ita, will you make a men in skirts site?

It would be pretty.

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I'm having something of a dilemma. I need to write a "reflection" (man, I'm tired of that word) on a time I as a learner experienced a particularly effective learning environment. And I'm having some trouble coming up with one. I mean, there are classes I enjoyed, but it looks like the main thing that made those particularly effective was the subject matter. Looking at the other aspects of the "environment"... they have rather little in common.

I guess I should just pick one and go with that, but it's kind of hard to come up with "qualities that made the learning environment effective" other than, "well, the teacher was pretty nice." This would be much easier if it was meant to be about a particularly ineffective learning environment. I seem to remember those more clearly.

Well... there was fifth grade.... that was pretty effective, but it seems like a long way back.

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Yes. MEN IN SKIRTS PLEASE! Also, you can add the Brad Pitt in a dress.

Hmmm.... men in skirts.

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What about a learning environment outside the classroom?

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From recent posts, we can plainly see that men in skirts are very effective.

Though not helpful to Emily right now.

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men in skirts.

And, I could do the research for you.

Hmm... Research.

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What about a learning environment outside the classroom?

Sure, sure, that would be fine... but I can't think of any of those, either.

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but I can't think of any of those, either.

A class that moved outside?

When you've had to learn something on your own? At home? At the library?

Learning to drive?

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I mean, there are classes I enjoyed, but it looks like the main thing that made those particularly effective was the subject matter. Looking at the other aspects of the "environment"... they have rather little in common.

For me, the most compelling environments were one where the instructor and the subject matter meshed well, just made sense together. There were moments that changed everything for me when that happened and the subject mattered more to me at the end than at the beginning.

But there were others when it was obviously just the right person in the front of the room -- and it wasn't going to change my life, but it was going to change the way I looked at the subject from then on...

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dcp, I don't mean I can't think of other environments, just that I can't think of particularly effective ones. Heh -- learning to drive was particularly ineffective.

I'd just like to share a couple of anecdotes from tonight, if I may. First off, we did a little "inquiry" project in groups of four (in my class on secondary curriculum design). Given two paper cups (one cut up, one not), two marbles of different sizes, a balloon, a measuring tape, and a stopwatch, we were to conduct inquiries into how fast things fell. Everyone in my group was convinced that the large marble should fall fastest of all. Because, you know, it's heaviest. (To be fair, this is probably one of those subject-area-bias things -- I'm not great with science, but I consider it pretty important to remember the really big science concepts since I'm in a related field; if I were a Spanish teacher, I might not be so concerned with it.)

Later, we were grouped by subject area and asked to come up with some of the "enduring understandings" for our subjects. We had some trouble with the concept of "enduring understanding" in my group of proto-math teachers, but we were also delayed by the need for two of us to explain the definition of pi to the other three people in my group.

(ETA: Actually, they sort of knew the definition -- if the definition is "three point one four blah blah blah." They had no idea what it meant. Talk about your enduring understandings!)

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