RR #9

As I read the King-Friedrichs article, I considered all of the elements of good instruction that surfaced. She had engaged her students by making a connection to personal experiences and then used those experiences as a common playing field to build instruction.  She incorporated real problems, sensory experiences, authentic assessments and fun.  I related to the statement, ‘Classroom teachers face the challenge of making the encoding of the information and skills that we are attempting to teach students as elaborate and deep as possible”(p.77).

After I taught 5^th grade for the first year and my students took the end of the year state assessment, I remember how my feelings of excitement turned to disappointment.  Many students could not recall social studies content that I taught early in the school year, even though I had asked questions about the material periodically throughout the remainder of the year.  I had failed them.  That summer, I spent time reflecting on my own learning experiences. As I pondered over all of the reasons why I remembered information, which seemed so random, a common theme emerged.  I had participated in simulations.   The first unit I taught the next year in 5^th grade social studies was Explorers.  I decided to provide my students with some experiences in exploration, from the perspective of an explorer and the perspective of Native Americans.  In order to feel like an explorer, I hid a chocolate bar in the classroom and placed the class into unequal teams.  The disgruntled voices seemed to soften when I explained how different countries spent different amounts of money in exploratory endeavors.  The benefit of a larger team meant more individuals searching for the chocolate, while a smaller team meant a larger portion of the reward for each person.  Immediately following the victory for the winning team, I asked everyone to write about the experience and to include their personal thoughts and feelings about the exercise.  The next day, a few fellow teachers entered my classroom during social studies, placing a flag on the door and speaking a foreign language.  The students had no idea what was going on and I played along. We offered the strangers treats from the treat box and they presented us with a deflated basketball and a pair of wooden shoes, both of which were useless to us. The strangers communicated to us that they were taking over the classroom and would be back.  On the way out, they took our treat box with them.  I knew these simulations made lasting impressions for many of my students, some of which stopped me years after later recalling the events as if they had happened yesterday.  I am sure William James would say I had captured their stream of consciousness.  He would also say they had made multiple associations. I had managed to make these students angry, excited, disgruntled and elated.  I end this post wondering about this big question: How do emotions influence how we remember experiences?