Class Review

There were many things about the class that I thought were done well. I liked the concept behind the course, teaching econ from the perspective of educating future teachers, not teaching standard economic course material that would quickly be regurgitated on a test and even more quickly forgotten. I found to be the most beneficial the lesson plans, which shed some light onto the process and preparation of teaching. I seem to recollect eating more candy in the course than any others in recent memory, which is always a plus.
I do find some criticisms in some of the work of the course, however. As evidenced by the number of posts on this blog, I found the concept of blogging to be extremely counter-intuitive to my usual academic conduct, as I am rarely encouraged to express my thoughts or criticisms of coursework. I found myself uncomfortable writing them, and I find myself uncomfortable writing this.
My greatest criticism was towards the Junior Achievement program. Although I was only able to conduct one successful session, and prepare for another, I found the whole process to be above and beyond the normal time and effort required of an upper division course. While I applaud the idea of having a teaching experience, I think having students almost exclusively interested in teaching history (and often uninterested or even hostile towards economics) was not particularly beneficial. More criticisms and critiques of the Junior Achievement program as a whole can be found in the previous blogs.
I did, as a whole, find this course to be very beneficial, and I appreciate the effort to implement new and creative methods in the course.

Assessments

The assessments for the lesson plans were difficult in the sense that there seemed to be only a little bit of creativity that could be used to evaluate how much somebody learned. Other than a review of what was learned, likely in a written response, I can't figure how an individual would evaluate a student. I'm probably just not creative enough.

Lesson Plan

I perhaps did not read the directions for this assignment thoroughly, or perhaps the directions were not thorough enough. Either way, the variety of lessons presented lead me to believe that others felt similarly. I would have preferred more direction and specificity. This may have been intentional.

Junior Achievement Experience #2

The teacher we were assigned to work with went AWOL. After preparing for the lesson and studying the material that we were to present in a quixotic attempt to make the material interesting to students, we arrived at the school to find that the teacher we were assigned to work with had been "transferred." We had communicated with the teacher the previous week and she had confirmed us to visit the class on that day, we were not informed by anybody that this had occurred. An assistant working in the office had to explain. Absolute waste of my time on every level.

Junior Achievement Experience #1

The lesson plans for the JA assignment seemed asinine, at best. The material was sophomoric, even for middle schoolers. The students seemed loosely interested, at best. Making the material seem appealing or interesting was the biggest challenge, seeing as how it was not appealing or interesting in any way. The whole experience seemed neither enriching to the students nor to myself.

Active Learning

Active learning is learning by using activity or interaction to reinforce and permeate concepts. Traditional learning, as opposed to active learning, could be defined as a lecture-style or passive learning experience. While there is validity to both as concepts, active learning has become the favorite in public institutions, especially among younger students. An active learning experience resonates with younger people, as short attention spans often make students impervious to benefiting much from lectures.

Initial blog!

This is a blog for an Economics for Teachers class taught at San Diego State University. I am a student posting reflections on assignments and other material presented in class.