I learned that these types of educators are the ones who value learning in a collaborative setting that includes more than a teacher lecturing. Instead they may plan activities where students can be engaged through participation in the lesson like a socratic seminar where the debates and exchange of ideas can produce learning.

I learned about cultural synchronization and what that meant in relation to teaching. I knew that this was a common thing that occurs when a teacher may not relate to their students values and backgrounds but I didn’t have a word for it. It is important for an educator to recognize the cultural funds of knowledge within each class they teach. Every individual student brings their own unique experiences and we must think about our biased views in relation to these students so that our views are not skewed or in conflict.

I never thought about how our behaviors as a teacher can be categorized to affect our classroom expectations. I learned that these 4 types of behaviors: climate, feedback, input, and output can have a huge impact on the performance of our students and the atmosphere of the classroom. If one of these behaviors is lacking, then the students will most likely not produce successful results compared to a teacher who is aware of their role in each of these behaviors consistently. 

I learned these 4 steps for confronting our biases in the classroom. If we take this approach perhaps at the beginning, middle, and end of the year then we can figure out what views are holding us back from being the best teacher for our students. The first step makes sense to acknowledge our beliefs. The important step is the last one, which is that we must be patient with ourselves and allow time for reflection before we can truly address how our belief may be limiting out potential as educators.

I learned about adaptive teaching and how it connects to changing our beliefs about failure and its implications for our students’ learning. This reminds me of a past course where we learned about the significance of assessment and how it is valuable to constantly be assessing students informally and formally so that you can adjust your lesson plans as needed. If you give a test and a majority of students perform poorly you should take those scores and use them to plan how you will reteach that portion of the subject.

I learned that it is difficult to confront our inherent beliefs that impact the students in our classroom. These beliefs can stem from our own perspective of our role as an educator in the institution as well as how we were raised and lastly what society expects of us. We must take all of this into consideration when discussing our beliefs. As mentioned earlier the first step is bringing these beliefs forth to our consciousness and the last step to changing is giving ourselves time to reflect on the affects of our beliefs in relation to our students so that we can achieve a cultural synchronization between the two.

I learned that you will probably have to keep revising your beliefs that no longer serve you throughout the entirety of your career as an educator. I feel this is especially true in regard to technology. We must adapt to technological advances and embrace them. On the other hand the article means that we must revise our beliefs as in its impact on our students. We cannot expect a certain student to perform better than another student based on how well their sibling performed the previous year. We must treat each student as an individual and shape our believes in cohesion with our students each and every day.