LDS Female, Extremely Literate, Brainwashed just a Titch

Disclaimer: This was for a class.. I generally don't devote entire posts to myself

LDS Upbringing

The LDS Church has been with me every single day of my life. From before I can remember I've been taught that I am a Child of God, that He loves me and that I can return to live with Him if I do well in this life. One of the most important truths I've learned and know is the eternal and divine nature that I have. I have the potential to become a goddess if I follow the commandments and endure to the end. As a member of the LDS Church, I also believe in Eternity and that there is no beginning or end which is why I chose to be married in the temple for Eternity.

One of the most comforting ideas to me in the Church is that I'll be with my family forever. Every member of my immediate family is one of my best friends and I get to be with them forever. The idea that we'll be together always has helped me to appreciate them but to also have an eternal perspective.

My Love of Learning

Since I was little, I've loved to learn new things. Especially when I can teach myself how to do them. Naturally, when my older sister started to read, I needed to read too. I couldn't stand to think that she would have access to things that I didn't. So I learned to read at the age of 4.

As a teenager, I would read all the time, sometimes finding it more entertaining that friends or going to the mall. I would read anything and everything. I was a TA for one of my favorite Literature teachers. I helped him move from one classroom to another. Each box I packed was filled with literary treasures and I wouldn't empty boxes until I had read everything in them. It took weeks to go through a box. Luckily for me, this teacher cared more about my hunger for literature than the organization of his classroom.

As a college student, reading is a treat. It only happens when I'm traveling or the rare moment when I have a fragment of spare time. It's so easy for me to get wrapped up in a book. I roll the words around in my mind and put myself there, following the main character as they blaze through the pages.

I read to learn. I read for fun. I read to be entertained. I read to be inspired.

My Hometown and High School

I thought I grew up in a normal Apple Pie American town. Richland, Washington. This is my school's logo. Please note the Mushroom Cloud behind the Richland "R."

About 70 years ago, Richland's government site, Hanford, was working hard on the Manhattan Project i.e. Atomic Warfare. Currently, the Hanford Site works on containing and destroying nuclear waste but during WWII, they were working on the Atomic Bombs. Specifically supplying the uranium and plutonium that massacred millions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and ended the war. As a child growing up in this region, this was history. We learned about this from grade school up until our senior year where we were required to take a class called, "War and Peace," and would have more accurately been named, "War and why we are the best."

During high school, our link crew was called "The Bomb Squad." Our Pep assemblies were covered with mushroom clouds and bomber planes and fake bombs. At rival games, the student section chanted, "Nuke 'em! Nuke 'em!" I always heard comments about how we glowed in the dark from radioactive exposure.

This was normal to me. It wasn't until college when I was chatting with roommates about high school that mascots came up and after everyone had listed off some aggressive animal, I sheepishly added, "uh.. the Bombers."

I then had to explain what that meant and why it existed. And then I was told how terrible and racial and controversial that was. None of these things had crossed my mind growing up because the whole town accepted this as history.

What this means:

There are some things that we can see affect us very obviously, like growing up in a Church. There are other things that affect us and we don't think about them at all, like the town I grew up in. However, what we need to realize is that every experience we have shapes who we are, what are beliefs are, and what we will become.

Why I Married Tyler

Most people see my sweet husband as a quiet, shy guy. More of a background kind of a person who's really good at keeping me balanced. This is all true but what no one else knows or sees is how hilarious and DRAMATIC he is. Here's a few of Ty's statements-

I walk into Ty's apartment... 45 minutes late...

Ty: {Eating peaches straight from the jar} I'm eating peaches. You know how angry I get when I eat peaches.

Walking to the car after school...

Ty: Sometimes when I'm at work {at Costco} people pull out their Sam's cards and it's like a shock to the heart.

As we're grocery shopping, picking out some hot cocoa mix...

Ty: Just for the record, I like my hot cocoa with milk. Not water. Milk. Am I making myself clear?

Watching a movie...

Ty: Oh girl. I love you. {Completely unprovoked}

Emily: I love you too.

Ty: I love the way you make the Mac N Cheese.... I love the way you pour the milk

So there are just a few but I'm looking forward to many many more.

So We're In Love

This is what happened in the last six months.

We met on a blind date doing this:

Neither of us wanted to go but we did. We were set up by the one and only, Jenny Bush, who is the reason for three eternal companionships.

And then I went here:

And Ty went here:

And I thought maybe we wouldn't work out because many a relationship has been murdered by EFY. But we talked almost every night and then finally we were able to spend my week off together.

And we went here (Lagoon):

And here (Idaho):

But then I went back to EFY and after 2 days of that we decided it was too hard without each other, mostly because we loved each other.

But then I went here:

And though I love my family, I really missed Ty. And I told him that I was getting back two days later than I actually was. I surprised him and he hugged me so tight I couldn't really breathe.

And for our last summer hurrah, we went here:

And the Disney Magic really got to us.

So then we decided that what we really wanted was to be together forever.

FOR-EV-ER.

And on September 27, 2010, this is what happened:

And on December 18, 2010, this is where we'll be going:

So we can live happily ever after.

Blog #7

Farren, L. H., Olson, J.C., & Davis, D. (2010). Shrinking your class. Mathematics Teaching In The Middle School, 16(7), 386-391.

This article describes how bringing in hands on activities help students grasp a relational understanding of the concepts being taught. The school brought in grad students to teach students about scaling and ratios. They started with different toys spread out across the room and had the students guess to what scale they were being represented in comparison with its real life counterpart. After they got comfortable with those concepts, students made models of themselves using a scale 20 times smaller than themselves. They used aluminum foil, floral foam, bendy straws and toothpicks to construct themselves and then they were allowed to construct accessories to go along with them.

The article spent a lot of time explaining the specifics of the activity rather than the purpose or outcome of the activity. They authors almost sounded surprised that come testing, students were able to remember scales and ratios better than other concepts that were being tested. Of course students will remember the hands on activities better! They have experiences that will be able to remind them of the things that they learned. So I agree with the main idea of the article, I think the activity would be very beneficial in a classroom, however, I think the teacher and author were a little bit dense if they were surprised at the outcome.

Blog 6

Guerrero, S. M. (2010). The Value of Guess & Check. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, 15(7), 392-398.

This article attempts to justify the importance of guess & check. Guerrero suggests that when students are taught how to make educated guesses, it's much easier for them to make more educated guesses with later situations. They are able to learn directly from the immediate problem they might be working on but they are also able to learn generalized techniques for other problems Guerrero specifically uses an example of a story problem where students have to find the individual lengths to each side of an enclosed fence.

I believe that guess and check is always a valuable tool, especially when you don't know at all what to do. In fact, I've never questioned the validity of the technique. I think it's a powerful learning tool, especially when students are wrong. They can see where they went wrong and what they can do to fix it. There's so much learning that can come from getting things wrong. I've noticed with my school work, when I get things wrong, it's more of a motivation for me to go back and figure out where I went wrong and how to fix it. After that, I usually have that knowledge forever because I took time to learn it.

Warrington Paper

There are a many advantages to Warrington's take on teaching division of fractions to her students. One is that it develops a relational understanding before it even introduces an instrumental understanding. The students never attempted to "flip and multiply" because that wouldn't have made sense to them yet. Another is that the students estimated before they actually tried to get the right answer so they new an approximate range that their real answer should be in. This also shows that they were developing a relational understanding. Another plus to this technique is that Warrington didn't tell her students if they were right or wrong and let them lead the discussion in class, whether it was in small groups or the whole class. This allows students to feel safe in the classroom and let them share their ideas without the fear of being wrong because no one actually knows if they're right or wrong.

There are disadvantages to this technique as well. One is the fact that it takes a lot of time to go through this kind of discovery process with every kind of mathematics that you come across. In some cases, it would be so much faster to slap an algorithm on the board and call it good. Another disadvantage is that if there's one student who understands right away, they kind of inhibit other students' learning because they are not given the time to figure it out completely on their own. I know if classes that I've been in that sometimes I just wait around for one of the "smart kids" to bust out an answer, sometimes because I have no clue what's going on but sometimes because I'm just lazy.

Constructivism

According to von Glasersfeld, constructivism is the way that we learn. He suggests that all of our learning and our ideas come from past experiences. Our reasoning is not questioned, regardless of what we are taught in lectures, until we have some real life experience that makes us change. Until our conclusions are questioned, they remain correct in our minds. Von Glasersfeld uses the word "construct" rather than "acquire" or "gain" knowledge because knowledge is not something that someone else can hand to us. Knowledge is something that we have to build and modify all on our own.

Similar to what we did in class with the fraction blocks, I think a way that I would bring constructivism into my classroom would be through visual explanations. Concepts and principles don't always make sense in lecture form. If I used hands on experiences, such as the blocks we used in class, the physical aspect of the exercise would shatter any ill-conceived principles or rules that a student might have constructed on their own.