DI Chap 8-10

Seeking to help push children out of their comfort zones is something that grabbed my focus about these chapters. The more experiences that I have with children, the more I can see and understand how much they wish/beg for growth and challenge, but it's about the way that we challenge them. Certainly, we should challenge them to become better at things that they struggle with, but if we can find something that a child is good at, and use that as a conductor for their learning, WHY NOT?

Growing up, music has always been my attention grabber. I have loved it since before I started to school, and when I think back to elementary school and the way that I learned best......it almost always involved music or some type of exploration or self expression. I can remember making up songs to help me remember things, I do it even now. Most of the time, I can sing you my grocery list. I don't know why I am this way, it's just the way God geared me, but I only had a few teachers throughout my school years that truly appreciated it, and harvested it. Those are the teachers that I can remember, and there also the ones that I still speak with from time to time. Believe it or not, humming through a test was not accepted in most of my classes. Who Knew?. I was caged for most of my elementary school experience, made to be quiet, made to sit down, made to learn the teachers way, all the time, and that is why I know that I can't do that to my students.

Just because I learn best through music, doesn't mean that they will, some might, but some won't, and it is my job to figure out what learning styles are present within my classroom and incorporate as many of them throughout my curriculum as I possibly can.

It's also important for me to find out where they are, and what they bring, in order to help them into the next stage of their development (socially, emotionally, cognitively, and physically).

My biggest aspiration as a teacher is to never get in the way of a students learning. I want to continually give them what they need to reach that next plateau in their life. If that means me, stepping out of my comfort zone and teaching them in a way that I do not learn, then so be it, that is what an effective teacher does.........she or he meets the needs. Differentiated Instruction, I don't think it's hard, I just think we have to get creative and be sensitive to the fact that we teach individuals.