Pruning
With past experiences that the students bring in the class room, either from a prior employment or even past schooling the students apply what they can to be successful.
Michael,
Good approach to bringing your adult students into the classroom setting in a way that is supportive and comfortable. You are also enabling them to benefit from their previous experiences whatever they may have been and giving them opportunities to create futures for themselves.
Gary
Gary Meers, Ed.D.
I do the same thing - my students, expecially now that the military is thinning out and many vets are coming to our classrooms, they tell of their many experiences, many are not positive and involve losses. I always ask what they learned from their experience good or bad. It seems we learn quite a lot from bad experiences. When was the last time you touched a hot stove?
I do teach in a career oriented college and activities such as Career Fairs and resume writing and Career Service Workshops in the college that I teach at.
Tamara,
You make a very good point. When they have had negative experiences we need to show them how they can be successful in our courses if they are willing to put forth the effort. With early success they will start to reshape their attitude toward school and begin to see that they in fact can complete their program successfully.
Gary
Dr. Gary Meers
Not always will the student bring in their positve experiences, so it should be our responses to transform any negative memories into learning tools to provide a successful career.
Yes, that's true. I definitely try to help the students prune the information as I'm delivering it, by highlighting the most useful and important info and especially by relating it to work in the field.
Pruning can be considered a system of efficiency in which learners seeks to understand the information as quickly as possible will limited stress level. It is a good system to incorporate strategies of pruning in the delivery method.
