In looking at the characteristics of the demographics related to what background my students have I found this from the email sent out to us last week by the director of Student Retention;
- Total enrollment for the college for Spring 2014 semester is 3,039 with 1,544 being full time students
- Demographics include; White students: 56.1%, Black students:13.4%, Hispanic students: 24.3%
- Cities Included but not limited to are; Mount Pleasant: 33.8%, Pittsburg: 32.0%, Lone Star: 42%, Ore City: 34%
- Age of students; 18-21: 44.9%, 22-24: 11.8%
- College level of Parents: Father Mother
- Did not finish HS: 12.5% 10.4%
- Graduated HS: 28.1% 21.4%
- Some college: 17.4% 23.6%
- BA or Higher 11% 16%
- Students may feel that they don't have prior knowledge related to the subject area.
- There is several Hispanics in my 3 classes, out of the total students in all 3 classes (70 total students) 23 are Hispanic. Many of them have been ELL in their school learning and may feel inferior as a result. I have to find a way to meet the ELL's learning needs more than I am doing now. I notice when we do group work in one class in particular, the 5 Hispanic girls all group together.
- Some of the attitudes I have encountered have been that the students do not like working with other students, they would rather do it alone. Yet, I feel collaborative learning is an essential skill that the 21st century learner must be able to do.
- Most are very motivated, they are paying for their education and want to be there. But there are some that do not want to be there, therefore their motivation is lacking. I have to find a way to target these students and make the engagement with them in class a valid part of what their future will be about. Have them see the relevance in what we do on a daily basis.
- Models that influence the selection of instruction always involve me as the teaching evaluating what the outcome of the lesson will be and what we need to do to get the content meaning transferred to them as learners. I do this by having the students analyze many different levels of materials such as; current events, newspaper articles, songs & movies and how their content may be relevant to what the lesson is, and the upmost skill I look for in my planning is that I am challenging the students to think on a critical level, that the answer is something they must dig for and come up with their own evaluation of what we are looking at.
- “It could well be that faculty members of the twenty-first century college or university will find it necessary to set aside their roles as teachers and instead become designers of learning experiences, processes, and environments” (Duderstadt, 1999). The role of the college professor is changing. While large lecture halls and bell curves have generally characterized higher education, according to Fink (2004) the past twenty years have seen an increase in active learning and cooperative learning based pedagogies in colleges across the country."
- "Students in cooperative and collaborative learning classes recognize that learning how to work with others will be extremely advantageous to their careers. Yet, according to Kohn (1986), such cooperation is contrary to the addictive socialized behavior ofcompetition in the United States."
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