Personal Learning Experiences
01
Elementary
In elementary and middle school, I recall spending quite a bit of time in “la la land.” In short, I was daydreaming and not paying attention. I can remember having to write a report about Jacques Cousteau when I was in fourth grade. I believe we were learning about explorers and/or influential people. My teacher assigned him to me, so I did not choose to study Cousteau. I was basically handed an Encyclopedia Britannica and I was supposed to write a few pages of information about him. I read from the book, tried to understand it, and my mother had to help me put it into my own words. The only part I did in class was the picture to place in the front of the clear plastic cover.
02
High School
In high school I had a very strict English teacher who insisted we learn proper grammar. This consisted of reading and discussing lessons from a grammar textbook as well as writing out exercises for practice. We used our textbook as a reference as well when writing papers (this was prior to the internet). She would also call student up to the board to diagram sentences without warning. We learned proper English to become educated and capable of speaking and writing properly.
03
Professional
As an educator, I was subjected to being taught “as if I were one of my students” on multiple occasions. One time in particular the presenter treated us like children for the entire training. She was “teaching” us about a new math curriculum, but instead it was like she was selling it to us. Our district had already purchased the program, so I kept waiting for her to actually show us how to use it and let us become familiar with it.
The presenter did not answer our questions but told us to wait until the end (and then never gave us time to ask them). The audience was bored and became distracted (checking emails, texting, etc.). I was to begin using these materials in a few short weeks and had no real training on how they were organized. I ended up spending time after the training playing around with the information and materials until I found the items and information I needed. It was a huge waste of time that probably could have been avoided if the training would have been better designed to meet our needs.