Reunions and Writing

PHEW! Week two of four is officially done as of 9 AM tomorrow morning! This materials class covers the art and science of education. We've studied various branches of philosophy and adapted it to cover educational philosophies. Figuring out what educational philosophy you identify with most is easy. Here are the three main questions:

1. What is the purpose of schooling?

2. What should schools be teaching? What's in the curriculum?

3. How should teachers teach? What instruction or teaching methods should they use?

(Kauchak and Eggen, 2011, p.201)

I find that I identify most with perennialism, which focuses on developing intellect and relying on classical foundations in writing, mathematics, history, and so on. My teammates probably find their own educational philosophies at odds with mine, which is great.

Have I mentioned that my teammates are really cool? Everyone is really easy to get along with and despite our schedules not meshing most of the time we've found ample time to get work done. This past Wednesday we sat in the San Jose campus and hashed out an entire United States history class activity, complete with group work, homework, and classroom discussion in the course of an hour. I put together a PowerPoint presentation on it, and my teammate C tore through the written summary portion of the assignment in no time. It will be really fun to see how the rest of my classmates act in these team experiences. We still have two more weeks of challenging work to fight through before moving on to the next class, so we'll just continue to get better at it.

My teammate A works at Starbucks, so he has an employee discount at any location. They told us at the outset that by the end of this program we'll be like all teachers - addicted to coffee. I think they're going to be right between the Starbucks and the instant coffee machine at the Livermore campus. I already have a small caffeine addiction (or maybe it's just Coca Cola?) Pretty soon I'll have a serious caffeine craving... I can smell it brewing already...

I'd better get to bed seeing as how I have a family reunion to attend in the morning. TTFN!