Project #3 C4T #3

Post #1

For C4T #3 I was assigned to John T. Spencer who shares a blog with Chad Segerston. Mr. Spencer is a sixth-grade ELL teacher, who has written five books. The first post of Mr. Spencers that I commented on was titled, "How to Fix Education in 5 Easy Steps". Mr. Spencer's post indicated that steps need to be taken to improve our education system. He then listed five steps that he thought would help improve our system. I told him that I liked the idea of taking a few steps at a time, and I thought it was a great idea. The step that he listed that jumped out to me the most was the step that said "empowering great leaders." I told him that without a top down change in the educational system, comprehensive reform cannot happen. administrators need to be involved in the process and should communicate with teachers and parents to come up with the best course of action for educating today's students. Without administrators support, systemwide reforms will be impossible, and students will be forced to suffer the consequences of actions taken by the decision makers of an educational system that will have failed them.

Post #2

Post number two was about Mr. Spencer's struggle on when to give students immediate feedback or to withhold the information for a while. The blog post was titled, "Is Timely Feedback Always a Good Idea?" Mr. Spencer said on most "skills" that he teacher, such as mathematics, he gives immediate feedback, while most "concepts" he teaches he struggles with trying to wait or give it then. I told Mr. Spencer that I agreed with giving immediate feedback for "skills". I said if we don't, then I would be afraid that the student would possibly end up confusing themselves even more, get overly frustrated, and ultimately give-up. Then I told him with "concepts" such as creative writing, we need to wait to give feedback. When creativity exercises come into play I think students need their space to be as creative as they can be. If we interfere with that then we could stop their creativity from reaching its highest potential. I then gave Mr. Spencer as example about dreams. I said when we're suddenly awaken from a really good dream, no matter how hard we try we can't get back into that place of utter bliss. The place where the world we were in was so vivid, and real. We're blocked, and it's just impossible to get back to exactly where we were in the dream. To me, this is just like creative writing. If a thought is interrupted than it's almost impossible to get back to where you were going with the story.