First Session Comments

First Session Comments

1.  Describe how outside-school experience(s) have expanded or deepened your subject area content knowledge, and tell how it enhanced or changed your understanding.  Include at least one specific experience. 
As a social science teacher, I have the opportunity to connect real world current events with a variety of subjects. I can discuss this weeks Supreme Court decision regarding “Obama care” with a government class or I can discuss how current US and Russia cooperation contrasts the initial days of the Space Race. In addition, as an older adult, I can connect my life experiences (crossing into East Berlin a week before the Berlin Wall came down gave me a small idea of how East Germans lived during the Cold War; watching the Challenger explosion or the events of 9/11 on live television and being able to express real feelings and emotions instead of reciting someone's versions of these events), with topics and themes that might only otherwise be found in a students textbook. History is connected to the events that occur today and one’s own life experiences play an important role in being able to connect the subject area with students.

2. Respond to the class discussion of Ball's 'The Subject Matter Preparation of Teachers.'.  Have your initial judgments or opinions changed based on the discussion?
The Ball article seemed to emphasize what many of us realize today. More and more is being required of teachers every year. The Ball article really didn’t come right out and say it directly, but a teacher’s career is (or should be) one of progress and evolution. I will be a better teacher tomorrow than I am today. I will know more about my subject matter every year that I teach (and therefore study) it. In addition, every year I will improve upon my pedagogical practices. Will I improve each and every year that I teach? I’d like to think so, but there are in fact too many examples of teachers who have given up and are simply biding their time to retirement.

Ball points out that teachers do not enter the classroom ready to teach, hinting that the liberal arts is not a valid place for teachers to learn the content sufficiently, (“What students actually learn about subject matter from their college and university liberal arts courses is both an open and critical question.”)

In short. my initial opinion hasn't really changed based on the in-class discussion, although reading the Ball article reaffirmed some of my thoughts on the profession.

Ball seems to hint that students should be directed toward the education path much earlier in their college career, an idea that cannot easily be argued. As stated during the discussion of the first class session, 25-35 units of US History has not fully prepared me to teach the subject.

3. Where are you in developing and pursuing a line of inquiry?  What is your question?  Are you satisfied with your question?  At this point, what do you know about the research available in this area?  What ideas do you have for possible experiential learning sources?
 I currently have a line of inquiry, however, I think that I am too broad and am not sure of which direction to proceed. As stated in my second post here (“Who really won the Presidential election of 1828” & “How did American Democracy benefit from the election of Andrew Jackson?”) still seem too broad to address properly. The election of Jackson changes American politics forever, the remnants of that election we still see today.

There is certainly plenty of information (primary and secondary sources) available on the topic although I am concerned about the experiential element (there’s no local Jacksonian Democracy museum located anywhere near here). However I may be able to connect the events of that era, with how political campaigns are run today, (I will consider any and all ideas mentioned here). In addition, I am attempting to interview some of the present day experts on the topic.

I commented on Tom's, Lloyd's and Marcy's blog.