Role Playing

At first I was not excited about the idea of role playing, but as we started to get into the roles, it became a very interesting and legitimate way for me to learn about No Child Left Behind. If it would have been a lecture instead of role playing, I feel like I would have learned the facts and statistics about the material, which is not necessarily a bad thing, it's just different than what we learned through role playing. We learned the proceedings and how different parties would feel about the legislation first hand. I'm not sure if emotion is necessary in the learning process. In this situation, I think it helped our understanding, but if we were in the lecture setting instead, emotion may not have been as big of a factor. There was definitely bias in who the administrators were addressing. The teachers and the parents of the lower achieving students were definitely not valued in the way that the parents of the higher achieving students and the business owners were. Overall, I think the role playing experience was a legitimate way to learn about No Child Left Behind.

Passion

During my senior year of high school, I decided to take AP Statistics instead of AP Calculus because math wasn't my thing. The teacher was wonderful. He loved math so much that he made me excited about it too. That turned out to be my favorite class. At the end of the year, I even took the AP test and passed. Without his passion for the subject, I never would have succeeded the way I did. I can also recall a time where the teacher lacked enthusiasm. The choir teacher was one of the worst teachers I ever had. I love to sing, but I hated going to choir every day. She didn't take our music seriously, nor did she take any of us seriously. In fact, she was so lazy she had me teach the class at least once a week. That was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life, and thanks to her, I didn't take music seriously until I got to Luther.