, she would publicly ridicule them.  Saying things like “What is wrong with you?” or “for anyone who has ______ in their group….I’m really sorry”.  She obviously debriefed us in the end and explained to us what the effects of treating some kids better than others will do to a class, and followed this up by giving everyone a treat.  This is 100% relevant to my future career as a PE teacher.  I REFUSE to be the teacher who only calls on the “athletes” in my class for demonstrations.  The whole “15/85” ratio is what brought me this revelation.  Not all students are going to be interested or do well in your class.  “Discriminatory difference…can impose value, and make one worthwhile and the other worthless” (“Jane Elliott Brown Eyes Vs Blue Eyes 1”).  Even if you don’t label the students who are demonstrating as good students, there can easily be a subconscious connection that the other students make about you and your feelings towards the participating kids.  You have to be fair in your class.  You need to speak to ALL your students in your class.  GET THEM INVOLVED, AND GET THEM EXCITED.  If you give them a chance to demonstrate something in class, I am sure they will do well.

In order to make this blog post as realistic and applicable as possible, I have decided to talk about the approach to reaching students with special needs.  More likely than not, I will have either a physically disabled student or a student with special needs in my class.  There is no doubt about that.  However, there are many challenges to be faced when it comes to this, and many ways about including them in the class.  I found a website that could be EXTREMELY beneficial down the road.  It has a list of 7 different ideas to tackling this obstacle.  “Gym surfaces and outdoor mats are one way to make physical education more accessible.  Another way is to level the playing field by having the whole class play a game such as sitting volleyball or scooter soccer” (Wang, 2013).  I find the second part of this quote extremely interesting.  This concept of “sitting volleyball” could make this individual feel a lot more inclusion in the sense that everyone has the same mobility as he/she does at this point.  Inclusion of special needs students is a huge struggle when it comes to PE teachers, so this is one amazing way to do just that.

****http://www.friendshipcircle.org/blog/2013/11/12/7-ways-to-include-a-student-with-special-needs-in-physical-education/****

I hope that everyone in the PE field can find this post useful.  I posted a link above for anyone to check out the other 6 ways of overcoming the hurdle of including special needs students in their class, and I sincerely hope it is beneficial to you.

Jane Elliott Brown Eyes Vs Blue Eyes 1. YouTube. N.p., 2017. Web. 5 Apr. 2017.

I chose this as my main source instead of citing the book, simply because                 of its relevance to my personal experience.  Making things personal allow               it to be understand and remembered more readily and easily.

7 Ways To Include A Student With Special Needs In Physical Education – Friendship Circle – Special Needs Blog. Friendship Circle — Special Needs Blog. N.p., 2017. Web. 5 Apr. 2017.

I found this article compelling in the sense that working with spec ed                       students will be a part of my career at some point, at least I believe it will.               This article offered suggestions on how to include these students into the                 classroom in very unique ways.  Not only did it offer PBIS suggestions, but             activities to do as well, as I had cited it in my post.

There are many theories that surround the field of psychology that help us better understand the world around us.  Biomedical therapy, bias’s, bystander effect…the list goes on.  However, there are many “beliefs” that surround the idea of behaviorism as well as cognitive learning styles.  For some reason, everybody thinks that it HAS to be one or the other, just like the concept of “nature vs nurture”.  Personally, I believe that it shouldn’t have to be one or the other, rather that they work together to build our knowledge and understanding of what’s going on around us.

When it comes to understanding learning from a behavioral standpoint, it isn’t as complex as it sounds.  Behavioral learning can be broken down into a few sub-categories, in which I will breakdown the following:  Contiguity, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and positive and negative reinforcement.  The first term I will elaborate on is the idea of contiguity.  In essence, it is the idea of association.  “Whenever two or more sensations occur together often enough, they will become associated” (Woolfolk, 2013).  As far as classical conditioning goes, this is defined as “learning of involuntary emotional or physiological responses such as fear, increased muscle tension, salivation, or sweating” (Woolfolk, 2013).  Coined by famous psychologist Pavlov, he conducted this famous experiment using his dog, food, and a tuning fork.  To put it into simple terms, his dog would begin salivating whenever they saw the food.  What he ended up doing was using the concept of contiguity.  Pavlov would ring the tuning fork everyday before feeding his dog, and when the dog saw the food, it would salivate.  However, over time, all Pavlov needed to do was ring the bell in order to have the dog salivate, even without providing the food.  This is how classical conditioning works.  The process of turning a neutral stimulus (the tuning fork) into a conditioned stimulus to produce a conditioned response.  The ideas of positive and negative reinforcement are sub categories of operant conditioning.  In my own terms, reinforcement is something that will increase the likelihood of a behavior to happen, where as punishment is gong to decrease the likelihood of something happening.  Positive means to add something or to give, and negative is to take away.  If you take these simple ideas and put them together, you will understand the differences between the four.

Social cognitive theory is defined as “[our] beliefs, self-perceptions, and expectations to social learning” (Woolfolk, 2013).  Social learning can be defined as learning through observation.  Albert Bandura, famous for the “Bobo Doll” experiment, concluded that children would behave violently if they had observed an adult model behave violently.  Basically, this theory is the whole “monkey see, monkey do” sort of thing.

As far as limitations go, I would like to talk about the downsides of behavioral learning.  For classical conditioning, most of the learning that takes place isn’t going to be long term.  Also, the things you will learn aren’t exactly useful (in my opinion) in an educational setting.  I do, however, believe in the ideas of positive and negative reinforcement/punishment.  In my O+P class, I have seen a pretty amazing example of this.  Although I’m not sure how she did it, she has conditioned her class (after lunch and walking back to class) to stop at certain points along the way to wait for her to catch up.  The students do this every day, and do not deviate from this.  The students must have been conditioned in some way, most likely through negative punishment, or positive punishment.  If I had to guess, she most likely took away one of their “good behavior card colors” if they had walked too far before she allowed them to go.  That or she would reward them when they stayed, by giving them candy or something.  If that were the case, it would be positive reinforcement.

Whether or not I believe in one more than the other isn’t really the point of this reflection, in my personal opinion.  However, as far as my future career is concerned, I would have to say the most reliable theory for me would be the social cognitive theory of role modeling.  Since I will be a physical education teacher, I will be doing a lot of demonstrations in hopes that I can help the kids who don’t fully understand how to do things like a correct serve in table tennis, or throwing a frisbee, things in that nature.  Tying in with that, I think applied behavioral analysis (B.F. Skinner, conditioning theories, etc) goes hand in hand with that of being a physical educator.  Discipline is a REQUIREMENT in a phy ed class.  That is where students blow off steam, let out their energy, and do not wish to be controlled.  I want my students to have that sort of release during the day, but they need to also respect my authority as well, and do as I say.  I will reward good behavior, as well as discipline bad behavior, which is basically what operant conditioning is.

As I go back to my earlier statement, it is not about one or the other…it’s about using them both together, and deciding when it is right to apply each method (procedural knowledge….hmm?? Psych has a funny way of connecting with other ideas).

References

“Bandura And Social Learning Theory”. YouTube. N.p., 2017. Web. 15 Mar. 2017.

I selected this video because I believe it does an outstanding job of outlining what I am referring to within my blog post.

“Operant Conditioning – Negative Reinforcement Vs Positive Punishment”. YouTube. N.p., 2017. Web. 15 Mar. 2017.

I decided to use another “Big Bang Theory” video, not only because it is                   hilarious, but also in that it proves to be quite helpful in explaining                           concepts, thank’s to Sheldon.  Within this video, they do an excellent job of             not only demonstrating operant conditioning, but they also help clarify the             difference between positive punishment, and negative reinforcement.                     These two, as stated in the video, are often mixed up when explaining                     them, as well as labeling them to certain situations.  I found that this                         clarification in the video was useful.

Woolfolk, A., & Hoy, A. W. (2013). Educational psychology: Active learning edition (12th ed.). Boston: Pearson.

The textbook does a great job of outlining certain ideas and examples that               without it would have mad this blog a lot more challenging.  That along                   with my AP psych notebook, I was able to have a deeper understanding of               some of these terms, which helps when it comes to explaining it to other                 people.  Things like explaining operant and classical conditioning, social                 cognitive theory definition, popular household psychologist names, etc.

When it comes to the stages of development throughout life, there are many sub-categories that branch off of them.  Social development, cognitive development, physical, the list goes on and on.  Throughout this unit/module, we looked at many developmental psychologists including Piaget, Erickson, Bronfenbrenner, and Vygotsky.  Each one of them have constructed their own theories surrounding the developmental process we all go through in life, each of which can be applicable to education.

What I would like to discuss first, is Piaget’s theory involving the 4 stages of Cognitive development.  These four stages include sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational, and formal operations.  Each one of these stages come with ways of assessment, to determine where a child is at in the development process.  Throughout the stage of sensorimotor (birth – 2 years old), they develop what is known as “object permanence”.  This is why children love the game “peek-a-boo”.  The concept involves the idea that “if I can’t see you, you must not be there”.  Children in this stage fail to understand that even though an object isn’t in sight, doesn’t mean it disappears.  “The oder infant who searches fo the ball that has rolled out of sight is indicating an understanding that objects still exist even when they are not in view (Moore & Meltzoff, 2004)” (Woolfolk, 2013).  We mainly talked about the idea of “conservation” in class, which is developed in the pre-operational stage.  The concept behind this is that if given an equal amount of something, when rearranged a certain way, the amount is still equivalent to its counterpart.

The concept of conservation can really be applicable in education in the sense of a math class.  I mentioned this in class, but when it comes to equivalents, fractions, etc, this is perfect to help move someone past the stage of pre-operational.  If you think about it, most of the “tests” you can perform on child to see their development, are basically math problems.  As an example, when my educational psych professor showed us the video of her child successfully passing the “water displacement” test of conservation, but failed the coin one, a math instructor could work with that type of information to help her move forward.

Many psychologists support Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, however, there are also critiques.  One limitation to Piaget’s theory is that it fails to reach to the developmental process of most adults.  This theory is strictly based on the development of children until the ages of 12-14.  After that age, none of the assessments can be used, and there aren’t any more stages after the fact. This is one popular critique when it comes to his theory.

As for Vygotsky, his ideas surrounding the “Zone of Proximal Development” relate directly to education.  It is a pretty basic concept in which you use the “scaffolding” method.  You teach/aid students things that are slightly out of their understanding at first, to eventually set them off on their own to try it by themselves.  The problem is that every student is different, so this would be a very individualized process.  You can’t teach something that is too basic otherwise learning won’t take place.  On the other hand, if you teach something too challenging, they will get frustrated and give up.

Within this unit, we learned about the 4 types of parenting styles, and with them their level of warmth and control.  The 4 include authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and neglectful.  Out of all of these four, I would say my family raised me with an authoritative attitude. “Authoritative parents also have rules that children are expected to follow, however, they allow some exceptions to the rule. They often tell children the reasons for the rules and they are more willing to consider a child’s feelings when setting limits” (Morin, 2016).  I personally believe that being raised in that style helped shape me into who I am today, to an extent at least.  I make good decisions, I stay away from trouble, and I learned from my mistakes growing up.  Alternatively, there are a lot of outside factors that ALSO helped shape me to who I am today, but that’s for another blog post I’m sure.  “Children raised with authoritative discipline tend to be happy and successful. They are often good at making decisions and evaluating safety risks on their own” (Morin, 2016).

References

Woolfolk, A., & Hoy, A. W. (2013). Educational psychology: Active learning edition (12th ed.). Boston: Pearson.

I used our classroom textbook as a resource involving some of the major                 topics I had covered.  I used the book for concepts surrounding Piaget’s                   theory of the 4 stages of cognitive development as well as touched upon                   Vygotsky’s work.  I also briefly went over the parenting styles which I                       learned from the textbook and in class.

Morin, A., & LCSW. (2016, June 21). 4 parenting styles and their effects on children. Retrieved February 23, 2017, from Verywell, https://www.verywell.com/types-of-parenting-styles-1095045

This article was very helpful in defining the parenting styles and how goes             a little more in depth on how it (on average) effects a child’s development.             Also, it helped guide my thinking process on how to describe my home life             as well as how I developed into the person I am today.

When we were in our small groups, I was talking/discussing with partner the topic of, “Can teachers be researches, and can researchers be teachers?”  Interestingly enough, we both came up with different answers.  I said that educators can very well be researchers, and I was going to raise my hand in class and say “I disagree” when my professor was talking about how teachers may not be as methodical as researchers or go as in depth etc etc, but then she changed her words and said that teachers COULD in fact be researches to some extent.  I probably should’ve wrote notes down because I would’ve remembered a lot more.

I think educators almost have to be researchers in some fields.  There is new and upcoming information all the time, and some of that has to be effective in their field, right?  If we take that out of consideration, there are still practical things that could be researched.  For example, how to be more efficient in the classroom, how to boost effort in the classroom from students, things in that nature could be useful for educators.

Now when it came to the concept of researchers being teachers, I wasn’t sure I agreed with my partner.  She said she believed they are, whereas I said,  “it’s a possibility”.  Personally, when I think of researchers, I think of people who are devoted to one subject area that are highly intelligent and spend most of there life educating themselves and conducting their own experiments etc etc.  These are the type of people I could see sitting in a Math class instructing 5th graders on how to do long division.  To me, being an educator requires a different type of skill, one of which I personally don’t believe a researcher would most likely have.

When it comes to impacting my personal career in teaching physical education, besides having my lesson plans filled out, I pretty much have my entire life set up in my head.  Unless a new sport comes up, there really isn’t much research I have to do on my own.  Sure there are things I had mentioned before like “Improvements to the classroom” and stuff like that, but I honestly don’t foresee things going awry in my class.  Of course, there is always an option for me to research things I have questions about or have to find solutions to involving my class.

Part 2:

“Students have a lot of time at home and they should do something” (Hinchey, 1996).

To the following statement, I have to say that I agree, they should do something.  However, I will be the first to say that I think they should be spending their free time as far away from homework as possible.  Students have lives outside of this teacher’s classroom, and to think that they have enough time for your homework alone is just selfish.  Personally, when I was in high school, I did cross country and track, and training during these seasons prevented me from getting home until around 5:30 or 6pm.  That gives me roughly 4 hours to myself after having a long day at school (which I can still clearly remember).  Taking into account I need to shower and eat, that alone right there is easily 30 minutes.  That leaves me 3 hours and 30 minutes left in my day.  I want to spend every minute of that relaxing before I go back to school and repeat. I feel for kids when they say they simply don’t have as much time as teachers think they do, or when they say, “I have other things to do” (Hinchey, 1996).

“Students report that their interactions with their parents around homework often involve conflicts and punishment, and that these interactions color their overall relationships with their parents” (Katz, 2012).  After doing this research, I have come to the conclusion that I agree with the teacher who wrote “students should not be given homework”.  The last thing us educators want is problems at home.  This only creates more stress on a student which creates anxiety which leads to future problems.

“Research suggests that students often fail to complete homework due to lack of motivation, partly due to the absence of student choice and a mismatch in assignment difficulty and student’s ability level” (Setz and Shroeder, 2016).  This shows that a large amount of students are given homework that is too difficult/time consuming for where they are in the course.  Although I never personally experienced this, it is a very logical statement.  If I was given an assignment that took me nearly an hour to complete, I wouldn’t want to do homework either.

“Students often complain about the amount of time they spend completing HW instead of engaging in leisure activities” (Núñez, J. C., Suárez, N., Rosário, P., Vallejo, G., Cerezo, R., & Valle, A. (2015).  This statement here really does resonate with me personally, because honestly, I never felt like I had time to  myself in high school.  All of my free time was spent working out for Cross Country, which is ABSOLUTELY NOT leisure, let me tell you that much.  I was pretty much assigned work every single night outside of school projects and stuff, and while having a job during school, this made for a very tight schedule.

My name is Matt Lander and I am a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.  I grew up in Waukesha Wisconsin for the majority of my life and graduated high school in 2015 at Waukesha North High School.  I’m an athlete as well as a self taught musician and hope to carry those passions on in life as well as form a career.

I’ve had the same plan since I was in middle school when it came to deciding what my future job would be.  I’ve always enjoyed my time in phy ed class, as well as helping others in class if they weren’t as good at something.  My plan after college is to apply to the high school I graduated from to teach physical education (and possibly health), assistant coach the Men’s cross country team, as well as potentially start ultimate frisbee as a recognized sport at the school in the spring to coach that as well.  I’d also like to form a table tennis team during the winter and coach that because these are all passions of mine that I was never able to pursue in high school.

There isn’t a single phy ed teacher I’ve ever had a problem with while growing up as a kid, all the way to the end of my high school career.  Some of my most influential gym teachers were Mr. Schlei (8th grade teacher but taught gym at the high school the next year), Mr. W (everyone called him Dubbs because his last name was too hard to pronounce), and Mr. Schaefer.  They were all amazing mentors growing up because they went above and beyond their job description and taught me a lot, which made me into the person I am today.

When it comes to being a “good teacher” (speaking about gym teachers specifically), I think there are a lot of factors.  You need to be easy going because it is after all gym class, a time for students to get a break within the day, but you also need to be firm and let your students know who is in charge.  You are their teacher, not their friend, which leads me into the next point.  You need to be open as a teacher.  My gym teachers always had their office doors open for anybody to come in and talk about whatever was on their mind, because they truly do care about your well being.  I also think a good teacher should help those in the class who struggle the most with learning the lessons being taught.  The people that need the most attention are the ones who don’t give all their effort (which could be from an abundance of outside factors) or don’t dress for class, etc etc.

I hope to look back on this one day once I’m in my profession to see if I did things/are doing things right.