Today we had the pleasure of listening to another guest speaker, Trevor MacKenzie, who talked about the importance of curiosity and inquiry in the classroom, something that I am quite passionate about! I believe that children/adolescents are, in most cases, naturally driven to curiosity and that teachers should try to take advantage of this curiosity to encourage inquiry and self-driven discovery. I was not surprised at all to learn that higher self-reported curiosity scores were correlated to higher achievement and attendance, but it was something I was happy to hear and that will motivate me to try my best to engage my future students.

Image from Mayo Clinic Health System

I thought it was interesting to learn that even something as simple as standing by the door and greeting students as they enter could have such a profound effect on the quality of their education. To me, this emphasized the importance of making an effort for my future students. I realized that I want to be the kind of teacher who connects with and encourages their students, and who brings a true love for learning into the classroom.

This lecture was the first time I had ever heard of the term “vertical learning” and I thought this was an interesting teaching strategy. I have always struggled to sit still and pay attention for long periods of time and this is something that I had to work hard to deal with in high school and college. As someone who is quite passionate about supporting students with ADHD and autism, I was excited to learn about more strategies to support different learning needs.

Photo from wipebook.com

One other valuable thing that I learned during this discussion was the importance of feedback and the characteristics of good feedback. It was really helpful to learn that, when giving feedback, I should be careful to make sure my comments are kind, specific, and helpful, and I am excited to implement this into my own teaching practice.