Third Day: Child Abuse

Since it was my third time taking a child abuse reporting course, there wasn't much content in today's class that I haven't seen.  However, it never ceases to surprise me how knowing the laws and signs and whatnot doesn't make many situations easier to determine whether there is an issue of child abuse or not. I plan to always err on the side of caution, but it's interesting how one case, of say not getting a child needed prescription glasses, can be completely different from another due to context, history, and even due to lens of observation. I know as a teacher I will always have support of my fellow teachers and administration to figure out what to make of situations, but from my experience I know it is still unnerving to always need to be watching for signs of child abuse regardless of support systems.

Second Day: Intro to Lesson Plans

In class today I learned about important things to think about and record when creating a lesson plan. One included section was academic language required for the lesson, and this was something I hadn't ever considered when thinking about lesson planning. It makes quite a bit of sense to draw attention to the terms and language that the students will be using during the lesson so that the teacher doesn't forget to emphasize new vocabulary and its meaning. Furthermore, it also draws reflection on whether there is fairly vocabulary being used that students may or may not have been exposed to yet in their lives. What an interesting thing to consider.

First Day: Initial Thoughts

We started out our class today creating a flowchart of important topics of health education. As our group started off, we initially thought of each topic and relationship linearly. We came to figure out fairly quickly that every topic and subtopic within health education is connected in an all encompassing way rather than branching linearly like we had initially thought to represent them. Physical Health cannot be completely separated from Emotional Health because things like physical exercise affects endorphin levels which directly affect ones happiness and energy levels for future exercise. One facet of health education cannot be separated without also talking about connections or effects each facet has on another. I think this will be an important idea to keep in mind for teaching topics in health.