Reflection #10

I have to say this was kind of a fun week. Despite having lectures on both days I feel like I learned a lot this week. Tuesday we talked about teacher salary, benefits, perks etc. and why it is awesome to be a teacher. I thought that is was very interesting to see some of the different starting salaries of school districts. It seemed that for the most part Utah districts had about the same amount within a couple thousand. It wasn't surprising to me that out of state districts had higher starting salaries. What was surprising to me was the about of students in our program that plan on leaving Utah to teach. I really thought more people would be sticking around.

Thursday was interesting as well. We spent the first half or so of class in our teaching groups discussing our lesson plan ideas and getting ready to teach the sixth grade class.

The rest of class was spent listening to Jeff LeBaron, a graduate of the program from a few years ago. He talked about some of the activities that he has his Jr High class do and they sounded way fun. I could really see me loving to teach an intro to tech class at the Jr High level. I had already heard of a lot of the activities that he does but the one that caught my eye was the hot air balloons that they made. Out of crete paper they built six foot high balloons and then actually heated them up and let them fly. That is a way cool idea! The other thing that I loved about Jeffs presentation was that you can tell he loves his job and his students. It was also easy to see that he is making a difference in his classroom, something that I will strive to do.

We also finished the readings for the Marzano book and I just wanted to add a couple of things that impressed me:

1) Organizers should focus on what is important as opposed to what is unusual

2) Higher level organizers produce deeper learning that the lower level

3) Advanced organizers are most useful with information that is not well organized

4) Different types of advanced organizers produce different results