Reflection 3

I believe this is from last week's reading, but I have yet to write about it and i think it had and will have great impact to my approach on teaching. The story (from The First Days of School) goes like this:

"In 1993, a group of 23 doctors in Maine and New Hampshire made an agreement to observe each others' operating room procedures and share insights.
In the two years after their nine months of observation and sharing, they reduced the death rate among their patients by an astonishing 25 percent."

This was an incredible story to me! One in four lives saved. This 4-line narrative has changed my whole look on teaching. It's all about feedback. Or maybe humility. There must be something to asking a friend, spouse, teacher, or our Heavenly Father just what we need to hear to be better teachers. It will make all the difference in the world - that humility - I believe. j

We've moved on to Gong's book now. He teaches first the Framework of Knowledge - the most effective way to organize and process information. The four parts to internalizing information are:

1. Look for purpose.
2. Determine the central message/theme.
3. Look for validations/applications (examples that illustrate central message).
4. Give it value/meaning by forming an opinion about it.

These parts build on each other and expand through each step in the process. You can add more understanding to the theme when you understand the true purpose behind it, for example.

In class, we role-played another message in Gong's book highlighting four more steps to learn. The examples I'll talk about refer to the conversation I had with Allen, a classmate who outside of the classroom DJs. Brother Wright had us listen to the experience of another and really try to understand and practice these four virtues.

1. Capture. < Denotes responsibility in student, not the teacher. "When you expect to teach, your mind is prepared to learn." Just a good quote in that section. Anyway, it is my responsibility as the listener to engage in what the teacher is saying. I am trying to capture his feelings, his words, his actions and emotions to connect the elements of what the teacher is saying.

2. Expand. < "Shifting the role from focusing on the teacher's purposes, ideas, and values to focusing on the student's own purposes. ideas, and values. Expanding the subject already taught involves much more than going over again in your mind the things that were taught. It involves creating connections in your mind with your own experiences, visiting relatable places, asking opinions, anything to take the learning to the next level and connect is to something within you.

3. Teach. < The is is the most important transformation, according to Gong. While expanding is helping connect material to YOUR emotions, teaching is helping now to connect that very understood material to benefit others in the form of teaching.

4. Evaluate. < This is where you see if you've grown or not. All experiences can be strengthened, Gong says. Asking feedback is part of it. Make sure learning is correct, complete, connected, and concise.