Hello!

Hi, everyone! My name is Megan McKinley and I am a English Education major. I like to hike, have the dog walk me, read, drink tea, and occasionally interact with friends. I work in the dorms, where all I do is say hi and find ways to entertain myself at 4 in the morning. I was raised in a small town in Mendocino County and had extremely slow internet/no cable, so I turned to books as entertainment. Thus, I fell in love with reading and I was crazy enough to pick a major off that basis. Then I found out I love teaching — especially the younger adolescents and kids– and it’s all sunshine and rainbows now. Since I read so much, there isn’t really anything else I did so my story is pretty short. I want my area of study to be in Language and Literacy just because I found the topics to be fascinating and super fun. This class is a requirement for Language and Literacy so here I am!

In the Forward to Situated Learning I came across a passage that gave me a light bulb kind of moment:

“…a training program that consists of instructional settings separated from actual performance would tend to split the learner’s ability to manage the learning situation apart from his ability to perform the skill. Given a sufficient disjunction between the skill being taught and the actual performance situation, one could imagine an actor who becomes expert as a learner — that is, becomes a master at managing the learning situation — but who never actually learns the performance.”

From page 21

So basically, if we only educate skills by talking or reviewing the steps in hypothetical situations students will know the steps but not be able to perform said skill. They learn to pass the test, talk about a skill and make it sound like they know what they’re doing, however when the time comes to do such skill they will not be able to do it the right way or effectively. Teaching this way can be absolutely catastrophic if all we have are people who can talk about how to do things but not actually do it. I believe in most areas people are life long learners and learn as they go if they don’t have experience. It would be better if we would give them practice at the start of their training, but hopefully most of these people can adapt in certain fields. There are more important skills that we need people to be confident and experienced with, like healthcare or firefighting. You wouldn’t want a doctor who could tell you all about heart surgery and never had experience practicing on any animal heart or virtual program.

I always knew that I learned actual skills best if I was made to do them over and over, but for some reason this passage jumped at me. I realized that teachers can drill a systematic way of doing something into students, but most students will not be an expert at this skill until they are allowed to practice performing it. They may become perfect reciters of information, but fail when it comes to putting that information to use in a real setting. I immediately thought of CPR/first aid classes I’ve done where you spend a few hours reading about how to give chest compressions, wrap a wound or give rescue breaths, however I’ve never been able to really know how to do those actions the right way until I’ve been shown it in person and tried it out on a dummy/volunteer several times. And it takes me a bit more practice to be confident in my performance of those skills. This leads me to think of other classes where I am learning all sorts of skills, theories and what-if situations. In some of these classes I am getting no hands-on experience which may really hinder my chances at performing these skills as a teacher.

I also really loved the Wenger Intro’s idea that we are all constantly learning together. I definitely think learning is much more effective if we do it while interacting with others in our communities of practice.