First Session For 525

After reading this session's articles, I decided to focus on a few things. This is my second year teaching and three principles really stood out to me. First was prioritizing knowledge and skills to focus on. I loved this quote, "Coverage is the enemy" because as a first year teacher last year, I had to make curriculum skeletons at the beginning of the year. As the year wrapped up, I realized I didn't get to nearly as much as I wanted to...it was almost comical. Therefore, as this new year approaches I am hoping I will be able to complete the task more appropriately. This leads me to the second principle, reflection and feedback. I think teachers have it engraved in their minds about reflection, what worked/what didn't. I also think teachers not only reflect immediately; they reflect weekly, monthly, yearly. As a teacher teaches a subject a few years in a roll it becomes a bit easier to adapt things, as opposed to learning the curriculum. As I look forward to my second year, I am hoping that I will be able to improve on things that worked last year. The third principle, recognizing and overcoming blind spots, was interesting because I thought to myself when I read that title, "What's a blind spot?" After reading that section, I felt that was a clever term and that will stick with me. I also knew that sometimes I did skip steps and will work on putting myself in their shoes.
The second article, the meta-analysis, was dry. I am glad I took statistics last spring because I was able to understand the technical terms. If it wasn't for that statistical background, I think I would have struggled a bit more with it. The one thing that I have to say about the article is that I can't believe that most of the research studies that were published in journals did not discuss software being used. I agree with the authors when they mentioned that was important information that was missing.