Kaizen

Kaizen is an interesting concept that still grabs my attention even though I read the book where I was first introduced to the concept. This book is called One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer, Ph. D. The subtitle is called The Kaizen Way.
People get stuck in life because of the fear inside them and the flight or fight process is active, creating a type of paralysis of the mind. The author demonstrates examples from his practice of
psychology of people who couldn't make headway in conquering their fears from people being overweight to people suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The title suggests the
strategy, kaizen, which is taken one very tiny step in the direction or towards the goal. The
kaizen way is using the smallest step - meaning it is literally impossible to break the goal down any further. He would take a person who had a severe case of PTSD and have that person do the smallest step, i.e. if he took that person who was afraid of flying in a plane, and give them the assignment of mapping the route to the airport, then that would be a small step. The next day he might look in the yellow pages to see what airplanes were available in his town. They are easy to do and a person won't cower with fear in performing these actions.
The reason why the flight or fight method rings true is that is is natural to look at life that way.
However, the author determined that people were often paralyzed by fear and stuck that way by yet another mechanism in our brain that remembers the injury and will always keep a person stuck unless overcome by natural means. Kaizen doesn't try to say a person doesn't have fear or to take steps that a person can't take, until they are ready.
This definitely suits my style of psychology and it makes sense. The book jacket states the
techniques: ask small questions, think small thoughts, take small actions, and solve small problems.
Teachers can use kaizen for students in thinking differently about some of their shyer
students or fearful learners. We can use these in looking at our troubles also.

Re: Brain Development & Learning by Paul J. Eslinger

Two thoughts on this most recent article.

"It is in the first year of life that the basic soundscape of one's native language becomes mapped in the nervous system, providing the phonemic elements that evolve into language. "

I have a friend whose son (now grown) had a a Spanish speaking care giver around the house. My friend and her husband-both bilingual decided that with their third child they would try introducing more Spanish early on. The other kids spoke only English. Well, Ben did not speak as quickly as the other two - it was a bit later in fact but when he began to speak, he knew both English and Spanish. Kind of interesting.

And regarding Multiple Sensory System Involvement:

"Because learning and memory abilities are generally not fully developed in all of these areas, educational approaches that use multiple memory systems lead to more in-depth knowledge and higher retention. "

As a visual learner myself, I know that our training as teachers challenges us to consider learning styles and differentiated education as we create engaging curriculum that will hit the strengths of each student somewhere along the way rather that teach one style and loose students who don't fit the mold.

web quest example

Check this out. A web quest for Estuaries

Fact Monster

Fact Monster

Offers a great research site for students of all ages.
Click on Homework Center in the lower left side of the screen.
The following options are presented.
Click on Research under Skills for tips on writing a research paper.

Subjects		Skills
Geography History Language Arts	Mathematics Science Social Studies	Writing | Research Speaking & Listening Studying

Up late & still reading.......

The chapters by Ormrod are very interesting. Amazing how many details I can pick out of the text and apply to what I see with my son, and in my job as a substitute teacher. Also, things we've already learned in our other two courses. It's all coming together. I thought I'd write down the vocab in my notebook but after the 55th entry for Ch.2 alone, I decided to discontinue that process! My head's spinning. I'm looking forward to a productive day tomorrow where we can bring all this new knowledge together and get some Transfer going. By the way, this is my first Blog posting, Ever...

I made it!!!

This is my posting test. Numerous tries and this looks promising. I heard Colin Powell speak at FGCU tonight. He was great. He does make you proud to be an American and hopeful for a future worth the work. See you all early.

how to blog

For those of you wondering where the buttons are, lets begin simply.

1. go to www.buildateacher.blogspot.com
2. sign in; the button is in the very top right hand corner.
3. It should open you up into your "dashboard"
4. in the very center of the page there is a hyperlink that says "new post +"
click it nd enter or up load what you were going to blog.
the new post can also be found in the upper right hand corner next to where you signed in.
5. hit publish when you are done.

Just so you know the CCEA ,the teacher union for collier county, started a blog so that the teachers would have a forum to voice their opions and concerns regarding what is going on in Imokalee. Because using school email is not secure or ethical to use.( I do not have the address on me)
so there you go.

Comments from C. C.

I had to read the first article by Gardner very closely to stay
focused. He is an extremely knowledgeable and somewhat controversial
expert on the topic of intelligence. I found it very interesting and
informative.

It seems that we should just know innately that people have
multiple/various intelligences; however it appears to be highly debated
in the literature.

Publications on MI

Here are some readings on multiple intelligences (MI).

http://www.howardgardner.com/Papers/documents/T-101%20A%20Multiplicity%20REVISED.pdf

http://www.howardgardner.com/Papers/documents/MI%20After%2020_Feb-03_HG.pdfthese are more along the lines that HTH sent.

Chris

Posting of publications to come

Welcome to build a teacher. I will post some cool pubs on this site.

This is a sample

This is a test.