SIB Journal 1

Student and Teachers

The students ability to learn and the teachers responsibility to ensure students do learn
has always been a semi-chaotic relationship. You, as a teacher, are given an array of widelydiffering individuals, both emotionally and physically, and it is your responsibility to work out
methods to ensure that those individuals learn, gain experience and ideologies, and grow. In the
past, a major problem was working in a way that you are utilizing a students talents and style to
provide them with a situation-oriented learning method. However, thats not as much the case
now as it once was; the internet and technologies that go with it make attributing lessons to
different learning styles much easier. Tactile learners can be given a tool/item to work on
assignments and present projects, rather than being forced to monotonously read a book or listen
to lectures. Visual learners can utilize power points, artwork, and imagery to better understand a
subject matter and memorize necessary dates/numbers. As a teacher, coming up with these
generalized methods to encourage your students to learn and improve themselves is your firstand-foremost responsibility.
The second responsibility of a Teacher is the role of leadership in the classroom. Not only
do you have to encourage your students to learn, you have to maintain the role of leader, making
sure students behave and stay on the right track. As the classroom leader, your primary duty after
ensuring students learn is to manage their pace. This is especially difficult in high school, where
students have entered the phase of self-identification; in which they believe they are them, you
are you, and so you need to lay off. I never went through that phase myself personally (My selfidentity has always been solid in my opinion), however, it can be one of the most rebellious
times in existence. Class Clowns are unbearably common on the grand stage known as high
school life, and these are usually the ones straddling the lines between classroom chaos, and
classroom peace. Teachers must, in these case, enforce rules as strictly as possible without
coming on as too authoritarian or too authoritative. Balancing your classroom ethic, and
punishing students requiring discipline as necessary, should keep your classroom organized, and
students on track as long as the disruptions are handled quietly and promptly. I have seen a very
horrible example of classroom leadership in my life, and do not want to repeat it myselfit was
in my algebra class during high school. The teacher would always call out the disruptive students
in front of the class, sending them out to the hall. Rather than handling this quietly, she was
easily-walked over and the students walked out of the classroom to the hall, stirring the class into
signing a line from Remember the Titans Needless to say, no student in the classroom was in a
listening, learning mood after that.
The students ability to learn is always in question. As I mentioned, teachers need to be
flexible in their styles/methods used to teach, and have a firm handle on classroom disruptions to
keep students on track. The problems begin with a students ability to learn. When a student
enters your classroom, you both have a clean slate with each other. You know not the others
habits, styles of teaching, or what irritates them. This makes it hard on teachers who havent
practiced for several years, then, to gauge what their curriculum setups should be. If the
curriculum isnt flexible, and assignments are rigidly set on a specific path with no room for
growth, change, or improvement, then a students ability to learn is negatively impacted because
they may not be able to get a firm grasp on the material covered. At the same time, the impact on

a students learning ability can be negative if the curriculum is too loose, too uninformative as
well. A students learning ability is heavily impacted by a teachers flexibility and incorporation
of various learning styles. Therefore, one can also imply that a students learning ability has the
inherent need to be flexible itself. If the student cannot adapt, they cannot learn. Nourishing a
students ability to learn requires effort from not just themselves, but the teacher as well. Conflict
will exist if either side is unwilling to bend a little bit.
Now, for a brief summary of the above writing. Basically, it is a teachers responsibility
to lead the classroom, and effectively teach students utilizing a variety of teaching styles to
combat a variety of learning styles. Teachers who have a firm balance of classroom ethic,
adaptability, and personal desire to teach will ultimately manage a classroom, quell disruptions,
and allow all students the opportunity to learn. Finally, a students ability to learn lies in their
own adaptability, and the adaptability of their teachers, to process, gather, and present
information.

SIB Journal 2
Teachers Expectations
A teachers expectations hold great weight over the school years success. A
teacher who sets a realistic goal for his or her students will have a class full of
students who (hopefully) feel that they can accomplish that goal. I would not want
to walk into my class at the start of the semester and have a teacher say at the
beginning Were going to climb Mount Kilimanjaro by the end of the year! Id be
completely demotivated on the spot for several reasonsbut the point is, realistic
goals set an uphill track for students to follow; if they keep on track, go along with
the lessons, and do all work promptly, they can achieve plenty.
A more in-depth analysis of realistic goal setting and its effects on a students
ability to learn would be something like this. If I set a lesson plan to get through to
the American Revolution within the first ten weeks of my class, I am no longer
rushing myself to think up assignments and quizzes for the students, nor am I
rushing to go through the text and read my powerpoints. Instead, Im giving the
students room for short, topic-driven discussions, and leave a safe spot to plan a
larger assignment after assessing my students knowledge assimilation on the topic.
If all goes well, it should take just about ten weeks out of the semester to get to and
through the American Revolution. Each individual subject you teach in class is a
mini-course of its own; like anything you need to let it have time to sink in and be
appreciated before knowledge can be obtained and utilized.
The importance of these educational goals, or expectations, is different for
both teacher and student. For students, it sets a firm guideline of what they will be
learning, what questions they should ask, and what research or writing they should
expect to do. If I didnt go into a U.S. History course expecting to learn either the
Colonial Period, Revolutionary Period, or Gilded Age, it would be a lot harder to
follow the instructors lessons, as Id have no clue what hes starting to talk about.
As a teacher, youre there to guide the studentsso dont leave them blinded by a
lack of goals and expectations.

For teachers, the importance of the goals lies in establishing exactly what
your curriculum is, and what you will do to help your students. For instance, if I were
teaching a Government class and I wanted to do a curriculum on Foreign Policy, Id
have to research the foreign policy aspect of our textbook, if it even had one, and
prepare my own research/assignments/questions for the students, then use the
goals as a guideline for what must be accomplished and when; as long as I dont
stick to it too much, as mentioned in paragraph two.
The basic gist of things isgoals are important, realistic ones improve a
students ability to learn, as they have legitimate expectations and a foundation for
what will be learned during the course study. The teachers job, then, is to use these
goals to better present their course to the students and encourage them to learn
effectively, while managing their own time.

SIB Journal 3
Social Ecology
The students social ecology could be utilized as an important learning tool
for teachers because social ecology pushes to transcend social norms. Many social
norms are good socialization opportunities, however some such as a communal
norm of bigotry/racism are not. Teaching to the students social ecology should help
to remedy non-acceptance of diversity towards things the social norms do not
accept.
Families have a large impact on a students learning, particularly on the
microsystem level. If the family unit sets a norm for good educational policy, and
provide early socialization with peers, students are more likely to succeed in school.
This is due in part to the family unit acting out its supportive social role for the
student; encouraging them to pursue knowledge and starting them out earlier in
their societal developmental tasks. Students who are largely left in nonparental
childcare situations are more likely to garner influence on their learning behaviors
from the care provider, however this still counts as an extent of family influence, as
the
The community can impact a students learning depending on how interlinked
it is with the school and family microsystems. From a mesosystem standpoint, the
community has an effective impact on the students learning through supporting the
schools in some way (either by volunteer efforts, monetary support leading to
better employees/supplies, or forming community-wide extracurricular activities).
The community can also benefit the student by having local public libraries for the
use of research or studying. I know when I was in elementary and middle school, I
would go to the Library on Marconi Avenue almost daily to read books on what I was
learning in school, and participate in other community events.
Culture can definitely have a big impact on a students learning; probably one
of the largest not counting family or the teachers themselves. Many cultures react
differently to educationUp until the early 1900s, Americans did not stress a
strong emphasis on education whereas most Asian countries are education-centric
culturally. What separates culture from family in the sense of education and student

learning is that a lot of modeling behavior occurs because of culture. For example, if
one is of the redneck culture, they may model their parents and decide to get an
agricultural or transport job rather than continuing onto college after high school. In
some traditional Asian families, the eldest daughter of a family-owned business will
inherit the business after she reaches adulthood, which may lead her to believe that
learning is the easy part and would work at being above the rest in her class from
a young age.
Families, Communities, and Cultures provide the larger part of the students
macrosystem, and thus influences their social ecology. To better influence a
students learning, all three of these combined with the educator themselves should
be great examples of social agents, not bad ones.

SIB Journal 4
Teachers and Culture
Culture and History are quite intertwined; if I as a History teacher were to
build up on the life histories of my students backgrounds, I would need to stress
sections that apply not just to Americans in general, but the immigrants of
ethnicities other than Caucasian. For example, if I were teaching the Industrial
Revolution, I might stress that the shift in industrial technologies were primarily
spurred on through the efforts of ethnic minorities, particularly Irish and German
engineers who settled along the east coast in the United States. While American is
arguably the culture of most students nowadays, its good to know about their
hereditary cultures and not just the culture theyre born into. In some cases, though,
I would opt to pause a few moments to study cultures. In my opinion, history is also
about cultures and the way those cultures shaped the modern world; so from time
to time to test the students understanding I would have a cultural studies period,
and an exam at some point later down the line to assess the students cultural
understanding. These studies would be more learner-directed than instructordirected learning.
What I spoke about above is essentially cultural pluralism, and in many
cases its a good social agent for teaching students to accept diversity. While the
people of America as a country are one culture, we also have the cultures of our
forefathers to considerAfrican, Mexican, Irish, Germanic, and British cultures are
the norms in our country, mostly due to a mixture of European and Mexican
immigration during the 1800s. Cultural Pluralism is the method through which
students are taught not only their native culture, but taught in a way that
socializes them with their hereditary or ancestral cultures. Cultural pluralism is fairly
healthy to the socialization of a child or student, because the student is exposed
to other cultures and becomes more open-minded rather than develop antisocial
behavior against minorities/diverse peoples and prejudices.
Cultural assimilation is the opposite of what I spoke about. Cultural
assimilation is essentially submerging a student into the current culture and
subjugating them into the ways of thinking and norms of the dominant culture.
America has a past of attempting this, however after many hard-fought battles for
advancing the rights of minorities and understanding/accepting cultures adverse to

our own, America became more of a Melting Pota type of state-wide community
in which multiple cultures are melted and mixed to form a diverse super-culture of
sorts.

SIB Journal 5
Curriculum for all Learners
Curriculum has to submit to the will of the state standards, however that does
not mean the teacher is completely bound in chains on what they can do to teach
the students. Depending on my class levels of education and learning styles I
would adjust my planning, delivery, and assessment.
Planning my classes for a variety of learning styles would involve making sure
my activities are relevant to the standards that the state has set, as well as be
workable for all students. Considering the way learner-directed curriculum is
handled, I think I would offer a variety of activities for my students, and allow them
to choose the assignment that works best for them. Some activities would
incorporate a mixture of learning styles so that every student does not produce the
exact same results, so long as they are properly understanding the assignment. I
wish to plan my classes to cover the most I can in lieu of the standards, while
allowing the students to explore the content and benefit from the learning.
For the delivery of my curriculum, aside from just lectures, I would utilize
hands-on learning activities, games, and other fun ways to incorporate the
necessary material. I would take care, though, in assigning group activities to be
inclusive and not encourage a clique-enabling environment, primarily to help the
students socialize better as a community and partially to keep anyone from feeling
included, which is the general disadvantages of allowing cliques to form.
For assessments, I have a three-step plan in mind that I learned from the
instructor Ive been observing over these past two semesters. The three steps
incorporate content understanding, critical thinking, and analysis while engaging
the students and making them more willing to fully comprehend the subject matter.
The preliminary testing step is a multiple choice exam, limited at most to 25
questions, possibly a few more depending on the specifics of the content. The next
class period would be spent allowing students to challenge the answers using
support from the lectures and text (proving theyve gained some mastery and
understanding of the content), if their answer is acceptable, they earn the point
they lost back. After the second step, if the students are still not satisfied with their
scores, they may take the retake, which will pose several essay questions that
challenge the students critical thinking, ability to argue a point, and analyze the
content matter. Utilizing these methods, students cover all the bases the standards
expect a teacher to cover in each unit with the assessment and content delivery.
To ensure that students raise their level of understanding from where they
were after entering my classroom, I would first have a cumulative project that small
groups of students would have been working on since the start of the semester. Into
this one project, all of their works would be placed side-by-side as an instantaneous
comparison of where they began and where they ended. Also, the assessment
process itself actually manages to do that quite well, as students start off, perhaps

at a snails pace doing bad on the test, and doing increasingly better while learning
to analyze the content more effectively to challenge answers I may have said were
incorrect.