Blog #3

As a reader, when I think of the term multimodal, I think about something being greater than one dimensional.  I think about how life itself is in some way like this because there are so many different aspects within life that overlap and need a healthy balance, that come together to form the life you are living.  Some of these aspects include work, family, physical health, social life, etc.  I also noticed this idea within my book of choice.  The one author was talking about how she was so overwhelmed and ended up quitting her job as a teacher during the school year in March.  However, she continues to explain when and why she realized leaving her profession was a big mistake and then discusses what changes she had to make to make sure she loved the job she felt she was meant to do.  She writes, “Teaching could no longer be my entire identity.  Instead, teaching need to be just a part of me… I knew that if I wanted to continue on this teaching journey and still be happy, still have time for my family, and still be able to hang out with my friends on the weekend – actually have a little life and not let being a teacher consume my entire identity – I needed to change.”  This quote helps demonstrate that the most beneficial and positive outcomes happen when multiple different things come together to create the final outcome.  It is no good having one aspect dominate all the others.  When that happens, it can be too overwhelming, and the end result suffers as a result.  The same applies with education and the material given to students.  There needs to be a variety of material given to the students to help gain their interest and give them multiple different ways to learn about and build upon the content.

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the term multimodal makes me think of something being more than one dimensional.  From a preservice teacher frame of mind this indicates that students should have a variety of different learning opportunities given to them.  This could be a field trip, movie/film, book, picture, map, etc.  When this happens, students have the opportunity to learn in a variety of different ways.  What may work well for one student might not work as well for another but providing these different learning opportunities helps ensure each students gains knowledge in whichever way works best for them.  In the book, when talking about regaining excitement for teaching the authors write, “The possibility it real.  It is attainable.  And this book – our strategies, or approach to planning – will get you there.”  The same would apply to students and what they are learning.  Oftentimes, students feel they are at a similar loss within their education as teachers feel they are at within their jobs.  However, just as they say teachers can rediscover their love for their job, students can also find the love and desire for learning, but this can only be done when everyone is given the right tools.  Just as this book will give their readers different strategies, teachers need to give their students multiple different sources to learn from.  Both of these have to be given with the assumption that different things have different effects on people, but that is one reason why providing more than one source to learn from is beneficial.  These multiple strategies or approaches help to gain interest and understanding.  As seen with the Stafford piece, the scaffolding methods that can be used within this concept ensure that each of the learning pieces has its own purpose in completing the end goal, just has the strategies to be given in my chosen book are given with the intent to helping their readers become better teachers.  However, if one of these does not have the intended impact, there are other sources to rely on to help continue to build this knowledge and understanding.