The Common Myths of Education

Of all the myths, I would have to say that I definitely found myself agreeing with the article discussing student engagement. Saying that a student is fully engaged in a classroom based on one criteria is not always true and can actually harm the student in the future. I was surprised by the article discussing learning styles. It has always been a part of my philosophy that students learn in different ways and can learn best when those considerations are made. With further thinking, I can see how maybe I was being too specific and need to think more broadly. Some students learn and work better under certain conditions, but this does not mean that they should be labeled as a certain type of learner (such as visual, auditory, etc.)Through my experience in teacher assisting, I saw how some kindergarteners performed best when my CT and myself set them up with certain consistent elements. For example, one student often got distracted and was the cause of other students' distractions. She worked more diligently when someone would sit down with her and talk to her about her work so she could focus on what she was doing and not other things. Other students worked hard but needed a longer period of time to complete their work because they just worked slower. The work was very thorough, it just took longer. I think that in my future classroom, I will still want to shape things to work in favor of how my students learn. To evade the myth that different learning styles exist and benefit students, I will avoid labeling students as one specific thing. I want to be able to observe my students and work with them to find a learning environment that best fits them to become successful. If I was told by a superior to teach a lesson in a certain way or to change something that I thought would help the students' learning, I would find a respectful and manageable alternative solution to suggest. I would create a list of students (named or not) that learn better under the conditions I hoped to create and let the administrator know why I would teach things a certain way. Hopefully we could come up with some compromise, at the very least. It is important to keep administrators happy, but in the end the learning is number one.