Classroom Confidential -- Chapter 1

In Classroom Confidential, Schmidt refers to multiple intelligences. What intelligences do you hope to use in your teaching and why?

In my classroom and teaching, I hope to use all nine of Gardner's intelligences. While this would be difficult, or impossible, to do in each lesson, I would strive to use as many as possible, or just keep switching off so that each learning style and intelligence is being taught in order to reach more students. I know that all students learn differently, so my goal is then to teach in such a way as to help students learn in ways that they respond best. More importantly, I would find ways to promote students to use their areas of intelligence in the classroom so they can build on their strengths and apply what they're learning to their lives. This would help them better retain the information.

Schmidt asserts that "activity without cognition is just a way to keep kids from smacking each other...Idle hands may be the devil's workshop, but clueless hands aren't much better...before you switch on the hands, you must ease the brain into gear and keep it running" (p. 15). Are there ways you will use Schmidt's "full brain learning"? Explain.

I really like the way in which Schmidt describes this. Allowing students to move around and engage actively without effectively connecting the movement to any type of skill or information is unfortunately futile. Students need to be able to make connections -- from what they know to new information especially. I will definitely be using this philosophy in my own classroom.

I believe that it is important for students to understand why they engage in activities when they are learning; otherwise, there is little learning actually taking place. I will try to be extremely aware of how I'm teaching in order to help students make connections. This might mean that I review thoroughly any material covered the previous day in order to illustrate to students how the information relates to what was learned. Or, this might take the form of carefully planned transitions. Regardless of how I enact this process, students need to know that the material they're learning is relevant to their lives.