Blog F

I think that the SED and EDU classes that I took this semester were really great classes to take. I enjoyed attending both of these classes because they both pertained to my major and I have a very strong interest in everything that we learned about in terms of the special education information that I learned in the first half of the semester, in addition to the regular, general education information that I learned in this last half of the semester. These classes have both taught me many things, not only about those topics in general, but I also learned a lot about this university. I had always heard about how devoted this university is to providing an above-average education to its students and turning its students into devoted, well-educated teachers. The SED and EDU classes this semester were the first things that have proven and shown me that the university’s devotion that I have heard so much about is very true.

In the SED 125 class that I took for the first half of the semester, I learned a lot about different special education disabilities and special education students that I didn’t know before. I was very glad that the class focused on the different kinds of things we should expect if we have a special education student in one of our classes one day. I learned what I should do in certain situations and I learned some very specific dispositions that some children with certain disabilities may have. I found this to be very helpful and affective because if I had just learned about the disabilities and not about how to deal with the symptoms of them, I fell as though I wouldn’t have learned anything that could be useful to me in the future, but I did learn many things in that class that I feel will be very useful to me when I become a teacher someday.

In the EDU 125 class, we learned a lot about the history of education and the impact that certain events have had one the way that education is today. I found all of this information very interesting and I was glad to learn about the different ways that past events have shaped education over many years. Another topic that we learned about in EDU that I found to be very interesting was the different philosophies of education. I thought that learning about this was very useful because I was able to differentiate between the philosophies and decide which one I agreed with and which one I disagreed with. This helped me to start to think about how I will want to conduct class when I become a teacher and also how I will want to teach my students.

I believe that another very important part of both SED and EDU were the professors that taught the classes. Both of them have very good senses of humor which helps to create a very relaxed, informal atmosphere in the classroom. Both are very nice and all around great people and, in my opinion, they taught all of the material very well. Overall, being in both of these classes has been a wonderful experience for me in many ways and I have enjoyed it very much.

Diversity

When I first read the topic questions for this blog, I thought to myself, “Well, this is going to be hard, I haven’t dealt with very much diversity at all.” When I was thinking this, all I was thinking about in terms of diversity was the difference between races and color of people. A very large majority of the people that I went to school with, from elementary school until high school, were white. Finally, the more and more I thought about it, I realized that I have been surrounded by different kinds of diversity throughout my life that I never even realized. The first kind of diversity that I thought of was an obvious one – gender. I went to a regular public high school with just as many boys as there were girls; so needless to say, there was plenty of diversity in that aspect. Then I thought about it more in depth than I had before and thought about how other kinds of diversity have existed in my life before. For example, I have a friend from back home that is gay, which obviously has to do with sexual orientation. I never really thought of him as a form of diversity in my life because I was just so used to him being around and it seemed so normal for me to be around him that diversity was never in my mind. I never thought until now about how different sexual orientations and even different genders do make people so diverse and different from each other. Even things that sometimes are, or sometimes aren’t, important to certain people can be diversity, such as heritages or ancestors. One of my best friends is one quarter Japanese and to me, she is just the same as I am. She doesn’t look very Japanese so I don’t think of her as Japanese when I see her. Another large diversity that I never considered to be diversity is the socio-economic standings of different people and different families. People all around the world have a large array of incomes and come from a variety of different classes.

I think that teaching diversity as a subject in school is a very good idea. I believe that all children should learn very early in life that diversity does exist in our world, and not only that, but they also need to learn the different types of diversity and what each kind of diversity means or represents.

I believe that teaching diverse students in the same classroom is very effective to help all of the children learn first hand about diversity and about the different kinds of people that live in this world. I believe that as a whole, diversity is different people that come from all walks of life and have different background and different moral beliefs. If diverse children are all taught in the same classroom, it will give all the children the chance to interact with different children that all have different stories to tell and maybe different traditions to share. I think that diversity should be a very important subject in education today.