Educating and Tryptophan

As the wonderful holiday of Thanksgiving has come and gone, I could not help but think about how some of the "traditions" of this holiday related to my teaching world.

Thanksgiving is a holiday where families and friends get together, share laughs, and eat way to much food! I feel as if my classroom shares some similarities with this scenario, especially when I am using lecture format. My students get together in my classroom, share ideas, and often listen to me use lecture format to overfill them with information (food) they will need. I believe that lecturing is still an awesome way to teach students, but I also think that mixing it up once in a while is an even better way to reach them. Some of the methods I am going to utilize this year, along with lecture are as follows: Photostory 3, Digital Storytelling, Skyping in other educators (like Ryan Lollgen and Steven Schels just did this past week), blogging, and using a wiki page. I am hoping using some of these tools will add more to a students "learning plate". It gives them many different ways to learn the curricula I am trying to relay, and it can really help multi-intelligence learners. It also keeps me on my toes, which makes my material more interesting.

After eating all day on Thanksgiving, I laid on my couch in a "tryptophan food coma". It made me think that if I were to lecture in class the majority of time it would create the same "coma affect" for my students. That head-bobbing, drowsy, day-dreaming look that I feel after eating to much turkey is the same look I see on many of my students faces as I teach them via lecture. This year my goal as an educator is to bring in some alternative teaching options, and try to get my students more involved in the learning process.