On March 8, 2018, I observed Ms. Durkin conduct a small reading group with six students. The students read the article titled “Helping a Friend” by ReadWorks. Following their reading, they answered seven comprehension questions. To summarize the article, ReadWorks shares the friendship between Enzo and Zoe. As both children run a race, Enzo fell and hurt his knee. Although Zoe was close to the finish line, she looked back at her friend. What decision should she make? The article mentions that Zoe could win if she kept running, or she could stop the race and help her friend. Zoe chose the latter option, and expressed her confidence that her friend would do the same for her, if she fell.
To start the small group instruction, Ms. Durkin immediately
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The soft voices made utterances in unison at times; and at other times, one or two voices became increasingly louder.
Occasionally, Ms. Durkin extended her finger to help Oscar track the reading. Oscar, the same student that attempted to predict the story’s plot, is close to achieving benchmark—like his five other classmates. Hence, Ms. Durkin allowed him to join the group. I would classify my observations as seeing like-readiness peers collaborate on an assignment. Even though Oscar peered at his neighbor’s paper several times, every child worked hard to read and contribute to their small group.
By the time the students ended their reading and learned about Zoe’s kind action, they learned a new vocabulary word, empathy. With the seven questions at the end, I want to reflect on Question #6: What did you learn from “Helping a Friend”? That question allowed students to synthesize their answers, and I recognized a behavior I learned from ED 517 about human development. According to Vygotsky, “private speech is vocalized speech addressed and adapted to oneself. Thus, private speech is neither social communication nor silent thought, but vocalized thought” (Jones, 2009, p. 169). With heads aimed in the air and lips moving with silent thoughts, the children were alone in their processes of thinking. Their thoughts were not directed to others, and they were formulating
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First, when an educator makes grouping flexible, all students have the opportunity to reach benchmarks. While Oscar was not exactly at the level of his peers, through cognitive partnership, peers are capable of advancing each other’s learning. Second, encouraging students to perform higher-order thinking extends children’s learning. Although Oscar mentioned that the story was about helping a friend, by asking the right question, students made real-life connections. Third, by making personal connections and text-to-text connections, students experience learning that is meaningful, relevant, and coherent. Finally, educators should always have the mindset to “teach up.” I appreciate that Ms. Durkin did not underestimate her students’ abilities to learn the word empathy. As an abstract noun, she related the reading passage to the idea and quality of being a compassionate friend. Ms. Durkin truly aims high with learning and makes sure she scaffolds her students to reach those
Empathy and Social Change in To Kill a Mockingbird, Milk, and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Empathy: “The action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experiences fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner” (according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary). When we think of social change, several of the themes in the literature we have discussed are based upon this concept of empathy. In To Kill a Mockingbird, there’s the repetition of the idea that you should stand in someone’s shoes before judging them. In Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, we see a liberal family who finds it difficult to accept interracial marriage when having to personally deal with the issue. In Milk, Harvey discusses how the gay movement has a better chance if more people come out, where if each person knows at least one “homosexual” there’s a better chance of the movement gaining public approval. For social change to occur, one needs to be aware of and sensitive to the issues at hand, and conscious of how everyone’s lives are differently affected in one way or another. Empathy is an important vehicle for creating lasting social change.
After reading the book, “Seasons of Life” by Jeffrey Marx, I learned a lot about a man named Joe Ehrmann. Ehrmann addresses many coaches, captains, and influential high school athletes. He is on a mission to change the world and believes it can be done by sports and social change. On page 49 of the book a character Biff asks what empathy is. Napoleon Sykes replies with, “Feeling what the other person feels.” This was a great response but Biff added, “Not feeling for someone, but with someone. If you can put yourself in another man’s shoes, that’s a great gift to have for a lifetime.” I believe implementing empathy into children and athletes life is extremely important to start doing at a young age. Yes, it is important to be strong, hard working and successful as an athlete but you will not be an athlete
Vygotsky believes that a child’s cognitive development originates in socialization activities, and then goes through a process of increasing individuation. He argued that self-directed speech did not show any cognitive immaturity, but did show some form of development. He claims that private speech represents a functional differentiation in the speech of a child, or that a child begins to differentiate between speech that is directed towards the others and speech that is self-directed.
According to the FBI, more than 75 percent of all murder victims are women, and more than 50 percent of the women are between the ages of 14 and 29 years old. A part of that statistic is Kitty Genovese,a murder victim who is the focus of an editorial, “The Dying Girl that No One Helped,” written by Loudon Wainwright. Kitty was a 28 year old woman who was brutally stabbed to death while on her way home from work. The woman, named Kitty Genovese, lived in a pleasant, welcoming, residential area, in New York. There was at least 38 witnesses that came forward, and they all heard her cries for help, but no one came to her aid. Wainwright effectively demonstrates how society has started turning a “blind-eye” toward problems that can endanger someone's
Empathy is imperative to teach kids from a young age in order to help them recognize mental states, such as thoughts and emotions, in themselves and others. Vital lessons, such as walking in another’s shoes or looking at a situation in their perspective, apprehends the significance of the feelings of another. Our point of view must continuously be altered, recognizing the emotions and background of the individual. We must not focus all of our attention on our self-interest. In the excerpt, Empathy, written by Stephen Dunn, we analyze the process of determining the sentiment of someone.
When the time was up to stop writing, I looked around the classroom and noticed some of the students appeared a bit confused. The assignment was not a difficult one, not for me anyway. When the teacher began asking students to share what they had written with the class, it was interesting to find that only a...
Those one hundred and twenty kids that began the education process as strangers not only excel in learning together, they become friends, some lovers, others bitter rivals, but they all grow up together. They experience hardships, deaths of friends and loved ones,
...ed me that students who may exhibit troubling behaviors in homeroom or other social situations sometimes become model students when classroom time starts. My final question for Antonio was the stereotypical “What do you want to be when you grow up?”. Antonio thought for a second and then said, “A doctor or a lawyer.” His answer delighted me, Antonio is essentially dealing with a double life, but he still has big dreams. Even though he has to make lingual changes on a daily basis and sees his friends not taking their education seriously, Antonio has a goal, an impressive goal at that. All in all, Antonio showed me that there are students who can fight the setbacks in their life and work hard to do well in school. I do not think there exists a “hopeless case” and I feel that every student can work hard to at least perform satisfactory work with the help of teachers.
A 2012 study conducted by researchers at the University of California revealed that adolescents undergo major expansions in cognitive growth. Assistant professor of psychology, Jennifer Pfeifer, explained that “brain regions that support social cognition, which helps us understand and interact with others successfully, continue to change dramatically during adolescence”. Research strongly suggests that people who develop affective and cognitive empathy form healthy relationships, and function more effectively in the workplace. Therefore, it is of great importance that senior students are encouraged to empathise with others during a time of crucial moral development, that will ultimately determine their success as participants of society, and To Kill a Mockingbird has the ability to provide this
...ideas and how each one of them will impact our classroom not only as an individual member of our room. Every one had an opportunity to contribute and express their thinking without making fun. By doing this activity the students mastered the activity without conflict and/or put-downs. According to T. Tamara “Teachers who apply psychosocial development in the classrooms create an environment where each child feels appreciated and is comfortable with learning new things and building relationships with peers without fear” (Tamara, 2010).
Rita Pierson has been a child educator for over forty years, teaching junior high, elementary school, and special education. She was also a testing coordinator, an assistant principal, and a counselor, bringing a special energy into every role. Rita Pierson gives this speech to an intended audience of educators throughout the world, showing how relationships can affect a child’s academic studies. I believe Rita’s speech is appropriate for her intended audience because there are some educators out there who do not believe in relationships can alter a child’s view on education.
A teacher today needs to have an ability to relate to and create partnerships not with their students, but also families, administrators and other professionals. This ensures that all persons involved with the education of the student are on the same page. All involved then work in harmony and help each other achieve the common goal of educating the student in the best possible way for the best possible result. (Wesley, 1998, p 80)
As a perspective teacher I have a long ways to go in both knowledge and experience in creating lessons and curriculum. As I continue to add the tools necessary it’s important for me to realize some of the most important resources available to me are my fellow teachers. Their prior experience and years of continuing education truly is invaluable. It is my hope that my youth and fresh perspectives can aide these teachers when we collaborate. The encouragement of teacher collaboration is important in creating higher levels of instruction. This is very exciting for me personally moving forward. Norman Webb’s Depth of Knowledge calls for teachers to raise the bar by collaborating. It also requires us to challenge our students to do know more
The learning environment connects the classroom to the community through a democratic approach. This community based learning brings the world into the classroom so students can implement social change and challenge social inequalities. The curriculum focuses on student experience and taking social action on real problems such as hunger, violence, and discrimination. It is important to instruct students to explore in group settings so they can work together to analyze and develop theories that can help each other and make a real different in the world. As a future educator, it is important to not only to teach my students the issues in our world, but how we can work together to find
It is very sad to see a friend or relative suffering or in need, especially when they pretend that everything is all right. It is a delicate situation when approaching someone in this predicament, as often a person’s pride stands in the way of reaching out for comfort. How to offer your help to an independent friend or relative in this position requires a bit of clever manipulation and a not-so- obvious plan in order to help.