Chapter 12-13 Reflection from the book:

Reigeluth, C. M., & Carr-Chellman, A. A. (2009). Instructional-design theories and models: Building a common knowledge base (Vol. III).

One of the things that I have wondered is why the lack of emotional education or emotional support in our school systems.  Every educator will tell you that a child who is struggling with something on the inside tends to struggle in school.

I look at some recent history in the high school where I taught for almost 10 years – we had a suicide problem.  I wonder, would that still be a problem if students had better support in the elementary school.  where they could learn how to deal with challenging issues in a safe way…where it was safe to talk with adults who were trained to help?  What about a more robust system in middle and high school?

This is hard because the current funding that schools receive is so tight, people who can help are being required to take on other positions are mandated to other responsibilities.

Having said that I do believe that schools can create communities where students do feel like they belong.  Where the faculty and staff feel supported, which flows to supporting the students.  To mention my previous high school again, we had our share of troubles, but we were a family.  And the students understood this as well (for the most part).

Loved the theme section, the entire time I was thinking about Teach Like A Pirate by Dave Burgess.  The underlying theme of this book is that education should be fun and exciting.  Take some of the things that pirates do and apply them to your teaching: they explore, they go into uncharted waters, they have to navigate the ship.  Using these underlying thoughts, an entire community has sprung up around this book.

There is also the theme that can be the umbrella under which instruction happens.  I enjoyed reading about the different ways to incorporate themes during the education process.  I think that sometimes teachers are scared to leave the comfy confines of habit to explore some of these things.  Imagine your own children learning all of the different aspects of a particular subject through theme!