M.J
I truly believe that Place and community learning is the best new addition to our educational philosophies. I didn’t realize as an educator I would be able to take so many different things away from, our environment to teach my students simple ordinary lesson plans and make them grand. I’m sure many of my teachers over the years have used place and community earning but as a student I didn’t really realize it. But now as a future educator this means a significant amount to me that not only will I teach my student life lessons but open their eyes to new things as well. Place and community earning is accomplished by few simple goals, the very first step is to erase the generic idea of teaching a lesson. We have to think outside of the box for example let’s say I was reading Dr. Seuss books during march reading month, then I will make all my lesson plans revolve around that. My math problems will gave story problems from the book itself, our arts and craft would be to create characters like Dr. Seuss. This small but unique type of activities gives our students a different perspective of learning and that it isn’t necessary to follow through boring lesson plans. As a future educator I need to be able to connect to my students because I believe if I’m not learning something new while I’m teaching my students, then most likely they probably are not as well. There isn’t anything wrong with following guidelines and rule books but we have to think of ways to teach our students lessons that will be useful to them in the real world.
My goal is to be an elementary special education teacher, and I know I will have to be aware of my student’s special needs. On the very first day of class I’d like to do an activity with my students that will help me get to know them, and they can adjust to me as well. This activity would be a classroom scavenger hunt, each student will be assigned to work with a partner. They will be given a list of few things and simple directions leading to those particular objects. The goal of this activity is to see how my students follow directions and work with each other. This will help them feel a little relaxed because on the first day of school everyone is naturally nervous.
Place and community learning appeals to my personal philosophy because my goal is teach my students lessons that they can use in their everyday lives. I remember when I was little and we used to do math problems such as what is the circumference of a circle. The first thing that would run through my head is why am I learning this? How will this help me when I go out into the real world? The goal of place