When We Are Trained As Teachers And Started Working In Schools

When we were trained to be teachers	While at school and our advise
Learning takes place at school	Learning can take place anywhere.
The teacher is the ultimate source of knowledge.	Any knowledgeable person can be a teacher.
Writing is a must to the students.	Experiences can be used in learning without necessarily writing down.
Assignments are directed to individual students.	Group work is encouraged both among students and teachers as colleagues.
The assessment program is structured on a time table.	The assessment is a hands-on activity and at any desired time by both the teacher and the learner.
Based on a rigid curriculum and assessment is based on the same subject content.	Every situation is a learning situation and not necessarily based on a rigid subject content.
Learning is structured in either semesters, terms or quarters.	Learning can take place even at home or in field tours and not on structured time table.
The teacher is always right in whatever he says.	The teacher also makes mistakes and some students are more knowledgeable in some fields than their teacher.

Semayobe's Inforgrapic

Teachers should use pictorials in order to condense the voluminous data and information for their learners.

1. In this lesson I found a lot difficulty in finding where to get the most fit pictorials.
2. It was also hard to choose the most appropriate Pictograph site for the lesson.
3. The formation of the pictograph consumed a lot of time when trying to get the most striking pictorials. 

How did you enjoy having to do a more creative kind of task?

1. A creative task made me feel good after constructing it.
2. It forms and promotes originality.
3. As the teacher feels contented, then the learner can learn more with out many explanations

How did you feel at having to tackle something with which you were unfamiliar?
          Tackling some thing unfamiliar is quite challenging-but educative.

If you experienced negative emotions, try to explore those more deeply. What was it that led you to these feelings?

As a matter of fact, negative emotions come in when one forgets to save the work, or sends it to a friend first to check out the accuracy but only to be informed that the URL fails to open.

 How did you feel when you submitted the assignment?

• I felt so relieved.
• Here is the link to my pictograph
•  https://magic.piktochart.com/output/5019087-semayobe-and-the-socratic-way- 

Reflection 2.4.4: Importance Of Experience In My Own Learning And Teaching

Question:

• If you are a traditionalist in your educational practice, and would like to adopt more progressive approaches, what are the hurdles and roadblocks in your way? What can you do to overcome these?

• I studied in Uganda all through in my elementary and High school. By now I am a High school teacher and a CCTI student; I went through a traditional way of learning and teaching even though a blend of methods of teaching was taught to me while at the university which included the progressive way of teaching; but the traditional way was much more discouraged.To my dismay, the same tutors who discouraged the traditional methods of teaching were also using the same method while lecturing to us (their students). 
• The traditional method included;
• Arranging students in rows and columns with their desks/benches 
• Use of the Chalk and talk method
• lecture method
• I stand before them and unfold the topic of study, then I start the dictating of notes while explaining.
• Drawing maps on the chalk board as students copy the same (some times inaccurate)

I have been also using both methods unknowingly.

How I use the progressive method

 Since I am  Geography and History teacher:

•  I group up students and then as a whole class we design a fieldwork topic for investigation together with our study objectives. We decide upon which methods to use in the field.
• Each group is given two (2) objectives of the study which they are to use to collect data-they ask respondents questions in the field as they record down the answers on paper.
• I even allow them to come with cameras for recording videos or still photographs.
• After the field trip we come back to class and each group presents its findings from the field, as I guide them on how to arrange it meaningfully.

How I use the traditional method still

• I usually use this method when teaching History or some topics in Geography.
• I organize up students in a class (desks in raws and columns)
• Students get their note books and write down notes as I read to them. 
• After a given depth of paragraphs written, then I explain to the students as they also rest from the speedy non-stop writing.
• I usually refer them to the library for their further reading about a topic that I unfolded to them already.

The hurdles I find to fully adapt to the progressive method.

• The syllabus is too heavy/big to be covered in a short time of the study term.
• The school is result oriented since it is a private school and therefore mounts a lot of pressure on me to complete the syllabus earlier
• There is a multiplicity of students with varying experiences and capabilities; some only wait for a command from the teacher and operate only on command.
• The nature of our examinations is structured to test how best a student can recall facts and be able to write it on paper.
• Technology resources are not enough.Even the newly published text books are not enough.

What I can do to solve the problem

• Grouping up students according to test score in my class
• Use of analogies when giving explanations far a covered topic or a topic to be covered.
• Giving them topics to read about together with the titles of  textbooks which wrote about a given topic from the school library.
• Give regular assignments which I can check on from their note books.
• Use of a projector to cast simulated videos gathered from various site like National Geographic Channels.

Note: In the mean time I blend both to my learners and History teaching mainly makes me go for the traditional method

Feelings About Teaching

At this stage, I feel teaching in the classroom is becoming easier. Because my role as a teacher is centered on identifying information sources which are in with my teaching syllabus, unfold it to my students and the give them freedom to explore it in a group at free will, then later I guide them.

I have tried the various approaches to teaching and learning inclusive the constructivism approach even before this course but precisely I never knew exactly what I was doing and it was done on a try and error basis. How ever after this exposure to the theory is self and the healthy debate with my ccti course-mates, I have discovered many advantages of the constructivism theory which I feel any teacher should adapt to:

First, it makes learners discover answers to problems by themselves which makes them actively involved in the learning process and not just going in for rote learning.

Secondly students are always challenged to think of new ways of solving problems by reading a head of the teacher and to discover their capabilities by themselves. this speeds up the learning process.

In the debate, one of our colleagues mentioned it that it is likely to breed job creators than job seekers because the hands on solutions to the problems at school does not differ much from the field challenges in the job market.

The Constructivism approach creates permanent to an individual because it is that student who finds solutions to the challenges at hand.

Moreover students can like their studies more if they choose what to learn about , compared to when they do study because they are commanded to go to school and study by their parents, and also their teachers begin the rote teaching.

On the other hand, a blend of both the Victorian way of teaching and a Constructivism approach are both needed in the Ugandan curriculum because it is quite difficult to change instantly a system of teaching and learning which is deep seated in the education system of Uganda where a student has to be assessed basing on the correct answers given to a structured question on paper which is in line with the pre-set curriculum.'the Bureaucratic Automatic Machinery'.

Also, It is difficult to cater for some learners who are intra-personal since learners have to work in a group and collectively find a solution to a given task.

 

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Using My Strength In My Teaching

According to Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligence, a teacher or an instructor may find different students in a single class or group who have the ability to learn in a visual-spatial way,some other are able to learn by discovering for themselves in a hands on way, while others have a concrete way of learning in a logical thinking way, where as others prefer or are able to learn through spatial judgment and visualize with their mind eye. 

Basing on the above tenets of Gardner's theory, I have the following strength though some times limited by the conditions at hand at our school:

By considering the verbal-linguistic intelligence,the main medium of communication is English at our school. How ever, there are some students who come from other countries other than Uganda like from Rwanda and Congo D.R.C who had never learned sufficient English Language but are used to the French Language. while some come from Tanzania and Kenya but feel more comfortable to communicate using Swahili-but know some English language. I usually ask individual questions in my Geography lessons of how some Geographical phenomena are called in their language. As students give out the different names in different languages, those who are not pro-English are observed smiling in acknowledgement that they have understood a phenomena in question.

For the ability to visualize with the mind eye, we use the discussion method. In this method I form up small groups of ten students each group and assign them a task to discuss about for the next lesson. Each group produces one presenter who presents on behalf of his/her group. In this way, students begin to challenge each other when they critic their friends' arguments. In that way, they visualize with the mind of the eye.

With spatial judgment, I usually take students for field work and we use the environment as a laboratory since some students are adventurous.

I some times encourage students to form up Geography albums and write simple essays to accompany a given photo or geographical event. this gives chance to the students with the Introspective capacities to explore their prowess in writing.

With music, I am not good at music. But the teenagers I teach love music a lot. So we as a class some times acronym some phrases which need proper grasping. For example when teaching Geography of North America, some names of place or lakes; like the great lakes of the USA (Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario, we phrased a song with a verse 'Some Men Have Eaten Oranges' but each word in that verse stands for a lake in the USA.In that way students get to understand what I teach them and enjoy it.

Even though the Multiple intelligences approach to teaching is effective to trigger off the students' understanding of what is taught, I find it difficult to cater for every individual student's strength and weakness. I teach many students which make my classes big. This even makes the Connell's Multiple Intelligence Questionnaire for Children difficult for me to use. Besides, the result oriented nature of my school and Uganda's curriculum some times makes me spoon feed the student in order to complete the syllabus. 

Embracing Authentic Learning Experiences For The 21st Century

Lombardi(2007) gave out 10 fundamental design elements for any effective learning experiences in any subject to take place among learners. From her full article i discovered that my teaching has been tailored to the traditional ways of teaching and learning; By the virtue of my school set up which is result oriented more over in a very short time, as a teacher I am forced by circumstances to 'spoon-feed' the learner and I become a moving encyclopedia. Even though my lessons are made interactive and students are given cites for more academic content, they shun it since they are not used to the self discovery method very well.

However, with this exposure to modern knowledge; in a few lessons I have conducted at my school by the beginning of the year 2015, I have managed to practice the following procedure below:

• Find out about ideas or content to be taught from the Internet and or from text books.

• Improve my content delivery skills by making it learner-centered and sometimes outside the classroom since I teach Geography.

• Make my learners learn collaboratively by grouping them up and assign them different tasks per a group which they later present or express out clearly in order to master the content easily and also discover more on their own.

• I re-teach or re-explain what was not well presented by the students.

• As each group comes out to present, they communicate and challenge each other.

• With the above steps, we as a class(me the teacher and my students) manage to make analysis of a whole given topic in a small period of time of about two lessons.

EXPERIENCES OF TRUE LEARNING

1. Sylvia's experiences when learning English:

In her video she mentioned that it was a difficult experience when learning English yet she was used to speaking French.

She put it that it was her personal initiative to learn by her self.

Even though her Profs. taught her, they could not trigger off the zeal in her to learn, but it was her personal initiative.

When learning, people face different difficulties, for example she was laughed at when she made blander in her speech but she played it cool and laughed back because she knew what she wanted to achieve.
2.My experiences of true leaning

I teach Geography and History. I found hardship in drawing the geographical diagrams and maps. Each time i drew a map, teachers used to comment that i had drawn a jerry-can! yet i had tried my best.

At a higher level, i was introduced to the GIS technology in geography. Here the story was a little bit different but still difficult; Prof. used to teach us how to create a data base and then create shape files for maps: The challenge was that after creating one shape file, i could not recall where exactly it had gone for future reference about it.

Our instructors encouraged us to discover every thing by our own-it was too disturbing but i mobilized my fellow students who were better than me and we tried it out. we succeeded at the end.

3. It feels good when you can do what previously disturbed you. And you can not just laugh at some one who has failed because you already know his hardship.