What can you add to your knowledge of you and of your knowledge of teaching in your content area?

First, to add to my knowledge of me, I prefer the practice of mindfulness. On most mornings, I use the same routine. After I brush my teeth, eat breakfast and all of the other mundane activities of the day, I sit down for ten minutes and meditate. Sometimes, I use guided meditation and other times unguided, but the point is to ignore the incessant inner-ramblings and pay attention to yourself. This helps me get tough with my emotions, and I have noticed that it makes me a lot calmer.

To add to the knowledge of teaching in my content area, I treat the profession just like anything else. I learn by reading. I look at the standards and they want  you to teach students about a Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr. or Hamlet by Shakespeare. I go on the internet and read it. To learn more about the subject I go on Youtube and search for videos on it. I also think videos are a great resource for learning actual teaching skills like behavior management and how to have a class discussion.

Assignment 1A

Self Assessment

 How does or will your personality affect your relationships with your students?

Hi. My name is Marc Leon and I chose this profession because I feel like it is a career that can add meaning to your life. Previously, I worked in management and I felt that the only goal was to get people to move as much overpriced merchandise from the stockroom to the sales floor. I also played 25-30 hours of online poker before going to work, but more on that later. I thought a career in education would provide me an opportunity to actually make a difference in people's lives. I also thought that since I like to read that it I could spread the love to all students so much that they will stop wasting so much time on their phones and learn to love to read as much as I do--Okay, so I knew that wasn't going to happen, but I want to be able to get them to read and write better.

How did your personality affect your choice of content area?

According to the website, I am in between an INTP and ISTP personality type. I'm most closely related to the INTP which stands for Introversion, Intuition, Thinking, and Perception. I think this has influenced my choice in a career because I like to read and I felt like that would be a good quality for an English teacher to have. I've now noticed that the Common Core has focused more on nonfiction writing than in the past and this is good for me since I prefer reading nonfiction and I'm familiar with a lot of the authors that many of the English Teachers at my school now use.

How will my personality affect relationships with my students?

My fiance is a special ed teacher and a few months ago we had a long discussion about some of the ways my personality affects my relationships with people in general. She told me that I remind her of Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory, meaning that I'm super logical and often can't see how this can sometimes hurt people's feelings. I like to learn that I'm wrong about something because that means that I learned something new. Most people have don't like learning that they are wrong about something because they're worried about what people will think of them or something. This means I have to work harder at developing relationships and I can't just tell people "No, you're wrong because of this, this, and this let's move onto the next question." She started telling me about operant conditioning and how that people can be motivated by it. So, I downloaded one of the Great Courses on Behavioral Psychology and I started figuring out some ways to help with this problem. Unfortunately, when I tell people they are wrong, it acts like a negative reinforcement (punishment). That's a really quick way to kill class discussions or anything for that matter. This was a huge revelation in my life. I seem to have this need to be right all of the time, and this is why I sometimes seem to have difficulties with other people.

1. I love debating I'll bring up all of these logical fallacies in their arguments and they have no idea what I'm talking about.

2. Think I'm a jerk (or some other explicative that I won't mention).

On the plus side, I've already figured out a lot of ways I like it to use positive reinforcement instead. This starts to spill out into all aspects of life too. Instead of nagging my 6-year kid to pick up his toys, I just go to the bank and get $20 in ones and start handing them out when he picks them up now. I can't afford to do this in class, but praise works pretty well too and I can always use something like candy whenever possible.

How will your teaching and learning style affect your teaching and your students' abilities to be successful?

My learning style is highly verbal and I am not very interested in learning visually. This influences the way I teach because I prefer to listen to things when I learn. So far, I have found that this works great for students that have the same learning style. Unfortunately, this is not the most common style of learning. In order to teach effectively, I have to get better at teaching in a way that allows students to learn. If 65% of people learn visually and I would rather have most students listen to me lecture, I'm not going to have a well-behaved class actively engaged in the lesson. I have to learn how to use the other modalities of learning to keep students active in the learning process. I am also highly into teaching with authority and becoming an expert on a subject before I delve into it. This can sometimes come off as me being a know it all which is another negative reinforcement to most people. In other words, if I only teach in the ways that I prefer learning in, I'm going to have a lot of students who are lost.