Week 1 Post

Hello! My name is Mariah Highbaugh and I am currently in my Junior year here at IU studying elementary education. I am from Fishers Indiana which is north of Indianapolis. I have a total of 5 siblings; 2 brothers and 3 sisters and I am the 2 oldest. I am currently employed at a daycare here in Bloomington and I love it. Although I work with children a lot smaller than I will be in the classroom, it is still a joy! I think my interest in becoming a teacher started in the spring semester of my Freshman year, where I was taking a career development class. I have always loved children and knew I wanted to work with them, but teacher never crossed my mind until the end of that class. I am leaning more toward teaching the grades K-3 but I am open to 4-6 grade as well. I look forward to the field experience in the class and seeing first hand what it is like being in a classroom teaching.

                This model illustrates the way that I think children best learn. I think that through personal experiences, students are able to learn. The little girl on the left represents a student. The globe pointing to her eyes shows that each person sees the world differently and that the way that they view it helps them learn because of that they are seeing. Things like the way their families are modeled, the school they go to, the community are a part of, etc. are all ways that each student can personally see the world. The baseball bat and glove pointing to her hands represents that activities and experiences that they take part in personally. This would be like hands on things such as sports, work, school experiences, etc. All these things combined will produce knowledge for these students. That is what the arrow pointing down on her head represents. Everyone can experience things in different ways, either personally (hand and baseball bat) or second hand by seeing and watching others (world and hand) but through these experiences, they are gaining knowledge.

                I think that teachers can provide this type of environment for the students by allowing them to experience learning. The picture on the bottom right represents the students looking at the globe and visually seeing it, but also experiencing it on her own, hands on by getting up close in personal. The teacher is there to guide the student, help the students, and feed them information along the way, but ultimately it is the student that is learning on her own. Am activity such as a learning station would be a great example of this.