Positive Psychology

In class we watched the video on positive psychology by Shawn Achor. I found it to be extremely interesting because I didn’t know that there was so much research being done that proves that being happy before accomplishing a task leads to greater success in the task. I think that this is an idea that everyone can use in their lives, especially teachers. Using the idea of positive psychology in a classroom could lead to greater success from the students. There are several things that I could think of that could lead to students being happy in the classroom. To start from the beginning the teacher should go into the classroom with a positive attitude. If a positive attitude is reflected by the teacher it can also be absorbed by the students.

I think it would also help if the classroom was arranged in a positive way. To go back to the example of when I volunteered in a grade two classroom, and the teacher had the student’s desks arranged in groups, and every week she would change the order of the desks around. This is just one example of how a teacher could create a positive and happy environment in their class. This idea got all the students interacting and working with each other in a positive way.

            Another idea I thought about that might work well with younger students, would be to have them create their own “happy place” or think of a memory where they are extremely happy. Then have them think of this place or memory in the morning before the day starts. Just thinking about a positive thing could affect their success.

            Overall, I think that creating a positive environment in a classroom is extremely important and can directly relate to the students success.

Promoting Acceptance Among Students

In classrooms these days there is a huge amount of diversity among the students and teachers. There is cultural diversity, economic diversity, and all kinds of other diversities. One of the challenges of being a teacher will be to not only check any prejudices that you may subconsciously have at the door, but also teach the students to not have any prejudices. I don’t think that teachers should have any sort of prejudices against any cultures because they may be unknowingly passing these on to their students through behaviour. As we discussed in class a great deal of what students learn is through watching the teacher. Teachers need to be aware of the impact their actions can have on students.

            I also think that we as teachers need to be promoting acceptance and respect of other cultures, not just tolerance. Throughout their lives, especially in a multicultural country like Canada, students will be working with and encountering people from many different cultures. This is why they need to learn acceptance from young age, and since teachers are such a huge part of their lives and spend so much time with them, we can be instrumental in teaching this acceptance.

An example of a teacher promoting acceptance comes from my experience volunteering in a grade two classroom. I thought my mentor teacher used a very interesting system in her classroom that promoted acceptance. She had the students desks arranged in groups of four or six, and every week or so she would rearrange the seating arrangement. This ensured that all the students in the classroom were working with each other. It seemed to have a positive effect in the class, and most of the students were friends. There was also a little boy in the class that was deaf, and it amazed me that all the kids in the class were making an effort to learn sign language. I was astounded at the level that the students went through to make sure he was included as part of the group. While kids will never be perfect in their acceptance of others, an idea as simple as moving the desks around (among other things) seemed to be leading to more acceptance in that classroom. This was one of the ideas that I took away from the experience that I would like to try and apply in my own classroom.

Using Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom

http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/articles/7_ways.php

            This is a link to a website that discusses the importance of using multiple intelligences in the classroom. In class we discussed how schools are usually only teaching two of the multiple intelligences. When considering that there are several other different multiple intelligences, this seems like a narrow minded approach to teaching.

            Thomas Armstrong uses a specific example to demonstrate how you can use several different multiple intelligences at once for one lesson. I think that this is an important part of teaching. We have been talking about how each student has a different learning style. If this is the case then why are schools only focusing on two of the multiple intelligences? A student might be a body-kinaesthetic or musical learner, but if these intelligences aren’t being used in their learning they might not have a chance to thrive. This is why I think that all of the multiple intelligences should be implemented into a teacher’s classroom. If all of the intelligences are implemented, this means that each student will have a chance to learn in the way they best learn. It could also mean that each student will develop more skills in each different intelligence, improving their learning abilities.

            Armstrong also proposes questions that a teacher can ask themselves when planning a lesson to involve different intelligences. I think that these questions can be a useful tool to teachers. He also acknowledges that it is not possible to implement every multiple intelligence into every lesson. Just implementing one or two that you have not tapped into before can change the way you teach.

IQ Testing: Opinions

This video demonstrates one of the concerns of IQ testing in classrooms. If a child has a “false negative” as the video called it, this score should not determine the students success through the rest of their school careers. In class we discussed how the score shows how that student did on that test on that particular day. If the student was having a bad day and didn’t perform as well as they might have on another day, this leads to a false negative situation. That is why this score should not be used to tell us as educators everything about the child. IQ scores should be used carefully in classrooms, and teachers need to keep in mind false negatives.

 

The beginning of this video talks about one of the myths of IQ testing that we discussed in class. This myth was that IQ scores don’t change. In this video she talks about how IQ test scores can change, especially when testing young children. This shows that we cannot completely depend on the IQ scores and as teachers should not use these scores to determine how the student will do in the rest of their academic careers.

This being said, teachers also need to keep in mind to be wise consumers of information. We always need to keep in mind that one study is not the definitive study on the subject.