Driving With Your Head in the Clouds

Do you remember the days of drivers’ education? I remember sitting in the drivers seat for the first time and praying to God I would recall each step before cranking the car. In my mind, I was saying lock the doors, buckle my belt, check my mirrors, and adjust the seat. Now, I was ready to start the engine; however, the checklist seemed to continue on and on. Next, switching the car into reverse and placing the right arm onto the passenger seat as you gently eased of the brake. Once I finally pulled out of the parking space, my mind would churned with all the regulations I needed to follow in order to pass the drivers education course. Now fourteen years later, I drive with my head in the clouds. Driving has become innate in my daily task. Some mornings I drive into the school parking lot and I think did I drive to school this morning. Driving at fifteen years old the task of driving can seem quite complex; however, the drivers’ education course reminds me of our readings. The course is constructed with essentials steps that need to be followed, so that safety and regulations are the first priority. These essential steps could be evaluated as a task analysis. A task analysis contains actions that are to be performed in a particular order. Depending on the individual, the task analysis may need to be diluted according to the individual’s learning needs. In addition to the task analysis driving could incorporate procedural knowledge from the cognitive task analysis. Procedural knowledge ensures the individual on how to follow through with each task. Procedural knowledge is what allows driving to become innate. The process of driving with practice encourages drivers to become more confident in the steps. As we become more confident with the steps, procedural knowledge also permits drivers to perform more than one complex task at a time. The next time you are in the car ask yourself, “Is your head in the clouds?”

An interesting learner I've known

Growing up I always listened to rhymes in hip-hop music. I remember being the student who could remember lyrics but not remember the text I read. It was frustrating going through school wanting to grasp the readings. As I matured and began reading more on daily basis, I began to learn how to break down the reading in order to comprehend the text. Then a couple of years ago, I met a guy who had to accommodate his learning needs. He also was able to memorize hip-hop lyrics but would struggle with comprehending text. We started conversing on what helped us get through school material. He said, he discover writing information and outlining text in lyrics helped him process the information. After sometime of writing lyrics, he would just put an instrumental version of hip-hop music on while he studied. He talked about the process allowing him to read information aloud with using a beat. The beat as well as hearing himself would begin to let the information become knowledge. Today, he is a language arts teacher. In his classroom, he uses lyrics during his instruction. He also realized that lyrics would not reach every student and he has developed an art for drawing and writing comics.

Excuses

As a math teacher, I am always prepared for the famous excuse of I am not good at math or my child inherited my math gene. I reflect on these excuses as I prepare for instruction. I start with developing a basic lesson plan and depending on the concept I add activities or technology to assist with instruction. In reading chapter one, I am able to acknowledge that I do have an instructional design plan. My plan is to begin with analyzing the goals and objectives in order to center them around each learner. After designing and developing the instructional plan, I implement them into my classroom. Sometimes I have to go back and identify problems or examine a specific learner, which allows flexibility in teaching the curriculum. The hardest part in my design plan is the evaluation. I tend to over analyze the instructional time because I want to make sure each child is being reached. I think it is easier for my evaluator to give an evaluation since it is someone standing on the outside looking in, which allows a different point of view. One thing I have learned in teaching is the basic lesson plans maybe the same each year but the instructional design will change year after year.

Why design instruction?

Instructional design is a means for solid decision making for any course. Education has a broad range of topics and the designing process allows an application of who, what, when, where, why, and how of training. These questions can guide standards for systematic approaches such as Performance-Base Training and Criterion Referenced Instruction. Education is always evolving and these approaches provide a support of materials to meet the ever-changing requirements.

Designing instruction is the foundation to any teachers’ classroom. It is important when a teacher walks in the room he/she is prepared to facilitate instruction. This allows a teacher to research strategies as well as an appropriate structure for teaching their content. Another important factor to designing instruction is the ability to create multiple instructional methods that may work better with specific students in a classroom. It would be unfortunate to teach a class and discover another method would be better suited and not have that method in hand. Designing instruction can assist in maximizing teachers’ instructional time and decrease confusing statements during instruction.