Jonathan Paul Loomis

March 8, 1999

Psychology of Education

Dr. Fox

The teacher in the vignette was both right and wrong in her actions. On one hand she was correct in not stopping the four girls from working on the birthday cards, whereas on the other had she should not have postponed her lesson entirely.

I believe that the teacher acted wisely when confronting the four girls and also in the creation of a solution to the problem that they were not attending to her lesson. The teacher did not stop the lesson to ask in front of the entire class what the four girls were doing which would have interrupted the flow of the class and brought undue attention on the girls who were not doing what they were supposed to. Instead she found a quick activity for the remainder of the class (the five-minute writing assignment) and quietly tried to deal with her problem. This was important because children do not need the large amount of negative attention involved with chastisement in front of their classmates.

The teacher's solution, joining the children by writing a quick card of his/her own and letting them continue with their activity, was an excellent way of dealing with them. The teacher demonstrated that he/she cared about Anat and that the death of a sibling is an important emotional challenge that one often must take time out to deal with. The teacher correctly assessed this life skill as being more important than the Significant Lesson.

The teacher allowed Anat's friends to continue with their project as well which was a good choice because by placing value in the children's horizontal relational relationships she demonstrated both their value in dealing with conflict and also the importance of empathizing with one another.

Further, by allowing them to work on their own project, even though they were breaking the rules to do it, showed the students that taking the initiative to do something which is important to them is an important characteristic.

By not forcing the four girls to stop their work he/she showed them that the personal skills they were demonstrating: individual autonomy, empathy, initiative, and respect for their classmates (they were not disturbing the lesson), are more important than the content lesson the teacher had prepared. Content can always wait for skills such as these will eventually allow the students to gain the content on their own.

However, for as well as the teacher dealt with the four girls and their particular situation, he/she was not justified in postponing the lesson until the following day. These four girls were making a personal choice to ignore the lesson because they felt something else was more pressing and more important. In doing so they must have understood that they would still be held responsible for the work and content being covered. When the teacher put off her Significant Lesson he/she only taught the class that a few students can cause an interruption, that their problems were more valuable than the progress of the class, and that misbehavior can be turned into a class activity. These are dangerous lessons to indoctrinate. It will teach students that acting out can affect the entire class, delay work, and ultimately become the day-to-day. The teacher should have continued with the lesson and held the four girls responsible for the work. Their project was important, but because it was only their project it should not have interrupted the class's routine.

The teacher's reactions demonstrated that she is probably demonstrative of the final stage of the concerns theory, the impact stage. By allowing the four girls to continue the teacher demonstrated that he/she was more concerned with what kind of people the students would eventually be than that they learn the particular material being taught that day, which would have been more demonstrative of the second, or task stage of the concerns theory.

I find Erikson's fourth and fifth stages of development to be most interesting (that is excepting the sixth, which is the stage I am experiencing currently, but which is inappropriate for this assignment because I have not yet passed it).

The fourth stage is the Industry versus Inferiority stage, which generally coincides with the elementary and middle school years. In this stage children must determine whether or not they are acceptably productive or if they lag behind their classmates. This stage is important because if students feel they are behind their self-esteem will suffer and they will develop the concept that they simply are unable to perform. In short, they will doubt their own potential and lose initiative, whereas if they are successful in this stage they will become self-motivated learners who will grow up to search out knowledge and experiences for themselves.

I believe that my own defining point for this particular stage was the third and fourth grades. In third grade I often felt that I was behind the other students, that I could not perform at their level, and that I was failing in comparison. However, in fourth grade I was selected for an advanced thinking and problem solving program that emphasized formal operational cognition and I began to see the areas in which I could excel in comparison to my peers. Ever since fourth grade I have never doubted my ability to perform academically.

The fifth stage is the Identity versus Role Confusion stage and is associated with the high school and early collage years. In this stage students must determine who they are and how they fit into society as a whole. If they do not do this they will fall towards the "Role Confusion" side of the crisis in which they will not have a strong understanding of what their purpose and place in society are.

I personally feel that I was only aware of my sense of identity after I came to college and was able to see who I was by comparison against many other people who already had established identities. This was a clear moment for me. During high school I often felt that I could move from group to group and that I didn't have a particular home identity. Once I arrived at American I began to see myself definitively as a Midwesterner, a quiet leader, a religious individual, as someone who is willing to compromise my own opinions for the emotional well-being of others, etc. These are all traits that I've had for years but that I have only understood recently.