New Years the New Thanksgiving

Over the Thanksgiving holidays Jeremy and I were talking about Thanksgiving. I like the holiday, especially the history behind it but sometimes I think the way we celebrate it is a little silly.... But then again food isn't really my thing.Anyway I was just talking about how it seems to me from my uneducated point of view, that Thanksgiving was originally not just being grateful in general but being grateful for the outcomes that your own labor and the hand of providence brought about... In other words being grateful for the harvest because of the work that you put in and for what you were able to reap from it. I hope that made some sort of sense... anyway, I was trying to describe this and I was also mourning a little bit that this isn't really how we think of Thanksgiving anymore mostly because we no longer are farmers, when Jeremy said "isn't that what New Years is for?"
So, this New Years, I hope you are able not just to set some new goals but also be grateful for the things that you have accomplished in partnership with God.

This is what I accomplished.

Christmas: A time of Traditions

We set up a Christmas tree this week. It was really fun to see how it all came together.
I really wanted to have a live tree, which we got and smells awesome. It is set in my parents Christmas tree stand, with their star on the top. Jeremy claimed the right to wind the lights on. So he wound some colored lights that his parents had around it. We both prefer colored lights on Christmas trees. I also put my parents bubble lights on our tree, a tradition from my great grandma. Then we both hung our childhood ornaments as well as a few new ones on the tree. At the foot of our tree is a beautiful Christmas tree skirt that my sister made.

I go into all these details because I thought it was so fun how we were able to combine old traditions with a mix of some new ones, that might be our own someday.
That is one cool thing about Christmas, not only is it about connecting and reconnecting with friends and family around us but also with those that have gone before.

Facilitating Lifelong Learning

My dad always says that it doesn’t matter what you don’t know if you know how to learn. Knowing how to learn is a skill that is beneficial throughout life. Educators can increase students’ desire to be life-long learners by creating an environment of curiosity and facilitating involved learning.

The teaching environment is vital for student engagement. As a teacher’s assistant for various professors and classes, students approached me most frequently when there was ambiguity abut assignments. A clear syllabus or online portal with policies, assignments, dates, and rubrics decreases stress for students so that they can focus on learning and not on guessing what the instructor requires of them. In addition, instructor feedback on important papers and tests transforms grades into a learning experience rather than a decree of fate. Organization and feedback enhance the learning environment, but more can be done as well.

Growing up, my home was a learning environment. My mom would look up everything from William Henry Harrison to the Linnaean system in her encyclopedia set, while I begged her not to tell me what she discovered because I didn’t need to know for my homework. Now her spirit of curiosity has rubbed off on me and I recognize that questions from students and self can be the most impelling motivators. A classroom environment based on organization, feedback and curiosity sets the stage for long-term learning.

Life-long learning is encouraged through active teaching which requires students to understand reliable sources, make connections, and explore. As an undergraduate one of my professors assigned a text book that he had written. This made me realize that real researchers are not so distant as they may seem. When instructors assign readings and give lectures not only based on textbooks but also peer reviewed literature it builds students’ confidence in learning from the source, helps them understand what a reliable source is, and gives them an understand of how real research happens. When instructors encourage discussion and other projects that guides students to make connections it helps students remember and apply what they learn. Sometimes when giving tours of paleontology museums I compare extinct animals to Pokémon and suddenly the fossils come to life. Such connections, whether made by the instructor or by students, in groups or individually leads to increased engagement with the material and opportunities for exploration. In my high school physics class, we dropped pumpkins off the school roof to calculate that velocity equals distance over time. This personal experience with equations made the principles understandable. When students are able to explore for themselves, they are more likely to internalize the subject matter. When instructors provide original sources, and opportunities to make connections and explore it leads to active learning.

Learning is enhanced when instructors create an environment of stability and curiosity and then facilitate interactions with the material that is based on original sources, and students’ own application. This type of education can lead to life-long learning, so that when students confront the unknown, they have confidence in their own ability to learn.