Learning Theories Week 4 T2P

Two things that I feel will most stand in the way of me teaching critical literacy in public secondary schools are students whom are unmotivated/resistant/won’t dos, and students that treat others with disrespect and furthermore don’t realize that they are treating others with disrespect.

In order to defend against these two fears I, as a an educator will work towards highly quality motivation that will take place in emotionally safe environments

To right the first problem, that of resistance, I feel they are many “tools” that I have gotten from the philosophers we have discussed in class. I think that main methods are 1) constructivism through the integration of youth pop culture into lesson in order to make the curriculum's relevancy more apparent, and 2) becoming students of my students through the development “caring relationships” that help us know who they are, where they are coming from and where they want to/should be going.

With this said my working theory is as follows

If a teacher wants to create a safe place where student can freely express themselves and are highly motivated toward self growth and development then the teacher needs to develop caring relationships with their students through authentic dialogues that breakdown the power relations between teacher and student roles because in order for a student to feel free enough to cast down their social armor they need to know that they will be emotionally supported through the journey they are about to undertake. I also believe that this atmosphere will support acceptance while fighting to end unwarranted prejudices and discrimination in our schools.

I feel that there multiple ways I could strengthen this theory, one of which being the addition of contextual data, but I do feel strongly about the ideas represented in this theory and I feel I will be useing them in my final Learning Theories paper.