Jeff Sandrock

February 2016

Thoughts on Teaching Standard #1: Student Development

Effective teachers understand that student development is a blending of cognitive maturation, social and
interpersonal discovery, emotional exploration, and physical growth and development. At the same time, these
25-cent words and big-picture concepts are just the beginning of understanding students, not the end!
Imagine someone hands you a lemon, a fruit you have never tastedhow would you know what it tastes
like before taking that first juicy bite? Your friend may attempt to tell you what it will be like in several ways,
but you cannot know until you experience it for yourself. A lemon is like other citrus fruits, but it is unique in
flavor as well among those fruits. Understanding students through all these lenses (cognitive, linguistic, social,
emotional, and physical) is much the same. The concept is the doorway to beginning to understand them. Each
is unique and talented according to their individual character, guiding influences, and personal growth.
My Growth and Experience
At first, I aimed highand missed. My teaching approach was extremely linear in its delivery and with
student interaction. I started off student teaching blending together two different aspects: my teaching styles
stemmed mainly from my geoscience professors styles, and from my graduate school professors, I tried to
adopt the activities and student interaction they exemplified. My Salt Lake Community College professors
renewed my love and enthusiasm for science, and my Westminster College professors showed me how to value
each individual by picking up their names quickly, learning from them their backgrounds and what makes them
tick. I also tried roaming the classroom constantly and embracing humanitys diversity, openly and proudly.
I thought I had it down, and was ready to perform at the level of career teachers. I discovered I still had
a lot to learn. Not all students picked up my enthusiasm. Wait, what? How can you not love science as much
as I want you to? I needed to put my science ego in check and discover for myself their interests and attitude
towards science. The product I used, a learning styles and interests survey was very revealing! Cognitively
and socially, students are not all to be reached with a single approach or set of teaching skills, no matter how
noble or innovative. Some students embrace the board work with its visuals and accompanying lecture. Others

want to dive into the textbook and at their own pace, work things out for themselves. I have had to balance that
diverse group of cognitive needs with my own limited pre-conceived notions of what effective teaching is.
To begin my student teaching, I arrived on the front doorstep of the Academy for Mathematics,
Engineering, and Sciences (AMES) school thinking of students mainly in terms of social groups. As we
observed in the epic film The Breakfast Club, I had fallen right into the trap we were warned not to... You see
us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. I was blinded by my own
expectations. Enthusiastic, but blind. Prior to this teaching program, I knew that every student employs a blend
of learning styles, which I would attempt to reach using multiple teaching styles but that is only the
beginning of appreciating these fabulous human beings we call high school students. In the few short weeks
since that innocent over-the-threshold moment, I have found each student to be a product of their upbringing
and circumstance, a cognitive and social work in progress, a profoundly brilliant yet frustratingly nave blend of
angst, reaction, and intuition. Each student is at a different level of emotional and physical maturity, and often
an outward appearance belies the innocence and hope within. Guarded or flamboyant, introverted or
extroverted, students emotional accessibility is just one of many doors to reaching them as an educator and I
make it my mission to reach them. They are both brilliant and ignorant, and my intent is to show them the
doorway to less ignorance.
In small ways, I have improved my attitude, and remedied some of my own shortcomings. I share my
pearls of wisdom a little less, and instead relate experiences that taught me something important letting
students draw their own conclusions. I write on the board for visual learners instead of just verbally spelling out
important facts, names, and events. My teacher-student interaction improves every time I take a ribbing for
Denver defeating my beloved Patriots, and my students have taken on the responsibility of remedying my DJ
playlist since the last dance, the January Black & White.
Ultimately, I find that listening to them is far more important than ensuring they are listening to me.
They listen to each other and those teachers they trust. They follow the old adage, they dont care how much I
know until they know how much I care. My mission: Care about them and their successes.