Adlerian's Lifestyle Assessments for Students

In our counseling course by Dr. Wassim Abou Yassine, we were discussing Adler’s approaches in psychology who greatly believed in person’s individual psychology and social interest and lifestyle assessment therapy. But, how can this be applied for students in a classroom by a teacher counselor?  Lifestyle assessments therapy explores a student’s family of origin, his birth order, early memories, and beliefs about gender, achievement, significance, and belonging.

 This approach helps to identify what makes a student a unique individual. Adlerian life style assessments are explorations which relate into different aspects of student’s life. They are composed of a series of questions which aim to identify the way this student understand the world around him. Adler believed that most of the personality or lifestyle was developed by age five. By this age most of students have established some understanding of the world and how they fit in it. While they continue to grow older, they generally interpret their experiences based on prior beliefs. This explains how many people and even family members can go through a similar experience and interpret it completely differently. From studying family origin, teachers can see patterns in family relationships and even genes inclinations related to mental conditions like depression, dependency...

Teachers can use the below lifestyle assessment questionnaire for studying any of their student's cases: 

http://www.innerwisdom.com/assessments/Health-and-Life-Style%20Assessment.pdf

 

Flipped Classrooms

An article by Mary Hertz updated in 2015 talks about flipped classrooms which is new of it’s kind for us as teachers in Lebanon.

It is one of the most popular new approaches to in which this approach involves a process where the traditional lecture that happens in the classroom occurs at home. Students watch lectures on video, and then come back to school to engage in the exercises they would traditionally have for homework, and to ask questions based on the lecture they watched on their own at home. When students watch videos at home, they can stop and go and at their own pace, and take notes whenever they want. When they return to school, they can work in groups to discuss what they watched and have their questions answered by the teacher. In this process, students work together and learn at their own, and apply what they have learned at home in the classroom.

In traditional learning, students acquire knowledge in a classroom and are then asked to synthesize, analyze and evaluate after the class. In the flipped classroom, students acquire knowledge before the class and use classroom time to practice and apply concepts and ideas through interaction with each other and teachers. The main drawback of this approach according to Hertz’s experience is that the teacher won’t be directly working with the students who will be sitting in front of their computer’s screens to complete their videos.

In order to read the entire article about Mary Hertz’s experience with Flipped Classrooms, click on the link below:

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/flipped-classroom-pro-and-con-mary-beth-hertz

Virtual Learning by Samsung Gear VR

In the Practices course by Dr. Rasha Halat, we were discussing the idea of virtual learning in some subjects especially science ones. This idea made me curious and to further know about it. In order to understand the meaning of “virtual learning”, it is necessary to clarify some related terms. It is related to terms such as: e-learning, web-based learning and online learning. Online learning associated with the electronic content available on a computer/mobile device that may involve the use of the Internet.

One of the best devices found in the market these days and can be used for virtual learning is released by Samsung Company with its phone a virtual reality glasses called "Samsung Gear VR". For instance, the topic is about digestive system, students can experience the dissection of a digestive system in virtual real situations using this device. Such devices can be used in classrooms to present certain topics which are applied in new contexts and presented in new ways. The teacher in this case plays a key role in the student’s learning process while the study activities focus on sharing experience, solving team problem and receiving feedback on their learning performance.

Virtual learning has changed the way we learn and teach. The virtual learning shapes the way students learn, changes the content they acquire and the way they learn. Thus, virtual learning allows for a much more natural development among learners in learning process.

Importance of Doing Expeiments

In one of our courses, we were asked to do observations of Science class, the session I observed was a lab work in which students were divided into groups and each of them performed the experiment asked by the teacher.  As a chemistry teacher, one of her main objectives in the lesson was to do experiments so the material would be easier to understand when they are demonstrated in front of the students. 

This made learning chemistry more interesting, curious and understanding.  Research agrees that a session of laboratory work is important, in which teacher’s target is to develop students understanding about the way scientific facts are proven, with some expectation that they will understand the science content included in experiments. This was a successful technique from both cognitive and effective sides. Moreover, doing experiments can greatly promote the development of scientific thinking in students. Instead of making the students memorize the facts, they are made to think and understand things and the world around them. This was proved when students seemed very interactive and excited to work. The point the teacher was trying to make was that when students think about science in an abstract way they also have the idea that experiments are at the core of the scientific method.

Eastern and Western Blended Philosophy: Important Educational Approach

In one of our previous courses, we were asked to talk about our opinion about the most two important philosophies, the western and the eastern ones in education. These philosophies contradict in the big picture in which countries in the west behave differently than eastern countries when it comes to creating an individual’s skills and attitudes. Thus, different countries have different cultures and philosophies which lead to different ways of teaching. Westerns believe in continuous change and progress in education however Easterns believe in status quo. Both philosophies share some of ideas that can prove the possibility of taking a moderate view between these two philosophies and combining them in our educational system. Educationally, our 21^st century requires a blend of both the eastern and western philosophies which associates with the modern skills of students. Regarding life and job skills, the perspectives of the eastern philosophy help to cover all the values of responsibility, commitment and persistence in students. Self confidence, individuality and democratic education are values which the western philosophy can grow. When these tow philosophies are mixed together, a world of responsibility, commitment, creativity, strictness and carefulness can be included.  In terms of learning and skills, blended philosophy means that teachers have the responsibility to plan engaging lessons, holding inquiry teaching and giving the clear instructions to students. Also, students become familiar with active learning and creativity as important routines in the classroom. From the eastern philosophy, students protect personalized and individualized values which will result in peer support as an essential part of the learning process. Students of 21^st century need good imagination, cleverness, transferability and inventions. Regarding information, media and technology, both the western and eastern philosophies encourage the wise use of modern equipments in their global learning process. The blended philosophies results in teaching students project based learning through using good technology and E-learning. Thus, the teacher in a blend of both philosophies plays an important role to decide the suitability in giving both compliments and criticism, as it will affect the development of an individual.

"How to Speak so That People Want to Listen"

During my scroll through the web, I find an article by Julian Treasure. This article talks about how people can speak and make people carefully listen to the. This directly applies for teachers in classrooms because everyone of them needs students listening to them and not only hearing them. Julian stated the seven deadly sins of speaking:
1) Gossip, one of the worst habits people can have. It's important to know that teacher gossiping about another teacher will be perfectly gossiping on you five minutes late.
2) Judging,students who see their teacher judging, they find it hard to listen because they know that someday they are being judged inappropriately.

3) Negativity, negative teachers can greatly affect students who eventually find it hard to listen when somebody's that negative.
4) Complaining, most of teachers complain about schooling on its different sides and students usually never listen for people who's not spreading sunshine in the world.
5) Excuses, its very hard to listen for those who don't take responsibilities on their actions and all they do is trying to pass it on to everybody else.
6) Penultimate or exaggeration, teachers must be careful how to call things when they are really awesome because over expressing can make listeners lose their trust which turns out to be lying.
7) Dogmatism, when somebody such as a teacher is bombarding students with his/her opinions as if they are always true, students see it difficult to listen.

In addition to that, Julian suggested that professional speakers take into consideration the importance of human voice when they carefully pay attention to their voice's pace, prosody, timbre, pitch and volume. She finally ends saying " We speak not very well into people who simply aren't listening in an environment that's all about noise and acoustics".

Webinar: Encouraging Physical Activity in Preschoolers

The attended webinar was under the title “Encouraging Physical Activity in Preschoolers” by Dr. Steve Sanders. Dr. Sanders emphasized on the locomotors that first develop naturally within kids starting at the age of three months when infants are capable of changing their bodies then crawling at the age of 1 year.

Not only motor skills are important for physical movement of kids, but also toddlers who develop strong base of motor skills tend to be more physically active as adults. One important study has shown that placing infants on their stomach and not on their back positions scores higher motor development. Also, traveling skills have a great impact on social and language development of infants in which their language becomes more productive when they make the transition from crawling to walking.

In addition to that, the professor talked about movement concepts which include: space awareness relates to space, directions, levels and pathways; effort awareness is related to time, force and control of movement and body awareness relates the body parts, roles, locations and body shapes. In schools, locomotor activities must be practiced everyday by giving children some hints for each skill and placing them in different situations. For example chasing, fleeing and dodging activities are very important in which each of them can be practiced differently. 

For example, tag game is very popular in this domain in which children can be practiced in schools. Before starting, tell students about safe tagging and that this game does not exclude any children when being tagged.

Then present some guidelines such as the player who gets tagged immediately freezes. Then to unfreeze this player, there are several game variations such as name tag, tunnel tag, high five tag and math tag….  Such games, children practice traveling skills along with having experience with movement concepts.