Group Discussion

Our discussion group met and talked about the reading. We talked about positive and negative reinforcement, which we all had studied in general psychology, but we were able to apply more effectively in the environment of a classroom. We all had observed positive and negative reinforcement over j-term and talked about our teachers different teaching styles.
We talked about our personal encounters with punishment, specifically corporal punishment. We were all surprised that Canada and the U.S. were the two highest ranking countries who agreed corporal punishment was acceptable to use. Also, we talked about how surprising it was that corporal punishment was still legal for parents to use on their children.
We talked about the teacher panel that came and spoke last week. We all agreed that we wished the panel would have been broader, because we are all secondary education majors and most of us plan to teach in a significantly larger school than they taught at. We talked about cell phones being problematic and how different teachers handled this topic, and how we think we would approach students having cell phones. We talked a little bit about personal laptops and came to the conclusion that we thought laptops were unnecessary, especially at that age. We also came up with a couple possible solutions to the problem of laptops in schools, like blocking websites such as face book, or only allowing the students to use the computer during nonschool hours.