Thank you for sharing your own experience with us, and your post is impressive, especially the idea of getting exposure to difference early. It is kind of hard for current children, because children with disability are recommended to go to special schools, thus they are separated. I agree with you that if children are exposed to children who has a disability from an early on age, they will learn more about how to better communicate without hurting them.
I think of Krystalyn’s syllabus on Health Communication, and if this course works out, it will be really helpful for students who want to develop a career in health communication to decrease the stigmatization and provide better services.

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Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I agree with you that being your comfortable self is important for teachers. It also shows that the teacher is confident in teaching, and that will helps the teacher perform better. Another reason that some teachers hide their real personality and pretend to be someone is that they want to be better teachers that are widely accepted, like most students prefer humorous instructors rather than straight faces, so the teachers try to make jokes in class.

Hi Dr. Nelson,
Thank you for your interest in the book. The translation in your link is great, but I would recommend to search for the translation by Hongming Gu, who is a renowned scholar of Confucius and interpreter of China.

Your project “concrete canoe” attracts me in the first place! The imagination killing professors must question the ideas as “who is going pay for a concrete canoe?” or “Too many material out there are way better than concrete for building a canoe, and why are we going to waste our time trying to build a concrete canoe?” . But building a plastic or wooden canoe is not as fun as, not as challenging as, and not as attracting as building a concrete canoe. Education is not realistic or practical all the time. We accept innovative ideas, crazy inspiration or even failure to learn and to improve. Hope you can create an attractive learning project in the futuer.

Thank you for your thoughts. I shared the same torturing in class when I counted the minutes, similar to insisting the last steps in a marathon. I like your point on story-telling about a good lecture, and I hate to take notes in class. Some hand writings are very difficult to recognize, and I write slowly so normally I fall behind if I take notes. Sharing the slides before class is a better way to help students like me. We can print out the slides, go thought it before the class, and take the important notes on the slides which is much less than without the slides.

Thank you for bringing up the question that whether some level of participation is enough to pass the course. I was thinking of whether it is appropriate to evaluate the students’ performance partly due to their presence in the classroom. Some professors do that, because they want to encourage the students to interact in the physical classroom, or maybe they want to force their students to show up in their badly-taught class. Personally, I like to go to class, but I sometimes do feel it is a waste of my time to go to a certain class when the teaching is not very customized to me or it is easier to learn by reading or online resources rather than lecturing.

Your sharing reminds me of the precious and practical skills I gained from summer camps, too. They did not turn out to have a direct or quick results, like I can apply what I learned from the lecture or textbook into the exam and get a good grades, but they are benefiting my whole life. I also think of the impressed scenario at the departmental orientation on my first day of graduate school. Our department head asked us who would like to join a game with him. It was unexpected silent among us, which was quite disappointed. Then he asked us one question that I will never forget, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? If it was in kindergarden, the kids would move, shout, and laugh to join the game with teachers. But look at us, we were numb. We are even not interested in games, which supposed to be most attracted activity in the world nor we are not curious what kind of game the professor invited us to play. We are afraid to be embarrassed and to lose as adults. Do the children who lost the game cry? No, not always, or most of them do not. They just simply enjoy the game, enjoy the time with friends, enjoy the interaction with peers. The pressure from others, the grading system, the risk of failure, constrain our bravery to try new thing, limit our imagination and intimidate
us from innovation. Let reflect on what we learned in kindergarten, get rid of the restrictions, and enjoy ourselves.

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I like your point that accepted ideas can be interact to generate new ideas, especially in current diverse learning environment that open connected learning and multi-discipline cooperation are encouraged. We can not innovate based on nothing. Solid foundation of fundamentals will drastically facilitate with learning more advanced stuff and spark innovation from different perspectives. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree with you that students from all majors need to take some courses in art, philosophy, and history or other sociology related ones, especially for STEM students. Students will benefit from the wisdom left by the previous great thinkers, instead of being trained to be a professional machine. The integrate and comprehensive mind will not only help us solve problems within our own discipline, but also help with being a well-behaved citizen and educating the next generation.

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Hey, thank you for sharing your reflections with us. There are always blames on both sides of educators and students about who are more responsible for learning. I think the learning process is very interactive. Only cooperation and understanding are built between educators and students, successful learning can be achieved.