Yes, I know you’ve had a psychology course in your undergraduate work and you’re thinking, “Oh no! Not again!” Some information in our course may be redundant because of that, but I am determined to put a fresh spin on familiar information!
I put an image of a wrench here for a purpose. Since we all come to this class with varying years experience and have had psychology classes in the past, our course is going to focus on “fine tuning” the good work that you are already doing, thus the wrench. To the right (assignments) and below (course work) you’ll find all you’ll need to have a successful online semester.
Based on all of the feedback from previous cohorts, I’ve made some very important changes to this online course to make it more manageable for you. The first is weekly accountability. In previous semesters I let people do the Blog posts at their leisure. What happened is that many ended up waiting until the last week of school to catch up and (1) posts were, um, kind of crappy and (2) I got slammed so much that it was overwhelming to keep up with grading (which, I’m sure you can appreciate as future educators yourselves). I’m not doing that any more. Blog posts are due on Sunday night at midnight and if you miss that deadline then that Blog is dead to you. You can’t make it up. Disqus (the online blogging system that I prefer and use for my courses) notifies me every time anyone Blogs or posts and gives me the exact date and time of your posting, so this will be very easy to monitor.
The second change I’ve made is that all assignments for the course must be in a PDF form when you email them to me (assignments are emailed to me at jsapp@csudh.edu). It is so important that you format them to PDFs because, otherwise, it will overwhelm and shut down my mailbox. Our CSUDH faculty mailboxes aren’t allocated a lot of space and they fill up quickly with 140 students. Thanks for formatting all work to PDFs. Also, course assignments are due on Friday evenings by 5pm so that I am able to grade them over the weekend to get your more immediate feedback.
Just to be very clear about this: Blog posts are due on Sunday night at midnight. Course assignments are due on Friday evenings by 5pm.
Each week as we go through our experience together I am going to pick a few things from the assigned readings that I feel I can address best and dig deeper into those topics. You are, of course, responsible for reading all of the assigned readings. I promise I won’t just regurgitate what you’ve already read, but will highlight the areas of my expertise so as to offer you tools to help you fine tune your professional skills.
Let’s get started! Just click on the “Week” live link below and it will take you to your tasks.
Week1/January 22 - Introduction to our course and to each other; Brain-Based Learning and Brain-Antagonistic Learning; Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain; DUE: Introduction Blog due ASAP; Brain-Based Learning Blog #1 due by Sunday night January 28th at midnight
Week 2/January 29 - Exploring Identity-Based Curricula; Culturally Relevant Pedagogy; Lee’s Cultural Modeling; Moll’s Funds of Knowledge; Funds of Identity; Biography-Driven Instruction; Bronfenbrenner Blog #2 due by Sunday night February 4th at midnight
Week 3/February 5 - Learner diversity; Resistance theory; Language, gender, class; Learner Diversity Blog #3 due by Sunday night February 11th at midnight
Week 4/February 12 - Differentiation; Disability Justice; The Problem with Learning Styles; Teacher Bias; Cooperative Learning and Race Relations; Differentiation Blog #4 due by Sunday night February 18th at midnight
Week 5/February 19 - Constructivism
Week 6/February 26 - Memory and Recall Made Simple; Memory and Recall Blog #5 due by Sunday night March 3rd at midnight
Week 7/March 4 - Art in the classroom as complex cognitive processing; Art Blog #6 due by Sunday night March 10th at midnight
Week 8/March 11 - Positive behavioral interventions & supports (PBIS); DUE: Supporting Students Resources (When assignments are due “the week of” that means that you can turn this in anytime the week of March 11th - from Monday all the way until Friday March 15th by 5pm. And just email all assignments to me at jsapp@csudh.edu.); PBIS Blog # 7due by Sunday night March 17th at midnight
Week 9/March 18 - Learned Helplessness; Learned Helplessness Blog #8 due by Sunday night March 24th at midnight
Week 10/March 25 - Classroom Management IRIS Information Briefs
Week 11/April 1 NO CLASS, SPRING BREAK
Week 12/April 8 - Classroom Management IRIS Modules; Behavior Management Plans (BMPs)
Week 13/April 15 - Learning and Effective Teaching: Changing Educational Paradigms; DUE: Photo Essay; (When assignments are due “the week of” that means that you can turn this in anytime the week of April 15th - from Monday all the way until Friday April 19th by 5pm. And just email all assignments to me at jsapp@csudh.edu.)
NOTE: There are many reasons that some of us do not have photos of our childhood and assignments that ask for history and origin can be triggering for some of us. If this is the case for you, students have used clip art or stock photos to do this assignment and that is perfectly acceptable. Others have drawn picture or have re-imagined this assignment so that they feel successful and comfortable. I, for one, have spent the entirety of my parenthood worrying about family tree assignments because we are a family created through the wonder of adoption. Schooling can re-traumatize many of us with assignments like this, so please do this photo essay in a way that works for you.
Week 14/April 22 - School Reform; Standardized Testing
Week 15/April 29 NOTHING TO DO HERE BUT CATCH UP ON YOUR CLASSES
Week 16/May 6 - Teaching as a Subversive Act; What have we learned? DUE by Friday the 10th: Research Paper; That’s All Folks!
Research Paper: Title page; (Page 1) Introduction to your issue/topic and why it is important to you and education; (Pages 2-8) Literature Review; (Page 9) Conclusion; (Page 10) APA Bibliography
Your final research paper can be emailed to me no later than Friday May 10th at 5pm.