Final Project

In my interpretation from November 4, I noted that we discussed the different persona's of a student in comparison to how they enjoyed working in different environments (open vs. directed).  In a meeting with my Praxis advisors, we came upon an idea: is there a way to facilitate a way to teach students how to transfer into another type of learning environment?  Is there a way to promote the student's abilities to being able to shift to other learning environments without going through a struggle of identity?  On a personal level, I came from a very directed public school environment that didn't have any open inquiry.  Coming to Bryn Mawr and engaging in discussion pushed my limits and challenged me to look at problems, and classes, in a much different light.  I, however, came upon this when I was 19 years old; how do younger students, from elementary through high school, deal with this?  Is there a way to educate teachers so that the teachers can be aware of this need to make environments transferrable for students?  

I'm not sure if there is any one way for a teacher to physically 'teach' a student how to go from an open environment to a more directed one, or vice versa, but I believe there is a lot of value in actually considering that the student needs to self-check his or herself when moving from environment to environment.  I believe that some teachers do genuinely realize this--for example, 

We came to discuss the different student persona's in another way: some genuinely enjoyed working in an open-ended environment, being okay with broad concepts and thinking globally; others preferred more structured environments where, as we said, there was a system that they could define and learn to work.  Before this past year, I would've easily classified my life into the second category: working the system.  I knew exactly what I wanted and preferred to know the exact answers to questions without having to think outside the box.  I preferred textbooks and memorization tests.  Now, I find, I'm enjoying broader concepts and discussions.  I'm choosing classes based on content and my level of interest, not on level of easiness or ability to obtain a decent grade in the course.  It's definitely been a growing process, and I'm nearly 20 years old.  I can imagine the difficulty that some students may have when processing this information in a broad setting, when they have come from a school or from a mentality that is more focused on correct answers.  While neither is wrong, I find that a happy medium between the two is best suiting my own lifestyle and the growth process is one definitely worth doing.