Claudia Carroll Social Constructivism for Special Ed, A Reflection

1
Dont Empty The Baby With The BathA
Reflection on Social Constructivism

• Claudia Carroll
• most people photos by CJ carroll, or copyable
  Intenet images.

2
Question In correcting what is not right
(wrong) with current education (and educational
theories), are we in danger of, or having already
fixed what worked, simply disappeared the best
of what came before in favor of the new
theories as training for teachers teaching with
expectations so overwhelming most teachers
express frustrations at ever being able to
achieve these demands unreasonable testings for
students and schools and education that sees
students as a class, a grade, a group
rather than individuals? Have we not, to
paraphrase, emptied the baby with the bathwater
of constant, unremitting reforms? (Probably a
German proverb Dont throw out the baby with
the bath water, the earliest printed reference
to it, in Thomas Murners satirical work
Narrenbeschwörung (Appeal to Fools), dates from
1512. Murner wrote in German The quote and
wood cut is from that book. (1))
3
Introduction (graphic from Clock of the Long
Now rapid change is considered a fashion or
fad). I cannot imagine the future, but I care
about it. I know I am a part of a story that
starts long before I can remember and continues
long beyond when anyone will remember me. I sense
that I am alive at a time of important change,
and I feel a responsibility to make sure that the
change comes out well. I plant my acorns knowing
that I will never live to harvest the oaks.
Author, Founder of the Clock of the Long Now
Foundation, Stewart Brand. Today, all over the
world, education is moving towards more and more
testing, more examinations and more
qualifications. It seems to be a modern trend
that assessment and qualification define
education. If society were to treat any other
group of people the way it treats its children,
it would be considered a violation of human
rights. But for most of the world's children
this is the normal expectation from parents,
school and the society in which we live. A.S.
Neil, Summerhill School, UK.
4
Definition Social constructivism not only
acknowledges the uniqueness and complexity of the
learner, but actually encourages, utilizes and
rewards it as an integral part of the learning
process (Wertsch, 1997). Exemplars of
constructivist theory may be found in the works
of John Dewey, 1926, 1933/1998 Maria Montessori,
1946 and David Kolb, 1975, 1976, 1984.
5
My personal experience with Social
Constructivism While Ive often denied that I
teach the way I was taught, the more I examine
this, the more I see that, whether the teachers
then knew the theories (though they were of their
time), or the fact that I only learned the names
of several as I veered from my creative life of
art, writing, theater, to tread the uphill path
to becoming a licensed educator. With this
realization, I felt the need, in preparing this
project, to review what my education,
particularly elementary, and the settings in
which I received this, and whether I saw a
relationship with what I feel is my best choice
an ever-evolving social constructivism.
6

• My Elementary Education, 1940s
• What it was like in most of rural America before
  the war According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in
  1940, only about half of the people in the U.S.
  had completed at least eight years of school. But
  rural areas lagged behind urban areas in
  educational attainment. In 1940
• urban residents had a median of 8.7 years of
  school completed
• rural-nonfarm (that is, small town) residents had
  a median of 8.4 years of school
• rural-farm residents had a median of 7.7 years of
  school one full grade less education than urban
  folks.

7
I attended the one elementary school in my small,
rural, Spanish/Mexican/Mexican -American/Caucasian
town. My father, a truck driver, agri-worker and
oil field driller had, in Missouri, less than
that 7.7. years of school. My stepmother (they
married the year I was nine), part Cherokee, a
former Navy shipyards chef, had, while in
Oklahoma, taught school when younger, as had many
of my relatives on my fathers side (with eleven
brothers and sisters, and many cousins from
extended families, the older siblings taught the
family school near Buffalo). I loved to read,
and while the school had no library, it was a
short walk from school or home to the one on Main
Street, that still resembles that of Bedford
Falls (A Wonderful Life). There, Id find the
magical woman whod been dusting the books
forever, who offered a Saturday story-hour and
help with checking out books. (Sadly, that
library, and several in neighboring communities,
is no longer there, stripped of County funding).
I will though always remember the effect she had
on my life. When not working after school, or
doing homework (important in those days), I was
drawing or reading. I have often wondered why I
dislike working in a team, or group setting. But
again, looking back, I can see, and have realized
in many areas of my life, how the growing up days
and environments, the family commands, demands
and verbalized or not, expectations influence a
child.
8
Indeed, I grew up in the family restaurant, but
my waiting on tables after school (from the time
I was 11), was pretty much an independent
activity, done correctly to avoid my stepmothers
professional wrath. At summer camps, were girls
cliqued together, I wandered the woods or
seashore alone. Later, married with four
children, his and mine, I wrote poetry, plays and
made art and music, while the family swirled
around me, entering into group activities as an
activist, or producing a play Id written or
hosting a party of creative friends. But I was
like the tides, running in, kissing the sand,
then out to the great, forgiving, anonymous sea.
9
If I made a mistake, I came to understand, I
wanted to take responsibility for it myself and
make it better. If I had an achievement, and
often did, loving school, though not easy to
express at home as my stepmothers response was,
Well, I expected as much from you, I wanted it,
just once, to be really my very own. So, Im
neither inclined toward group or team work, due
to childhood and creative years, and likely due
to where I rate a 5 or 6 on Howard Gardners
Multiple Intelligences scale, plus my
inclination to vant to be alone! (Attributed to
actress Greta Garbo) to think, create, study,
garden, and watch the clouds roll by. This
inclination makes me uncomfortable with the group
work Ive observed during both my observations
required by these courses, or as a substitute
teacher. The discomfort however, I believe comes
from the lack of seriousness, the lack of
classroom discipline, and the attitude among the
students that working together is either a
chance to copy the better student, or play time
to sneak out ones IPOD or camera phone. While
much emphasis in current education is placed on
group or cooperative work, with the exception
of an almost Montessorri like kindergarten, our
grade-school academic studies (arithmetic,
reading, writing, history, (World and California)
geography and other aspects of science were
taught toward individual understanding and
achievement. I suspect the idea of scaffolding
was used, as students were encouraged to progress
at their own levels once the expected level was
attained (indicated by ABC grades). At no time do
I recall the idea of working on these subjects in
a group setting other than in kindergarten, where
the 1942 scene might have been a Montessorri
classroom with the exception of an emphasis on
learning to read. As I moved up in the grades,
social skills such as cooperating with others
were learned through art projects, such as mural
making, and theater or performance a yearly play
or production by each class, dramatic readings in
classrooms, and holiday decorating of classrooms
and the school. While team sports were not part
of elementary learning, softball, tether ball,
and the usual playground activities (which I,
something of a creative nerd, avoided) of jump
rope, jacks and hopscotch were, of course, small
group activities.
10
In middle and high school, academics expanded to
include chemistry, geometry, algebra, and
English (which changed with the grade, and
might include public speaking, American and/or
British literature, poetry, drama- both reading
and writing), and a foreign language, usually
Spanish. But again, these were targeted to us
as individuals, not as the class or grade .
Students of a more scholarly nature or who had
clearly in mind occupations or professions that
required a college or University education, could
opt for college prep, as I did, but conflicted
in this, as my interests were in the several
arts. Other students could elect wood or
mechanics shop, home ec, 4 H farming or
ranching studies or typing (primarily for those
wishing to become secretaries) which I took,
wanting even then to become a writer. Group, or
cooperative activities might have included a
science project, but were skills (teamwork)
generally developed in the gym or on the playing
field, or in my case on stage with the drama
club, or in the auditorium (glee club, band,
orchestra), and included the envied travel to
other schools and counties. For some, it meant
hanging out at the local drug store, sipping
phosphates and listening to the latest on the
juke box, but not me. I wasnt allowed to. The
restaurant had to be opened. I had to wait tables
and do homework. Priorities over fun with the
kids. Fortunately ,because I was too shy to be
comfortable with them anyway.
11
Order and discipline In general, from elementary
through high school (above) -for me,
1942-kindergarten, to 1955, graduation- the
teachers were strict and the classrooms more
orderly. I recall half-day dismissals once a
week to attend a religious training (Catholic
or Protestant), and certainly, coming out of the
Depression and into WWII, outright patriotic. We
were taught to save paper, pencils, books, make
our own valentines, and school-play costumes.
Most of all, we respected (was never a question)
our teachers, fearing the wrath of outraged
parents if we didnt. Even the rebel kids did
not act up in school, although much mischief was
perpetrated after school. At school though, I may
have pushed the envelope a small, shy girl
really, I was called to the principals office
more than once for punching a boy who bullied
another, or teased a girl on the playground.
12
One of the results of taking the SFCC Teacher
Academy courses, doing both observations and
substitute teaching, is that Ive become aware of
how different education is today, or in my
current experience in small town, New Mexico,
compared with that of my own, in small town,
California. However, the difference is not with
the states, but rather in the times, and the
changes of attitudes (in the national and global
cultures and educational theories and trainings,
and, equally as important, in the change in
families, schools, and teachers. Among the
students in whose classrooms Ive subbed, or in
the classrooms Ive observed, Ive noticed an
almost total lack of respect for teachers, or for
any type of information, knowledge, how-tos,
that may have existed before the generation of
the Internet, 300 channel television, IPODs,
camera-phones these instant answer machines that
are as likely to be generated by opinionated
bloggers and respected among this generation as
authorities if the authors they have video
feeds and can post what happened five minutes
before it happened, and the latest research in
almost any area is posted with a catchy icon
along with the latest sex, scandal and dance
lives of the moment-to-moment celebrity, CD, or
Wall Mart discounted, put another nickel in
the video machine. (Song Music, Music,
Music Teresa Brewer recording, 1950).
13
This lack of respect may be an old-fashioned,
even passeidea if one watches the shenanigans
of current political players (though less
publicized, it was worse for all the Kings of
humankind, and our own Lincoln, Roosevelt, and
likely every player who tried to make a
difference in education from Socrates to Diane
Ravitch. http//dianeravitch.net/. Violence
in movies (dvds) cant be blamed I think,
because we had White Heat, and The Three
Stooges, hardly pacifist films. In school,
though, the teacher was the teacher and like him
or her or not, somehow, we knew that we were
there to learn, and had darn well better!
14
Looking back through the mind-set time-machine of
the present, I find myself wishing that the baby
hadnt been emptied with the bath and that some
of the practices and attitudes that made me love
school, among classmates who, with few
exceptions, would go on to graduate, find an
occupation, or enter further education.
15
Because of my number of years on the planet, I
have found my continuing education toward a
teaching profession challenging especially in my
2001 Harvard School of Education experience.
There, within my masters studies, Arts in
Education, which has a long history behind the
ideas, a documented history dating from the
1800s with which I became familiar doing
work-study in the schools library, up to and
including the strong influence of Project Zero,
Gardner and others theories re multiple
intelligences. Challenging, because despite
being in the midst of a great sea of knowledge,
I, and the other students in my core course were
allowed only to use (and cite) the writings
presented to us in a hefty corebook. To my
recollection, none of the authors had published
before the 1980ies, and most, more recently.
Challenging because, the bath water, and the
baby, had pretty much been emptied, or ignored,
as new theories sprouted like wild grasses, among
the publish or perish PhD candidates and
instructor-professors. Whats new in education
seemed to me as faddish as Whats new in
fashion, and changed more often. I saw little
agreement with my understanding that current
theories were not eurekad but rather built on
the past seemed lost in the race to be the first
with the new theory that would make our schools
and students globally competitive.
16

• What was missing for me was a focus on the
  individual.
• Now, that may seem an erroneous idea, considering
  that even my course title Arts was spelled
  with an sand included touching here and there
  on the several arts, and the make-up and interest
  of my fellow students included all of these,
  which, in itself, seemed to me an impossibility
  to master in a year.
• Most of us came together with some concentration
  in one or the other areas, either life-experience
  as did I, or more recent BAs, and wanted
  sincerely, to discover how we could make a
  contribution, and make a living, in the
  community, or in the schools with one or more of
  the arts.
• However, the first time I tried to include some
  of my personal research on the arts in education
  (from periodicals, manuscripts, books, visuals
  housed in the School of Educations own library),
  I was warned to stick with the corebook
  selections.
• The reason was plain to me this made it easy for
  a teaching fellow, reading our papers, to rule
  out plagiarism. So much for the individual, and
  so much less for the history of arts in
  education.

17
Two instances of group consciousness and lack
of awareness of that fact that we 65 students
brought terrifically different levels of learned
knowledge (stuff we already knew) to Harvard
with us, I and others were shocked to find
ourselves being asked to sit on the floor during
some break-out sessions to construct, in
group-think sessions, materials to be used in an
elementary classroom, ( I, older, with far more
experience than my younger classmates was the
only one, likely, to be asked why I was unwilling
to participate in a group. On the other hand,
almost all of us, some thirty A in E students
were equally unhappy with an elective class,
called Book-Making, which wed been led to
believe did include some the glorious history of
the making of books, the binding of these, and
perhaps even touching on the latest independent
publishing, found ourselves instead in a crafts
class, where our projects were folding, cutting,
pasting paper to make little artsy books the
kind you see in some local galleries today, and
which I, and those who had visual art backgrounds
already knew how to do. Missing, I felt, in my
educational experience, was the long-look, a
concept Ive come to appreciate and frequently
refer to in a book by a California author,
Stewart Brand, The Clock of the Long Now. A fly
by the seat of your pants brilliant philosopher,
who, with the Foundation for the Clock of the
Long now has surrounded himself with a team of
equally brilliant minds who believe in looking at
the long past in order to create the long future,
one not determined by fad or fashion, revolution
or reform. It is a concept which, except when
I enter a classroom, gives me a steadiness, and
belief in the future, regardless of the hourglass
of my own years, and regardless of the constant
input of the latest in news, research,
theories, scandals and conflicts, regarding
education.
18

• Nevertheless, I already knew how the ancients
  taught, due to my own reading. But how
  interesting it was to discover (in the library on
  my own, re the history of arts in education),
  that
• 1800 Sarah Moorhead, or Scipio Moorehead, an
  African slave in Massachusetts, was one of the
  first "professionally" trained African-American
  painters
• 1909 the first blackboard appeared in a school
  (eliminating somewhat the need for the use of
  slates)
• 1901School Arts Magazine first appeared as The
  Applied Arts Book
• 1932 saw the closing of the Social
  Constructivist influenced Bahaus in Germany. A
  result of this ..talented, experienced art
  educators immigrated to teach their skills
  throughout American higher education.
• 1934 Professor Franz Cizeks ideas about the
  nature of children and art education become
  widespread through his Exhibition of Childrens
  Art in London in 1934, and 1935. Cizek first
  founded his Juvenile Art Class in Vienna in 1897.
  Cizek's approach to juvenile art education opened
  the minds of many educators to a new way of
  teaching art. Cizek's main belief was that
  children should let their natural talents unfold
  freely, unhampered by vocational, or technical
  training from their teachers.
• 1947 Margaret Naumbergconsidered the mother of
  art therapy helped the field of art therapy
  expand as well as be taken seriously in its early
  manifestations during the mid 20th century. In
  the words of an anonymous friend of Naumburg's,
  "She took the psychoanalytic patient off the
  couch and stood him in front of an easel.
• 1949 The federal government followed growing
  post-war, public interest in the arts. In 1949,
  the Office of Education reestablished, after many
  years, a position of Specialist in Education for
  the Fine Arts.

19
I mention the arts and my experience with higher
ed as the several arts are (or should be) within
the whole Social Constructivist idea. Once they
were so important to education from the 1800ies
to the 1940ies but have now in far too many
states and districts, thanks to the Core
Standards emphasis on math and reading (see
additional thought, below) for the most part been
relegated to half-hour activities, babies
emptied in the murky bathwaters of educational
reforms. It is true that socially,
culturally, much had changed since my childhood
school experience I was born toward the end of
the Depression, in school during WWII, when after
the war, the need for education for returning
WWII veterans (it is estimated that millions of
draftees were turned down due to illiteracy), the
return of women to the homefront, the
recognition of the cultural differences making up
American he cold war(s) the Civil Rights
movement the 1960ies-70ies freedom to tune in
and drop out, and finally, the gradual awakening
awareness of an almost alien creature that would
forever change our world, personally, and
globally the computer, which then birthed the
World Wide Web.
20

• Through all of this, education was changing and
  practices that saw children, students, as
  individuals, sans color, gender, yes, civil
  rights was only a seedling, and gender issues
  have only recently, history-wise, hit the fan
  with positive improvements and, it is true that
  the profession of teaching has long been
  underpaid and undervalued with an estimated
  thousand teachers a day leaving the profession in
  the present day in the 40ies, they joined unions
  later labeled communistic.
• 1800, 90 percent of American schoolteachers were
  men by 1900, three-quarters were women. The
  feminization of teachinga job once filled
  primarily by transient young men, often saving up
  to finance a legal or medical educationwas, in
  large part, why education became one of the few
  white-collar unionized professions in the United
  States.
• Most female teachers earned just half the salary
  of a male teacher, and their jobs were getting
  harder and harder each day. In turn of the
  century Chicago, classrooms housed 60 students,
  many of them new immigrants from Eastern and
  Southern Europe who couldnt speak English. Yet
  teacher pay had been frozen for 30 years at 875
  annually (about 23,000 adjusted for inflation),
  less than a skilled manual laborer could earn.
  because female teachers couldnt vote, they
  needed the muscle of the male-dominated labor
  movement to back them up in their efforts to win
  higher pay and more say over how schools were
  run.
• Still, within the general public school
  classroom, whether all-white or all-black
  whether girls schools or boys schools, learning,
  as in the arts, were far more geared to the
  individual, the goal being what they learned
  would make them able to break free of cultural or
  economic limitations, contribute to society, make
  a living, and be happy. And, needless to say, a
  college, or University education (another matter)
  was a gateway to the better life.

21
Then in 1957, the Russians launched Sputnik,
and the U.S., fearful that the event represented
both Russias military and technology power,
concluded students were not being groomed for
this mastery. Much of what was both arts in
education, and individual-focused education,
suddenly lost funding, and education, and the
reason for it, became as much a tool of the
government, as it was in Russia, as the U.S.
decided that math and science trained-ducklings
would become the future techno-swans. We are
still stuck in that muddle-puddle today.
although science is currently taking third
billing to math and reading.
22
Frankly, I believe teachers were already teaching
basic math and basic reading-writing. I believe
what happened, with the sudden burst of fractured
light called Silicon Valley, that reading and
writing became an essential only for reading the
Internet, and that writing, a matter of
key-punching. (Much research has gone into
whether the brain, accustomed to making marks
called language, with the hands in some form of
hand-writing has now returned to a form a
chisling marks in stone, or key hammering, and
what this is doing to the brain. For centuries,
cursive handwriting has been an art. To a growing
number of young people, it is a mystery. In
fact, cursive was an evolved shorthand for
printing of letters by hand). Now, Id be the
first one to fight with you if you tried to take
my laptop away. But as a teen, more than most of
my classmates back in the olden days, I wanted a
typewriter, for my birthday, or Christmas, or any
good reason. I got one when I was sixteen, and
used it to write poems, plays, newspaper articles
etc., until 1995, when, living with my sister and
electronics nerd brother-in-law, learned to turn
his newly acquired toy, a computer, on and off.
Now, thanks to the ease of revision, and the many
on-line publishing sites, I publish my own books.
(While computers as we know them may have
originated with the abacus in Greece (3000 BC) or
even before in China, the fancy electronic
typewriter, as a useful toy for commoners, came
in around 1991 with the introduction of the World
Wide Web).
23
What actually happened, I believe, in schools
during that first rush of discovery, is that
students whose families could afford to, and
believed in the computer, the Internet, and the
basic, soon to be global language of the
Internet, English, had access to knowledge that
could get them better grades. When schools
then, noting the disparity, scurried to have
banks of computers in schools, what happened to
the reading of books? It hardly takes an Internet
search to come up with the answer.
24
However, one New Jersey edu web site does answer
this question, both positively and negatively.
Still, I feel the opinions, expressed below, and
the use of computers and the Internet for almost
everything a student does in school poses some
serious further questions about the relevancy of
teaching-learning theories in the classroom, and
maybe in the soon-to-be here sci-fi future, the
relevancy of the teacher, unless she or he
video-tapes and markets their curriculum.
Were supposed to be training kids for jobs
that dont exist yet, so how do we do that? said
Aaron Sams, a Colorado teacher who was the
recipient of the 2009 Presidential Award for
Excellence for Math and Science Teaching. His
flipped classroom take on teaching melds
computer and video technologies Students watch
lectures at home and participate in workshops and
discussions in class. What about kids whose
families cant afford these electronic
marvels? The real push behind increased
Internet and computer learning is the result,
some believe, not of the need to train kids for
non-existent jobs but rather is caused by the
pressure to test. On the same site, Will
Richardson, a former New Jersey teacher- author
and strong proponent of using technology in
education is quoted as saying "Basically, the
message schools are getting is you have to be
doing what youre doing better. Better is always
measured by how well you are doing on the
test." However, Aaron Sams, the Colorado teacher
quoted in this on-line article New Jersey in the
Spotlight concluded My job has dramatically
changed. I really see myself as a tutor, a coach.
This really is a student-centered class. Im no
longer there to deliver content. Im there to
make sure the kids get it."
25

• NOTES
• According to the social constructivism
  approach, instructors have to adapt to the role
  of facilitators and not teachers (Bauersfeld,
  1995). Whereas a teacher gives a didactic lecture
  that covers the subject matter, a facilitator
  helps the learner to get to his or her own
  understanding of the content. In the former
  scenario the learner plays a passive role and in
  the latter scenario the learner plays an active
  role in the learning process.
• The emphasis thus turns away from the
  instructor and the content, and towards the
  learner (Gamoran, Secada, Marrett, 1998). This
  dramatic change of role implies that a
  facilitator needs to display a totally different
  set of skills than a teacher (Brownstein 2001).
• A teacher tells, a facilitator asks a teacher
  lectures from the front, a facilitator supports
  from the back a teacher gives answers according
  to a set curriculum, a facilitator provides
  guidelines and creates the environment for the
  learner to arrive at his or her own conclusions
  a teacher mostly gives a monologue, a facilitator
  is in continuous dialogue with the learners
  (Rhodes and Bellamy, 1999). A facilitator should
  also be able to adapt the learning experience in
  mid-air by taking the initiative to steer the
  learning experience to where the learners want to
  create value.
• The learning environment should also be designed
  to support and challenge the learner's thinking
  (Di Vesta, 1987). While it is advocated to give
  the learner ownership of the problem and solution
  process, it is not the case that any activity or
  any solution is adequate. The critical goal is to
  support the learner in becoming an effective
  thinker. This can be achieved by assuming
  multiple roles, such as consultant and coach.
• Web Sites
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(philosophy_o
  f_education)
• Applying Standards-Based Constructivism also
  clarifies the connection between

26

• The Private School
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vGdwjvxcJHTA
• My ideal of a private school is A.S. Neills
  Summerhill School in the UK, which, for those of
  us creative types in the 60ies, often wondering
  whether our offspring should even be going to
  school, held as an ideal. It was, likely, a
  forerunner of the Multiple Intelligences ideas,
  embracing ideas of freedom (though not license)
  and creative learning within ones own time
  frame. On the schools website http//www.summerhi
  llschool.co.uk/pages/index.html Neill is quoted
  (1921)
• I hold that the aim of life is to find
  happiness, which means to find interest.
  Education should be a preparation for life I
  have seen a girl weep nightly over her geometry.
  Her mother wanted her to go to university, but
  the girls whole soul was artistic
• Classroom walls and the National Curriculum
  narrow the teachers outlook, and prevent him
  from seeing the true essentials of education.
  (The teachers) work deals with the part of the
  child that is above the neck and perforce, the
  emotional, vital part of the child is foreign
  territory to him. Indifferent scholars who, under
  discipline, scrape through college or university
  and become unimaginative teacher, mediocre
  doctors and incompetent lawyers would possibly be
  good mechanics or excellent bricklayers or first
  rate policemen.
• Now Today, all over the world, education is
  moving towards more and more testing, more
  examinations and more qualifications. It seems to
  be a modern trend that assessment and
  qualification define education. If society were
  to treat any other group of people the way it
  treats its children, it would be considered a
  violation of human rights. But for most of the
  world's children this is the normal expectation
  from parents, school and the society in which we
  live.
• Today many educationalists and families are
  becoming uneasy with this restrictive
  environment. They are beginning to look for
  alternative answers to mainstream schooling.
  http//www.summerhillschool.co.uk/

27
This attitude I think, is pure Social
Constructivism updated, evolving with the times.
Today, I am taking this course, and others,
because of the miracle of the Internet, and a
schools innovative thinking about its students
needs. I personally, prefer this approach, since
the old idea of the University, with its
one-on-one mentoring by a chosen professor is no
longer, for the most part, in existence, and how,
in light of the global information past, present
and future, available to us as the click of a
switch and the click of a button, can one person,
teacher, professor hold it all? It, electronic
learning is the way of the future, and I for one
am glad that, as an older student, Im proving,
to me at least, you can teach the older dog
tricks, even if means I have to be a
self-motivated, creative learner. At least, when
that Special Ed, with ESL and Art endorsements
finally is in my hands, I will be in the middle
of the muddle, and ready to use, and teach, and
mentor my students in the many, ever evolving
ways the electronic world can increase their
knowledge, prepare their tomorrows.
28
As for becoming happy, I plan to also do field
trips to the local childrens library, theater
and museum hands-on programs. As for
team-learning, Ill leave that to the P.E.
teacher. I suppose, in doing that, we two make a
team.
29
(No Transcript)
30
(No Transcript)
31

• Citings
• Note I have referenced Wikkipedia several times,
  as there is just so much information on
  Constructivism, and its founders, movers and
  shakers these references allow for simplicity.
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Vygotsky
• http//www.personal.psu.edu/mas53/timelint.html
• http//www.summerhillschool.co.uk/
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_28phi
  losophy_of_education29
• http//www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/dont-throw-the-
  baby-out-with-the-bathwater.html
• http//www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/education/ed_mi_over
  view.html
• http//library.thinkquest.org/J002606/1940s.html
• http//www.pbs.org/nerds/timeline/
• http//dianeravitch.net
• http//www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/us/28cursive.htm
  l?_r0
• http//www.njspotlight.com/stories/11/0530/2255/
• http//www.personal.psu.edu/mas53/timln940.html
• http//www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/20/teachers-
  unions-rise-a-lo_n_1900130.html
• http//www.danagoldstein.net/dana_goldstein/2012/0
  9/the-chicago-strike-and-the-history-of-american-t
  eachers-unions.html
• http//www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe40s/l
  ife_19.html