Focus on the Art of teaching

Great work - thanks for the feedback from the teacher.

Again I'll emphasize what the teacher quotes as the "ART" part of teaching (see her outlines):

a) A teacher is described as “… an artist whose medium of expression is the spontaneous unrehearsed, and creative encounter between teacher and student.” (Parkay and Standford, 2002, p.115.)
So, with that in mind, I think we need to add how we can include opportunities for unrehearsed and creative encounters. Let me know what you all think:

I was thinking - as a teacher in this lesson, we could walk around and ask questions if there are self assessments going on. If students are preparing menus, ask why they chose certain foods, or ask why they discarded certain foods. Asking the students if anyone wants to share about their experiences with diabetes to the class could be another way to spontaneously interact with that student.

During the class presentation - there are plenty of opportunities to engage the students. If we prepare a balanced snack, we can talk to the students during the process. Find out why they chose a certain snack- what they like about the food, what they don't (this opens them up for more discussion). We can them move into questions again on why the food is a good choice - and relating it back to why - tying it into the material.

So the art of teaching is the opportunities we give the students to engage us - to answer and ask questions - to work together to solutions. Or at least, that's my take on it.

Oh, here's another idea... Have students bring in an ingredient for a snack that is glucose friendly. Then we could have students take their ingredients and actually put together a balanced snack or meal type thing with these ingredients. This is an example: Student A brings in all bran cereal and student B brings in some strawberries - could these be paired into a meal? This would have the students trying to find other students who brought compatible foods for their own - might be fun!

Well that's it for my brainstorming. I am off to work on my other homework. Please let me know what you all think!


Julie Rahill - PDT