Week Four-Curtis-Morality: Is there a Mars/Venus Divide?

    The readings for this week included two chapters from the Lifesmart textbook.  Chapters 6 and 7 dealt with childhood development during the Early and Middle Childhood years.  These periods, lasting roughly from ages 2-6 and 5-12, see children undergoing dramatic changes, both physical and mental.  One area of particular importance is moral development of children.  During the Middle Childhood years, children begin to develop their own moral views as well as their understanding of why they should not harm others.  Although Piaget felt this development was due to the cognitive development of the children, he observed how children responded to rules.  His view were later expanded and developed into two varying theories.
   The first theory was developed by Lawrence Kohlberg, who felt that children must overcome their ego centrism before they could begin to make moral judgments.  Carol Gilligan, on the other hand, felt that this theory focused too extensively on male children for evidence.  She, then, developed a theory which focused more on girls and women, called the Ethics of Care.  In this view, morality is developed as a result of relationships with others, and morality is determined by how we affect others through our actions.
    This justice vs. care dichotomy of morality is drawn along lines of sex, it seems, which may explain how children develop their moral views, but it doesn't take up the question of moral judgments.  I believe that understanding this difference in development, however, is a useful tool for teaching young children, as it can give teachers an understanding of what strategies will work best in teaching students right from wrong.  It can also be useful for developing classroom rules which can be understood and appreciated by both boys and girls.

Week Three-Curtis-The Circle of Life.

        This week I was responsible for reading three chapters from my Lifesmart textbook for class.  Chapters 3-5 dealt with the early years of life development: pregnancy, birth, and infancy.  All of these areas which are covered are examined through the lens of psychological health and development.  For example, the section dealing with birth offers a significant amount of information regarding postpartum depression.  While much of the information presented is quite basic, the text seeks to go beyond merely explaining the biological facts of birth and development, and instead attempts to see how psychological development is also carried out during early childhood.  Another such example of this psychological centered view is how premature babies are discussed.  Very little time is spent looking at the physical consequences of premature birth, but a great deal of time is spent focusing on how premature babies can lack much of the human contact which is necessary for their psychological well-being.
        I didn't expect to find these chapters as intriguing as the previous ones, but I found myself wondering how things such as premature birth can have ripple effects on development.  I wondered if perhaps a lack of physical contact many premature babies can suffer can carry lifelong consequences. Perhaps this lack of contact at an early age may lead children to develop an inability to connect with others or a lack of trust.  I was just remind of how events long since past can still effect young people and how this can effect the learning environment in the classroom.  I realized that even if I believe I know my students well, there may be past events which still impact their lives, whether they are aware of them or not.  Part of my duty as a teacher is to be aware that anything may be possible and to recognize that everyone has a different story.  My job is to teach all my students regardless of what past events still impact them today.

Week Two-Curtis-Man, the Social Creature

      In the reading for this week, I read about the different theories of development: Psychoanalytic Theories, Cognitive Theories, Behavioral Theories, an overview of the Bioecological Model, and Developmental Theories.  The varying theories were listed according to their creation and inception by their founders, ending with Developmental Theories.  There is far to much to mention in such a short post, but I would like to focus in on the Psychoanalytic theory of Erik Erikson.  Erikson  studied a variety of cultures and believed that all people go through eight stages of development, each marked by a life crisis which must be passed so that every individual can pass onto the next stage.  Each stage is marked also by a specific strength which allows individuals to pass onto the following stage.
     I found that this theory made a lot of sense to me, as it did also to many others.  I liked that it covered the entire age of human development, unlike Freud's theory which really ceased to develop past puberty.  I think that understanding this theory of development will make me a more competent teacher.  For example, in the middle childhood stage, individuals are suffering a crisis regarding success in learning skills.  With this in mind, if I decided to teach a 6th grade class, I could have a baseline for examining possible motivations shared by my students.  If, however, I was teaching a 10th grade class, I'd know that that crisis my students were likely facing was the search for their own identity.  With this in mind, I could provide guidance beyond merely grades and aid my students as they begin to discover their own identities, possibly as they look into colleges or future professions.  Whatever their choices, I believe that having an understanding of all the theories covered in the chapter will enable me to make more informed decisions in guiding and teaching my students.

Week One-Curtis-Living Life on the Edge...of the Strip

         When I first began watching the video about the Mobius Strip, I was unsure of what I would see.  As I watched the video, I realized that the position Parker J. Palmer was promoting was one I had not seriously considered before.  According to Palmer, when we are young, our inner and outer selves, are exactly the same.  Who the world sees is the very same person we are on the inside.  Yet as we age, we begin to realize that always showing our inner selves all the time can lead to problems with other people.  So, we develop an outer self who we present to those around us, who is more socially acceptable.  As we age and are forced to pursue success, our outer self becomes more and more disconnected from our inner self--or worse, our inner self begins to change and become more like our outer self. He uses the example of a strip of paper rolled into a circle.  The two sides are separate and distinct, and have no interaction with one another.  Moreover, a person who does this is more prone to shut out people who are not exactly in accord with them.  The Mobius Strip is an alternative method of this circle, which connects the two sides, so that there is no clear inner or outer side--there is only the entire strip.  The means that the whole person is involved and constantly changing, the inner self influencing the outer self and vice versa.  This influence ensures that there is no disconnection between the inner self and outer self, and the person becomes like they were as a child...a person who is not compartmentalized. 
          I had never seriously considered such a position as the Mobius Strip presentation, nor did I believe that such a point of view was relevant to teaching.  I must admit, however, that ever since I viewed the video, I began to examine my own life as well as the lives of others to see if this example was accurate.  I realized that until I began implementing this model in my own life (though I did not know of it at the time), I struggled to separate between my outer self (my mask, so to speak) and my inner self, the part of me I thought of as 'the real me.'  As I realized that this understanding of self actually impacted my own life in the past, I began to think about how I could use this to better understand my future students.  I am not entirely sure how to do so, but I know that I will be examining my students closely, striving to pass through the outer self and to meet the inner self of each of my students.