Teacher Perspective!

While I continue to post and search my mind and others to contemplate and babble about the idea of the individual being affected by outside influences; I thought about students.
When we think of the psychological development and growth process a person's minds we are sometimes quick to assume with the impact of our "words" that this process ends somewhere near high school graduation? Would you believe this to be true?

When we think about a toddler it is known that they babble and mimic our adult body language, and verbal language to gauge and learn about what they can and cannot control while there brains are taking in as much as possible.

As every person grows, and experiance different stages in their life, there thought and emotional process adjusts and may possibly even change? Most people do mimic, or are afraid to stand out in the crow; is this because we are all comfortable with fitting in? Or is this because we could possibly be still in the prime stages of our brains growing?
With so much of this to think about, I was interested to finding out what the effects of outside world was like to a student with learning disabilities. Although, interviewing a student may be interesting I thought it would be different to get the perspective of a professional and someone with a lot of experience in this department.

I went to Adelphi Universities Learning Resource Program, and sat with a Senior Educator, Mr. Glenn Suchy. Glenn has had much experience in the teaching world, especially with learning disabled students. In today’s world any sort of disability is not normally presented in the media. This would or could make accepting having any form of a disability difficult, aside from all of the major adjustments one may have to make in order to find a comfortable place in life.
Glenn, has had teaching experience in more than just learning disabled, and he really enjoys it he also enjoys his time off in the summers. In his years of college he had the experience to student teach as part of receiving his degree with many different types of students in many different teaching settings. Since having the experience out of college he feels that the learning styles have completely changed and have bettered in several ways no matter how a kid is influenced by the media.

The media has brought about several changes in the world. He feels that if we eliminated some forms of technology in the learning area of a child’s life each student’s would possibly benefit from school more. He feels that at a college and high school level a student’s brain is still in the prime stage of growth and has not fully adapted its senior growth level. With this understanding, why would technology be of any form of help, College and high school level students are missing out on several important areas of knowledge.

While discussing this with Glenn, he recalled upon a conversation he had with his cousin whom is a retierd police officer and now teaches at a college about his experience and knowledge in the criminal and police force. Glenn wasn’t surprised to find that, his cousin stated a good majority of his students state they want to be in that area or field based on what they see on t.v such as shows like CSI. Although, many programs do not offer internships or shadowing the fact that a high school or college level student fails to see the reality of a job or lifestyle and blends this fantasy idea with a broadcasted show is scary.

Glenn feels that if we possibly implemented critical think lessons, or classes into our schools curriculum along with possible studies of what the reality of entertainment t.v or any form of the media, even advertising students may have a different perspective of them selves. This topic is so interesting because, when we discussed students self growth time periods we found it interesting that many of Glenn’s current students, and students in the past were comfortable with the ideas that they had learning disabilities. Where as most in this age, would feel standing out in a crowd or accepting the idea of being different to be challenging.

This was a interview that made me, personally question a lot. When does a student fully accept themselves and/or find themselves comfortable and accepting of who they are without any influence of media, family or friends? Do we ever find a place in or lives were we can find that or see that? Or does this come in stages?
Glenn found that the majority of students he knows are greatly impacted visually, when we think about watching commercials it’s more about what we see than what is being said. So how does that affect blogging?

To find out more about Adelphi Universities Learning resource program, visit Adelphi’s web page;http://academics.adelphi.edu/lrp/