AA #4

  


In the post "Sketchy Portraits: 8th Grade Identity and Pencils" Mr. Spencer compares an 8th grader to a pencil. This post helped me more than he will ever know because I am a nanny for four teenagers ranging in ages 15-12. One of them fits this post verbatim. He is searching for acceptance and approval all the time. One moment he is happy and like a child and the next he has the worst lash outs ever. As teachers we need to be able to respect thus change and be able to help them not fight with them during this time because that just makes everything worse. I have seen that first hand. I want my 14 year old to see me as his allie not the bad guy. In the other post "Just Teach Them To Solve for X" Mr. Spencer talks about the importance of teaching our kids about metaphors. We need to be able as teachers to turn on our kids mind and make them think. That is our job after all. The more we teach them about the world around them the better they will be. In the other post "He Just Likes the Class for the Pencils" he talks about the way teacher humiliate their kids to make them comply with what they want. This is not the way to handle discipline in the classroom. That just makes the child retaliate more and makes the learning environment even worse. In the last post "The Medium Shapes the Learning" he talks about when teachers approach a topic to make it fun but at the same time make it knowledgeable. We are reshaping education and teaching with all these new tools we have. We are given agreat oppertunity we just have to find the medium with all of these new things.