Learning Log Chapter 2

What?
Children, humans, are amazing processors and go through different stages of processing at different times in their lives. The accumulation and assimilation of or accommodation of knowledge into our lives and brains is an amazing ability. Theorists, including Vygotsky and Piaget, have different ideas of how this works and when it or why it happens in a child's life but the ideas all center around how a human child becomes who they'll be as a human adult.



So what?
So everything...not so what! I know that my moral and social selves are just as, if not more, important to me than my intellectual self. When I am comfortable in those parts of myself, I will succeed. Students can't work in a classroom that does not support or at least protect these very important aspects of themselves.



Now what?
As a teacher, it will be important for me to understand the levels of understanding students are dealing in, depending on their age level. It is appropriate to push those levels (zone of proximal development) but not to the point of frustrating the student. It is also important to recognize the limitations of students at different times in their lives. As a teacher and growing educator and person myself, it is wonderfully refreshing to know that I am still growing and that the possibilities for my brain are still endless. The idea of strengthening certain pathways in my brain by repeated use is helpful to know and supports the theory that practice makes perfect.