Blog Post #4
Quote your favorite line from this Justin Sung’s TED Talk. What does this mean to you? How will you apply this idea in your professional life?
Blog Post #1
Imagine you just won Teacher of the Year for not just the 1st time but the 3rd time in a row, like John Taylor Gatto. What would you talk about with a national platform in regards to education?
"We all have the same 24 hours in a day. Would you rather use it to study or to learn"
ReplyDeleteI feel like this quote stuck with me because I never really thought about studying and learning as being different until now. It makes sense though! When we study, we don't always retain the information. We just store it long enough to pass a quiz/test and then move on with our lives. When we learn some thing, we retain it and it's stored in our brains for later use. We have made space for the knowledge and have deemed the information important enough to keep and use until we need it again later in life. I think about when we have spelling tests at school, or any test for that matter, and I don't take down the environmental print on my walls. Then during the test I catch them copying the information on the wall. When this happens, I proceed to say, "if you have to look at the wall and copy the information, then you haven't learned anything. It's so true!!
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ReplyDelete"Understand your engine: count times you zone out during studying, which is when you find that information irrelevant. Try to reduce those times by connecting more and more info."
ReplyDeleteThis quote resonates with me because it reframes “zoning out” not as a lack of effort or motivation, but as valuable feedback. When students disengage, it’s often because the information feels disconnected or irrelevant. The idea of “understanding your engine” suggests that our brains are constantly telling us what does and doesn’t make sense and how to respond by making different connections. When content is connected to prior knowledge or the real world applications, engagement naturally increases. Zoning out isn’t always negative, but can be a sign that the learner needs better context or a personal connection.
Instead of teaching topics in isolation, I can emphasize relationships between ideas and ask students to explain how and why things connect. I could also encourage students to reflect on moments when they feel lost or disengaged and help them see those moments as opportunities to ask questions and make sense of the material.
As a teacher, this pushes me to design lessons that are more relevant to my students, using real-world scenarios and hands-on activities to help decrease those “zone out” moments.
Learning has this snowball effect. The more you know about something, the easier it is to learn more about it. Higher-order learning creates networks of knowledge, which is a stronger foundations for future learning. As you learn more, thinks make more sense and you become more efficient. “
ReplyDeleteThis quote from the video resonates with me because if we can get students to the higher-order thinking, it sets a strong foundations for future learning. I teach first grade and if we can get students to get a strong foundation of learning in first grade, they could be successful in the rest of their schooling. We would be setting them up for success. I will apply this idea to my professional life by adjusting my questioning technique, asking students to justify and to explain, or prove.
“We need to learn how the Engine works. Become the mechanic of our brains.”
ReplyDeleteI am a person who spent numerous hours studying and pouring my time and every ounce of effort into studying. I struggled so bad with anxiety of not being able to learn. I would then do the assignments and take the tests in high school only to come up with mostly C grades and a few B’s. I worked myself into the anxiety of I have to strive harder and study harder because I am not smart enough and I have something wrong with me because I don’t easily get A’s like other classmates. I have seen this anxiety flow over into other parts of my life. If I could have learned how my brain learns I could have built more meta cognition. I maybe could have built more of my confidence.
I am going to apply this to my professional life by remembering that “common methods create common results” and I not only need to figure out how my thinking works to help myself to think about thinking and learn efficiently. I want to not only learn this for myself, but then integrate it into my teaching so my students can improve their learning and reduce anxiety.
I like the idea of "Leverage Notetaking; make it non-linear." I will try using this with our study of Huckleberry Finn. Using maps to take notes on, I have found, has really made a connection for my students -- Huck's adventures on land and on the Miss. River. It also visually reminds them of the slave vs free states and how that affects their journey. So not only does it record plot points, but it groups together the location with the story. I haven't done that for a few years, but I am going to print out a map tomorrow and use it right away with my students. I forgot how effective that non-linear method was until this TED talk reminded me.
ReplyDelete"Learning has a snowball effect." This quote resonated with me because once my students explore and do hands on learning, they keep wanting more and more. The learning they are doing is not linear it goes all over the place. In college I studied and memorized... I did not learn. Once I took the test, I moved on to the next group of information that I had to memorize to pass the next test. As a teacher I recognize that this does not work. We want our students to use higher order thinking and make the necessary connections to spark more learning and make connections to other knowledge that they have in their tool box. In my room, vocabulary understanding is very low. In order for my students to understand and retain this learning, It needs to be interconnected with things they already know and then explored to connect that understanding to things they want to know more about. Memorizing in the lower level will not help them, nor is it a task they want to do.
ReplyDeleteQuote: "We all have the same 24 hours in a day, would you rather use it to study or to learn?"
ReplyDeleteThis really stuck with me, because I realized the two go hand-in-hand (learning and studying). We can study all we want, but are we truly learning? Or are we just studying to "pass the test", and then forget it the next day? At the same time, in order to learn you need to study. You need to ask questions and research if you truly want to learn something. I believe both are equally important. I will apply this in my professional life by having my students take both open notebook assessments, and then assessments without notes. This way they can compare the two.
In his TED Talk, Justin Sung emphasizes the importance of meaningful learning. One line that stood out to me was: “Make learning and studying relevant.” To me, this means that learning should connect to real-life experiences and things that matter to students. When students see the purpose behind what they are learning, they are more engaged, motivated, and able to retain the information. In my professional life as an early childhood special education teacher, I apply this by focusing on functional and meaningful skills. I connect learning to everyday routines such as communication, social interactions, self-care, and play. By making learning relevant to my students’ daily lives, the skills they practice in the classroom are easier for them to understand and use in other environments.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite line from Justin Sung’s TED Talk is, “Learning is a process.” To me, this means that students do not learn everything right away. Learning takes time, practice, and mistakes. In younger grades, this is important because young students are still developing basic skills in reading, writing, and math. They need many opportunities to try, practice, and grow.
ReplyDeleteIn my professional life, I will apply this idea by reminding my students that it is okay if something feels hard at first. I will encourage them to keep trying and celebrate their progress. For example, when students are learning to read, I will give them repeated practice with familiar books and new words over time. In math, I will allow students to use manipulatives and practice skills in different ways before expecting mastery.
Viewing learning as a process will help me focus on growth instead of perfection. I want my first graders to feel confident, take risks, and understand that learning happens step by step.
My favorite quote is "And you think, I don't know anything about cars. If you don't know how the engine works, you cannot fix it." How often do we just go through life praying we make it or grasping at straws to make our way through. It all comes back to the fact that we don't know what we don't know. We are always trying to do or accomplish something, whether it be studying/learning or chores at home. However, if we truly don't know much about what we are trying to do or the reasons why we are doing it or the reasons why it will work, we are not making it as far as we could/should/want to. So to put this to use in my professional life, I need to make sure that I don't keep doing something just because that is what we/I have always done. I need to make sure that I truly know about what I am teaching to make it truly worthwhile for the students. And I need to truly know about what I am learning or why I am learning it, to truly make it worthwhile and stick in my brain. Such a simple phase, yet we so often go through life thinking we can do/know/learn something without maybe understanding the best/right way.
ReplyDeleteLeverage Notetaking -- make it non-linear. It made me chuckle, when I take my own notes from a class I am taking or for a lesson I want to teach, my notes are "a mess" to anyone else that looks at them, but to me, they make so much sense. I add pictures or prior knowledge or another topic it is related to that I want to add into my class lecture. I use a lot of concept maps in my classroom. I give the students a list of vocabulary terms or topics and tell them to cut them out and organize them how it makes to sense to them by adding the connecting words.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many good reminders in this talk, but "learning is a process" is one that struck a chord with me. Behind the word "process" is the idea of "effort" as well, which Justin Sung touches on at the end of his talk. As a French teacher, many of my students complain that actually communicating in the target language is just too hard. What they are often saying without saying it is that they don't want to speak unless they can sound as articulate as they sound in English. In class we work a lot on giving great value to mistakes, making relationships with words they already know, and thinking about how best to learn the new information. Sometimes it feels like a large part of what I teach is not necessarily French but rather thinking about how best to learn and retain. I feel like I already use a lot of the principles Justin Sung touched on in the classroom. I think where I needed the reminder was in my own life.
ReplyDeleteI loved the idea of non-linear note taking. I have always wanted to take notes like that but always felt like I was just playing around rather than getting down the information. I naturally think in a non-linear way and now I know that I should have been doing it that way all along. I plan on putting these note taking skills to work at the next professional development meeting I need to take notes at ...and I bet I remember the information a whole lot better than before.
ReplyDeleteQuote your favorite line from this Justin Sung’s TED Talk. What does this mean to you? How will you apply this idea in your professional life?
ReplyDelete"My methods got me excellent results, but at what cost?" - This phrase really stood out to me because today I think some of our best students spend so much time on 'perfecting' their studies at the expense of enjoying life as a teenager or kid. We've become so uber focused on grades being the 'end all be all' that we've let it define us. Whether it is good grades or bad - both are defining in their own way. Instead how can we shift the focus away from grades being the definition of school and what we are good or not good at and instead tap into truly finding the strengths of our students and even weaknesses. As far as applying this in my professional role - it has made me think about assessments and the value that they truly hold - and do assessments needs to look the same for everyone every time.