I enjoyed the video tremendously. Largely because it brings to light
trail-blazing Journalists who followed their passion around the world telling
stories of un-sung heroes to help spread awareness and collective empathy. The world would never see or hear amazing,
tragic or inspiring photographs and stories without people like Sarah willing
to get out there and face danger to acquire it.
I look up greatly to adventurous, committed professionals that carry
their passion to such lengths, like Sarah.
She is far from finished with her mission. She has built a company to teach and inspire
others to follow this path of adventure and discovery. It is beautiful and well done to people
worldwide for pursuing their passions.
I believe anything is newsworthy as long as someone is
sharing a creative element in telling a story or conveying a message. Humans feed off news and storytelling, good
or bad. We (people/cultures) are drawn
in by many things, all of which are valuable instructional tools we can use
with our students, depending on the situation and subject.
Student motivation is a tough nut to crack. I believe you can motivate students by being
obviously interested and excited yourself (as the teacher), you can draw them
in with stories yourself that make segues into your lesson relatable to
students. There are many ways to
successfully accomplish a motivated lesson and personally it really depends on
the day and the climate of students that moment. This chapter gives us many avenues to grab
student motivation, primarily by tapping into contemporary culture and topics
hot-button and deeply relevant and interesting TO THEM! Making connections to news stories that they
are hearing and seeing currently is an excellent way to draw them in and
contain their interest. Keeping our
media deconstructions in mind also, throughout and showing them how to properly
manage sources of information that are credible helps them weed out the useful
information from the “BS!” that is often put out there by un-educated or
misinformed observers.
Authentic learning is crucial! Students need to have opinions and emotions
about REAL events that are occurring now and that perhaps hit closer to home
than others. It is amazing how one class
of students can learn from each other just through mere discussion of
experience and opinion. I enjoy bringing
my own personal, sometimes emotional experience into a classroom; depending on
how emotionally mature and able students are to receive such knowledge and
experience. We had a death at the start
of school. One of our students was
struck and killed crossing the road.
This was devastating and tragic, but deeply relevant to everyone about
the fragility of life and experience, and that we are not guaranteed time. I took this tragedy and made it into a
discussion about life and its purpose and meaning. We mourned the death of a beautiful soul
taken too soon, but we also held an informal memorial and celebration of life
and all that we are given on earth.
Instead of focusing entirely on the negative, we made it a deeply
emotional reflection that we could all learn from and appreciate as a reminder
of what we hold dear. This discussion
was well received by my students and I felt as a teacher, this relevant
teachable moment was essential for their emotional development and character
building. This is a real example, but
other connections that are less right here in our community could be made to
discuss and inform students in lessons as well.
Place-based education is a great tool! I experienced much of this growing up in 4H,
an active group of students that grow and learn though community involvement to
improve everything possible about where we live and enjoy. This organization helped foster many of my
teaching interests, along with build up my sense of responsibility and
self-worth. Being actively engaged in
improving ones environment for the greater good is a great feeling of
satisfaction and purpose. I encourage my
students to become involved in similar organizations as much as possible, as
these groups gets students out there in the thick of the experience and help
them solve- problems and often times provide manual (hands on) impacts on their
communities. I hope with our future
shift to digital things, we don’t lose touch with people and the importance of
building strong community foundations within our children. Place-based projects have countless
advantages for kids and I sincerely hope they continue to be sought out.
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