*Learning Theories* - T2P Week 2

If a teacher focuses on enabling the creative processes of their students’ inner workings , then the students are more apt to form ideas and thoughts on their own. This is because they are letting their creative juices flow, and are embracing their ideas and questions rather than stifling them.

This is my "if... then... because..." statement which I created about halfway through Week 2's class. My theory was created after watching several short clips, and then I was able to put my newly created theory to practice through the re-creation of a mapping exercise we had done in our last class. With the use of our newly acquired knowledge from a week's worth of classes we had to construct a mapping of "what learning is", without looking back to our previous work. One would think that this is something simple since we had already completed the activity once, but in reality it was much harder the second time around. As a group, we struggled to put our ideas to paper and convey the proper terminology. Once completed, we were given the original mapping to compare our new one to. From this we could clearly see the differences one week of education really made. In the new mapping, our ideas were more concise and logical, rather than our previous one which consisted of displaced thoughts thrown on a poster. Overall there was much more thought and theory behind our new map.

This exercise placed us in a creative environment which really made us think. Through the process of critiquing our previous work, and also creating dialogue centered on how we grew over the period of one week, we were able to stimulate the creation of personal thoughts and ideas. Thus, in it's completion, I now have a better grasp on the material, as well as how my own mind works. Also, I was able to put my "if... then... because..." statement to practice, and I feel that it applied well.

Response
If students feel comfortable and emotionally safe in the learning environment, then they are more likely to excel in the classroom because they less likely to shut down and put walls up. Feeling safe makes a student more inclined to add their input into a classroom discussion or activity because they don't feel judged or inadequate. Also, without input a student can't receive much feedback.