Stephen Kirk

I love to exercise and it always helps me deal with work and life stress. I do my exercise at a gym early in the morning to eliminate the day getting in the way of my exercise. I start at 5:30 am so there is little else to get in the way of my completing an exercise program. This also helps me to get to sleep at night.

Stress is a natural aspect of life without it we would be less than productive. However, sometimes I find myself stressing out over getting everything done and doing it well. Come to think of it I have been stressed since notification that I needed to complete some Maxxknoweledge units. Trying to fing the quiet time to do so with teaching, family, grading and being a doctoral student is hard. Now here I am and soon I will cross this off the list......

I enjoy grading because students often teach me about new aspects of the subject. I realize that it is time consuming but I try and give assignments that will result in good solid reserach and as a result the task becomes a learning experience as well as part of my job.

I love to use either outlook, if I am at my desk or a simple pocket size notebook if I am away. when I return to the office I add my tasks to Outlook. These tasks are rank ordered each day and the completed ones are left (strike through) to show what I have completed, good feeling!

Use-ability is a word I created to define content information that is set in a context that the students find useable. Information if you will that creates utility for them in some fashion. For example, telling students that they need a flash drive for a class is not as useable as showing them how to set their flash drive file system to create a useable archive of everything they need, created and delivered in all their classes.

I really try to make the first class meeting, live or archived a jovial one. That is not to say that there is not a sense of conviction to the subject matter and my dedication to their learning. However, I think first classes are a delicate time when first impressions can mean the difference between persistence and lethargy.

I often have students tell me that they cannot find the term “Team intervention strategies” (just an example) in the book. They tell me that they have searched the glossary and the TOC. My response it that often the term is verbatim but the description is there if you read and comprehend the books content. I believe that many of our students have had primary educators spoon feed questions and matching answers and therefore it is our job to assure students achieve interpretative skills in there readings.

Helping students understand how to research properly to support (or diminish) their positions is an essential aspect of content learning. Often research may lead students to avenues that only support but not challenge their hypothesis, this is a bad practice.