week 1 dq post

I have Dyslexia, I do not have Asperger’s or autism, but I am on the spectrum. I do not think or process information the way the overwhelming majority of neurotypicals do. Consequently, my interaction with education has been difficult most of the time and traumatic most of the rest. Minus one really great teacher in elementary school.

I do not have a specific instructor from Junior High, High School, under grad, or grandschool I liked that much. Most of my classes from my bachelors and grad school have been to varying degrees frustrating, a few traumatic, and at least two of my teachers broke the law. Grad school has ranged from mild frustration, to more than a couple of Psychology instructors invited me to leave not only the class but the school.

I do not have a lot of good memories regarding my classes (Stallman, 2010). My last two classes at Walden were some of my least frustrating classes, but they were still frustrating. But taking the same class for a second time because Walden refused to accept the credits from another school did not help. So, in effect I turned in all the assignments in two separate schools, seperated by 2 years, twice.

Some of the teachers were cooperative but had issues with power and control over the class (Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M. C., & Norman, M. K. (2010). The old “things will be run my way, but you have to spend the 2 months in class guessing what I want”. Which is the most frustrating of all. Classes become a guessing game, which the instructors who think they are the easiest to get along with are usually the worst regarding “I have my rules, all you have to do is guess what they are and follow them. I am the easiest teacher in the world, as long as you know I am god of the class”. Almost to a person the hardest and most difficult teachers are completely convinced they area the easiest and most clear members of the faculty, when in reality, their instructions are only clear to people who think exactly like they do.

I had one instructor who was at least semi cool about 3 years ago. That instructor his tyrannical issue was solved by accident. I wanted to explore the concepts of the history of Psychology. So virtually every sentence I wrote was exploring a new idea about Wundt and where he actually was during his teens. Since virtually every single sentence was exploring new ideas, I cited virtually every single sentence I wrote in that 8 weeklong class. His “thing” other than citations (he would have actually preferred about 5 citations per sentence) was cognition. So, since the study of cognition and neuro is right in the wheelhouse of Wundt, I did not mind including cognitive aspects in most of the papers written. However, in the next class, which was entirely about cognition, virtually everything I wrote in that 8 weeks he hated to the max, at the end of the class I was informed “do not write a single more word about x subject in my class. No matter many citations you use, that subject is not welcome in my class”. 3 more-hour long phone calls and 30 emails over the next 5 months and I was asked to leave the school. What I wanted to learn and what the school was willing to teach became incompatible. I wanted to learn science, they wanted to teach theocracy. The teachers minus 2 I directly interact with had hardened to their own ideas about psychology, not unlike walking into a class about anatomy and biology regarding the Neanderthal and the instructor is a Dr Boule devotee. Let us just throw out the science of those subjects to keep up the fictions that the 14-year-old arthritis riddled boy is actually 30-year-old battle damaged adult.

Consequently, I have not run into many good teachers, mostly my teachers in my 5 separate gradschools have been more like tyrants who make nonscientific demands and are upset that said demands are not entirely obvious and should be followed without question.

Of the reading and the aspects of being a good teacher, only a few of them used even one of those tools in class.

The ability to develop relationships with their students (Svinicki, M., & McKeachie, W. J. (2014).

Patient, caring, and kind personality

Knowledge of learners

Dedication to teaching

Engaging students in learning

Have not experienced much if any of these features in my teachers. I strongly assume these features are much more of a demand in ground locations, where personal interactions are face to face. Online most of my under grad and grad school teachers were there for the money and the DS aspects of teaching, which is close to the worst reasons to get into teaching other than the worst. The worst being too incompenant to do anything other than parrot from the textbook.

References

Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M. C., & Norman, M. K. (2010). How learning works: 7 research-based principles for smart teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Stallman, H. M. (2010). Psychological distress in university students: A comparison with general population data. Australian Psychologist, 45(4), 249–257.

Svinicki, M., & McKeachie, W. J. (2014). Introduction. In McKeachie's teaching tips: Strategies, research, and theory for college and university teachers (14th ed., pp. 3–5). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Svinicki, M., & McKeachie, W. J. (2014). Meeting a class for the first time. In McKeachie's teaching tips: Strategies, research, and theory for college and university teachers (14th ed., pp. 19–25). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.