Jeff Dude

Jeff worked in the industry for several years before going back to school for his teaching degree. The defining thing that stood out to me as he spoke to us for 45 minutes was his love and passion for teaching. He put his heart and soul into his classes... it wasn't just a paycheck to him...

Jeff paralleled several things that our professors advocate. Both he and Geoff mentioned that middle school teachers have a greater influence on the kids. Geoff explained that it's not the quality of teaching, rather, the state of life that the kids are in. They're young and malleable, receptive to good teaching... A state that leaves kids as they grow up. Returning to a child like state has a little more significance now...


Teaching Grade school
I was only nervous when Geoff came around to my station while I was teaching. :) The rest of it was cake. The kids were great. They responded well, did what was asked of them, had some fun, and produced a few good looking cereal boxes :)

Reflection 10 - Teaching the Elder's Quorum

This last week I taught my Elder's quorum a lesson on Teaching. We had been hitting home teaching pretty hard the last few months and so I wanted to bring a fresh angle to the table. My lesson was taken directly from my Geoff's lectures. It's funny how we don't really appreciate how well something is taught until we try and recreate it ourselves. I did notice, however, that I was instantly a better learner when I decided that I wanted to reteach what was being taught. I used several mixed methods of presenting information to break up the monotony of a typical EQ atmosphere and also used group work to give everyone a chance to participate.

Jerry is a middle aged man with several mental and physical handicaps. He is allowed to attend church when accompanied by a full time staff from his 'halfway home.' Jerry had no fear of speaking up, whether invited to or not. His hand came up every time that I asked the class a question. In the beginning I honored his hand raise each time and called on him to speak. His comments weren't always related and he was incredibly difficult to understand. I felt a little foolish when I couldn't fully validate his comments by summing up what he had said or agree/disagreeing with him. Soon I learned that if I wanted the flow of my lesson to improve I would have to stop calling on Jerry. I felt a little bad, not calling on him as often... But the flow of my lesson improved dramatically.

I think that as a teacher facilitates learning that there has to be a structure with boundaries in place even during an 'open ended' style lesson that is so prevalent in the modern LDS Elders Quorum.

Assessing my own teaching

This week I watched videos of myself teaching. It's always a little awkward watching yourself but I'm glad that I did. The overall feel that I now have after watching myself teach three times to my peers is that I really need to improve the flow of my lessons. I have awesome ideas and plenty of excitement, but the way that I structure my lessons and introduce concepts has got to be revamped. I need a process that helps me to shape the overall lesson of my plan. Maybe a good idea would be to start by asking myself the ultimate question, "What is it that I want these people to learn?" Or feel, see, know, etc... I also know that I need to pick one or two ideas and expand them more, versus slamming 10 ideas in and jumping all over the place.