What I of ALL Teachers (not only SLA)

Chris Lehmann posted an article about what he expects out of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) Teachers and I thought to myself..."This is what should be expected out of every teacher."  As a current student and future educator I am constantly critiquing my professors, myself, and my classmates on how well they teach as well as thinking about what I would love for them to do to make things better for my learning.  Included in this constant analysis would be instances where a teacher says one thing and completely disregards what he/she is saying just a few minutes later.  The following is an example of what I mean shown in a dialogue between professor and class while learning about ADHD....

Professor (While referring to the powerpoint): "As you can see the average child with ADD cannot concentrate on a single subject for an extended period of time."

Student 1: "How long is the attention span for your normal college student."

Professor:  "Well I would say that about after 35-45 minutes students will start to wander and 'tune things out'"

Class now continues for an hour and a half going through the powerpoint....

Professor: "Okay we will take our break now."

Do the math on that one for me and practice what you preach.  You just told me that I'm most likely going to be losing attention after 40 or so minutes so why are you lecturing to me for over twice that amount of time?   With all of this being said I would like to add #11 to Lehmann's list and generalize it to all teachers.

#11) Please be accountable for what you teach and give me the best opportunity to succeed in your class.  Even if that is a two minute break where I can get up and just stretch without missing anything, it would make a world of difference and optimize my learning. Thank You.

Asperger's...So Intriguing

As a teacher going into special education and hopefully pursuing a Masters in Autism I found the Skype conversation particularly interesting.  Since Asperger's usually affects the social and emotional portion of the brain, I really expected him to struggle with this type of communication.  He really impressed me! The conversation showed just how much of spectrum Autism in general can cover.

One of the most amazing encounters I have had in researching Asperger's occurred through none other than ESPN (sarcasm).  Clay Marzo is a world class surfer with Asperger's who struggles to interact with the public scene surfing usually embraces.  When interviewed about his condition and what it feels like to be around a large group of people and socialize, he says his cup overflows.  He looks at it as if he has a cup for socializing and everyone has a big bucket.  When this cup overflows he just has to get away from it all.  As a future educator for students with special needs, I need to always be aware and accepting of the different issues my students could be having and so my best to really get in and understand what's going on inside that head of theirs.

The top image shows the brain imaging of a person with Asperger’s when they see an emotion of love.  The bottom shows the same brain activity for a person without Asperger’s.