Blog 7: The Teenage Brain

After reading and pondering the debate about teens lacking adult reasoning capacity, yet being held to adult consequences, what do you think this means for you as a teacher?

Knowing that the brain does not develop fully until later in teenage development, it is difficult to justify adult consequences for juveniles. As a teacher, I can help my students through processing different actions and consequences, especially for my male students. I can teach them social and emotional skills that will help them take time to process their decisions instead of jumping into something and not realizing their decisions have consequences. 

Helping to teach students calm down is also a skill that would benefit teenagers. If they can train themselves to pause, they will be able to think more clearly and not get into trouble. 

Blog 6: Music and Math

After watching the videos on Math and Music, how does this information impact you as a teacher?

The information learned in watching the video will change my teaching style by inspiring me to provide positive music and math activities for my students. From the video, I learned that upbeat and happy music is better than slow and sad music. The music I play now is a mixture of calming music, but I want to make sure that I have an upbeat tempo to now encourage positive experiences and success.

In my classroom, I need to provide more opportunities for students to estimate. This may mean just showing a picture and having students estimate how many. This can be a daily activity to help engage the brain, especially since estimation skills are shown to help students succeed in the later grades.

I also want to play more games that incorporate math. When the activity is fun, students are much more engaged and learn more than when they are given a worksheet. This can be a quick and daily activity to warm students up before we get into the math lesson.