Share a story about your best learning experience. Why did you enjoy it?
I don’t think I can narrow down to a single best experience, but one of them was learning about mindfulness and how to practice it. In grade 9, while I was boarding at my school, one of the resident parents led a yoga nidra every Sunday night. I had no previous knowledge of this type of guided meditation, and the first time going definitely felt a bit strange. I began to grasp how to relax, release stress from my mind, and have sense while doing so. I normally would fall into what is called a deep state of conscious awareness sleep. I had never felt so relaxed, calm, and peacefully rested. As someone who struggled with insomnia and sleeping issues, I always wished I could doze off into sleeping for the night right then, or be transported into my bed somehow. Additionally, I was shown how to practice mindfulness meditation, something like a 10 minute pause during the day. Much of the time I would become distracted and caught up in my thoughts unintentionally, but I learnt to notice that, and come back to the present. I enjoyed this as it really made a difference to my mental health and overall wellbeing, it was very applicable and helpful for myself to know about, once I got past any inner judgment. Moreover, this sparked my own interest for personal reasons and allowed me to gather the importance of mindfulness for the human system itself.
Based on your reading, would you consider your current instruction style more behaviorist, cognitivist, or constructivist? Elaborate with your specific mindset and examples.
I would consider my current instruction style to be most similar to that of a cognitivists. I think that the learner as an individual, environmental factors, and the interaction between the two, is what should be importantly examined. This means that major tasks of myself as a teacher would include understanding people, to bring their individualistic learning experiences to the environment, which all in all affects the outcome of their learning. I think that information should be presented in multiple ways, and allow the learner to navigate making connections at revisited content using problem solving skills. I would focus on how to pull on knowledge through connections, and build off of what you already know; focusing on how you come to learn and study material. I’d make use of the feedback from knowledge of results to guide and support the accurate mental corrections to succeed in learning; something I wish more teachers of mine did themselves. Further, by making knowledge relatable to knowledge in the memory already, the intake of new information is better supported. So as an example, figuring out how to design instruction so that it can be readily digested and taken in by the learner, so they are not confused and able to follow. Using planning and strategies based on the learner themselves, is much more individualistic, realistic, and inclusive of different types of learners. General teaching strategies I feel do not encompass the needs outside an average abled learner. With challenges I face from neurological disorders myself, I have come to experience the lack of depth in supporting different types of learners. Those with learning disabilities I think would benefit much more from the instructional design of a cognitivist, which aligns with my mindset of teaching. I believe that applying techniques and strategies that work best within a certain topic, and situation with specific learners, is key.
