Driving Miss Megan

My 16 year old has her driver's permit, a personal nightmare for me. The funny thing is that it's not my daughter's driving that I fear, it's all the things that she does IN MY MIND while she's driving and I am sitting next to her. Literally, she could be stopping, slowly, at a stop sign. I see her careening through the stop sign, being hit by an oncoming car. Literally she is just driving down the road, under the speed limit as she is extra cautious. In my mind, she is wildly speeding, doing a "drunkard's path" and hitting all dogs and pedestrians along Linwood's bike path. Needless to say, I have taken her driving a total of two times in what is almost a year. There's an old adage that says "Practice makes perfect". That is certainly true for learning how to drive, but Meg won't be getting her driving practice with me unless I am heavily medicated. However, I CAN teach math without the cognitive "visions" or being heavily medicated. Math is another subject where practice makes perfect. Does this hold true for all things in life? Can't we see or do things so often (the practice) that we don't see differences (other ways of doing or seeing things) for what they trully are? We make assumptions instead of observations, or our observations are tainted by our experiences. Although practice does make perfect in some areas of our lives, I think we must also remember that things aren't always as they seem. In a wonderful world of so much variety, we can't afford to "clump" experiences or people into our old and worn mental files...we would be missing out on life.

It's not just me!...

I was so relieved in class when Jill mentioned how difficult the Advanced Organizer jargon was for her. Just like Jill, I had to read and reread nearly every paragraph of the chapter (I also had to pinch myself to stay awake). All these complicated words, just to talk about graphic organizers. Jill's presentation was first rate, however. I loved the way she put the strategy to work by creating folders within a folder to be more organized. Advanced organizers are used a lot in my classroom. They help special needs students make sense of all the information, they organize. We've used Venn diagrams to compare and contrast stories we've read. We've used webs to further our understanding of our new vocabulary words.
Now onto Cognitive Inquiry. I'm never sure how I feel about this theory. I see the good in it, but also the bad. Personally, I'd rather work alone, with all the "am I doing this correctly?" insecurities. In cognitive inquiry, we work in groups. Groups aren't so bad if I am comfortable with everyone (I am completely comfortable with my MAIT family), and if everyone pulls their weight. As a teacher, I've seen groups that work together and learn, and I see groups right next to this group, where only one or two children are doing the work while the others play around. To give my final thoughts on this theory: I like it, but with close observation of the groups by the teacher, and in moderation.

Home schooling...

Tonight's class was nice. I like the "drop in cafe" style. I was there if my little one needed me and to kiss my husband good bye when he left for basketball... a nice relaxing evening. The only glitch I ran in to was when I tried to work on a power point and be on Wimba at the same time. I kept getting error messages. Memorable thoughts of the class... Ann shouldn't use the talk lock button, Kathy on the camera (our Wimba version of the movie Truman).
While working on my personal learning theory and reading about the different theories in our book, my eyes are open to so many spatterings of the theories in action, both within my classroom and in others. I am very fortunate to be in class support to two regular education teachers with very different teaching styles, utilizing different degrees of the various learning theories. I wonder if anyone will ever put all the theories, or parts of them, into one new theory?