The school's behaviorist approach was also evident during formal instruction and before meals. Before every meal, the students must always participate in giving thanks for their food by reciting a chant in unison that goes something like "this food sure smells good, I bet it's delicious, I am so thankful for my dad and mom". The repetition of this chant serves as a way to reinforce the idea that the students should be thankful for their parents and whatever their parents were able to give them as a meal.
When it comes to formal instruction their approach is very behaviorist and completely different from the approach taken by St.Timothy. In Dong-feng the students are given specific instructions on how to work with the wooden blocks and must set up the materials in a certain way before they are even allowed to start. Once they start building their wooden structures, they must follow the guidelines, and will not be given any positive reinforcement if they deviate from them by doing something different or creative. Instead of rewarding creativity like the staff in St.Timothy, the staff at Dong-feng seems to only care about the students' ability to follow directions.
When it comes to educating and teaching students with cultural and linguistic diversity, one must always keep the lessons interesting and original. As a future teacher, my area of expertise will most probably be math. My lessons will contain as many visual components as possible and as much student participation as the lesson allows. I will motivate the students to take risks by making a constructivism-behaviorism-constructivism sandwich. The students will be given a task to complete, which they don't yet have the skills for. During this time the students will be encouraged to brainstorm ideas on how the task might be completed; both right and wrong approaches will be celebrated as achievements, the important thing is that they are willing to try new things. Once the brainstorming period is done, I will instruct them on how the task is most commonly completed. The students will then be given some time to practice following the specific steps that allow them to complete the task. After they seem confident enough using these steps, they will be given the freedom to experiment with other approaches that they might have thought of after being taught the steps. They will be encouraged to use any methods that make the task easier for them as long as it gets them to the right answer. They will also be told that it is perfectly fine to use the steps taught by the teacher, but that the approach might not be the only or easiest one.
To conclude, I believe that in education neither constructivism nor behaviorism have all the answers. As a teacher, one must find a midpoint, a way to combine the best aspects of the two in order to provide the best learning environment and results. It is my opinion that St.Timothy was the better school among the three when it came to formal instruction and correcting misbehavior. I also find it worth mentioning that both Komatsudani's staff's lack of action disciplining the students and Dong-feng's bathroom routine were somewhat disconcerting.
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