UbD Chapter 2 Response

The biggest take-away point that I got from this chapter is that it is important to be flexible and adaptable as a teacher.  Otherwise, it will be much more difficult to meet the many varying needs of your students.  The chapter also made it clear that you can’t always rely on one particular “plan” when it comes to helping a student; you must be open to having a Plan B, Plan C, and so on, as demonstrated in the section about Yana (14).  Likewise, teaching requires a great deal of patience.  I will have to constantly remind myself that it’s okay if I don’t “get through” to a student immediately, and that just as we expect the students to learn from us as teachers, we also have a lot to learn from them when it comes to their individual learning styles, interests, strengths, weaknesses, personalities, home lives, etc. and that it will take time and dedication to the student in order for us to gain a full understanding of how they best function and what they need from us as educators.  I also felt that a lot of what was discussed in this chapter ties into what we’ve been reading and discussing in Dr. Theresa’s course on classroom management.  For example, in the story about Noah (15) we learn that he is a kinesthetic learner and that he learns best when he is able to move around.  The reading we did for Dr. Theresa (from Classroom Management for Middle and High School Teachers) gave the impression that classroom rules and regulations should be directly stated and enforced with little room for compromise or exceptions.  I don’t think that this idea correlates very well with what this chapter is emphasizing, which is the teacher adapting the differing needs of his or her students as opposed to the students adapting to a strict set of rules.