Learning Theory and Week 1

Welcome to my blog, as I welcome myself to my first experience of 'blogging'.

I have to admit week one is quite daunting. I am struggling with all the readings and trying to work out what is more important information than anything else when time runs short. I read the study guides and textbooks, web links, discussion forums and suggested reading, but at the moment my comprehension of it all is quite low. I'll be honest in my blog, I struggle with learning from pages, I always have excelled in the classes that allowed me to view things differently, so I do not expect the readings to make much sense until I can jump into a classroom and see things in action. I am very excited that after contacting 8 schools I may finally have one willing to take me on as a prac student, but it is still not set in stone, and with NSW school terms being slightly different, if I don’t have a school to start at by the 19th of March, I will still be on prac by the time the next Res School rolls around... that is not a lot of time.

Time management is something I need to focus on, I am working and trying to complete this degree full time, while living with my parents and sister. Study time is often difficult, as I try to read a textbook I hear my sister yelling at my niece who is struggling to complete her homework in the next room, I hear the 8 year old argue that "It doesn't make sense" and that she "doesn't understand what it means" and I can't help but identifying with her.

As my sister explains the same thing over and over again the way she was taught it and my niece becomes more and more frustrated, because it still doesn’t make sense, I can see her mind working the same way as my own. I try a different task to explain the problem, and while working with her calmly we come to a point where she can follow my thoughts. I do believe, to an extent, this is the brain being 'wired' differently, connecting with those who are on the same wavelength. I guess these experiences are a great example of why I want to teach, I have seen so many kids in my craft classes whose parents come up to me and praise me because their child has spent the last hour focused on completing a task, and yet have been told they are behind at school because they can’t focus or devote the attention required to complete tasks. The truth is, the teachers just have not found that one key thing that will get their attention. I am lucky in craft classes because most of the children that beg their parents to come to my classes are kinaesthetic learners like myself so we connect and it is easy to get them to share something about themselves to make the task personalised and that keeps them wanting to be involved.



I have always found theory learning to be challenging, but through engaging with my peers, both within this degree, friends from work, and friends from networking sites like facebook, I have been able to still work out how to create this blog, so yay for learning theory through multimedia and discussions with friends.

more to come....