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Girl Rising

Flyer of the SMC Common Read events The Saint Michael’s College Education Department has a common read each year. The common read for the fall 2018 semester was Girl Rising by Tanya Lee Stone. Three events were held over the course of the semester to deepen students’ and the public’s understanding of the book. I attended the author talk on October 22nd and I watched the film (which came before the book). The trailer for the movie is here for anyone interested in watching it. The author talk with Tanya Lee Stone was inspiring and moving. She began the talk by explaining how the Girl Rising movie was released in 2013. After watching it with her children, she noticed that they remembered more about the girls’ stories than about where the problem of education is in the world. She became passionate about slowing down and unpacking the information in the film in order to understand it better. This passion led to the idea of turning the movie into a book.   Stone c...
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Woo, Triangles!

Hey, everyone! This past week my classmates and I practiced our teacher skills in a 15-minute vocabulary lesson for our Literacy course. For my lesson, I aimed to build a solid foundation about triangles in order to deepen my students' understanding of the Pythagorean Theorem. Click here if you want to critique my teacher presence and/or learn how to classify triangles based on their side lengths, and click here to view my lesson plan.           For my lesson, I focused on the following terms:  scalene triangle, isosceles triangle, equilateral triangle, right triangle, and hypotenuse. I chose these terms because they are crucial to understanding the various types of triangles and how they relate to the real-world. According to “The Power of the Word,” these are important terms to teach because they are representative, repetitive, and transportive to other class projects, and make up a tolerable cognitive load.  I started writing my ...
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Educational Theorists

Teaching styles vary from teacher to teacher. However, most teachers have one or two educational theorists that they relate to the most. After learning the basics of about five theorists, I found that I relate to Abraham Maslow and Lev Vygotsky. Maslow was an American psychologist who created a hierarchy of needs, predicting that in order for a human to reach self-actualization (in order for students to focus and learn in school), he or she must fulfill basic human needs first (they must have a solid foundation in which they feel comfortable in). The below chart shows Maslow's hierarchy of needs in greater depth. The base tiers of physiological and safety needs emphasize the need for a guarantee of food, water, warmth, rest, safety, and security before anything else can be considered. The middle tiers include belongingness and love needs as well as esteem needs. These incorporate the need for intimate relationships, friends, and strong self esteem that can be focused on o...
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