Two Unrelated Subjects--Roleplaying and Reflectiveness

Students and teachers alike find it hard to reflect because of the very nature of reflection. Reflection demands that you critically evaluate your performance, and this often involves looking for your faults, mistakes, or failures. Society as a whole finds it difficult to admit one flaws. However, reflection, done correctly, allows us to correct mistakes and improve future performance. Even if you are successful, reflecting on what made you successful is useful because it will continue to improve future performance. I constantly reflect, whether it be as I am engaged in a task, trying to figure out what is working and what is not and how to get the best results, or laying in bed thinking about my day. People are always changing, always learning, but the only way to make sure that their is positive results is to critically reflect on what you absorbed.

In regards to Monday evening's role playing simulation:

This method of role playing is a legitimate way to learn about student learning and accountability. It opened up a discussion on the advantages and disadvantages to high-accountability/high-student achievement models emerging in school districts like Washington D.C.. In comparison to a typical lecture approach of discussing the same material, the role playing model forced us (the students) to take a stance and explore given problems and advantages to the proposed model versus a professor giving us the same data--it makes students think. Students need to have a common grasp of a base set of skills before they can grasp more complex skills. I think Santrock would agree with me. Students need to have at least some sort of developed schema regarding a subject matter before they can build off of that and engage in high level, critical thinking. Without, they are shooting around in the dark, struggling, and making things up. That time would be better spent developing a schema than skipping over that and having them struggle. Emotional engagement is a big part of the learning process. When students are passionate about a subject, or can at least relate to it at some level, learning becomes exciting. Education is never without emotional engagement. For example, a student may hate math. They struggle with it because it not an interest of theirs, and therefore they do not pay attention in class. That is an example of emotional engagement. It is negative emotional involvement, but involvement nonetheless. If the teacher is successfully able to negotiate this emotion, and make something click with the student, they become excited about the fact they "got" something. This is emotional engagement.