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Educational Psychology

This semester, I’m taking Ed Psych (short for Educational Psychology), and after only two class sessions, I can say that it is the best class I have ever taken. The professor is fantastic; an old-ish man who is straight-forward, engaging, and pretty funny. The class is all about learning how a child’s mind develops, how they learn, and how we, as future teachers, can adapt our teaching styles so that they can learn new things in the best possible way that suits their budding brains. So far, we’ve addressed Piaget and his cognitive developmental stages, and it was all pretty familiar to me because I took a first level psychology class in high school. A lot of it came back to me as the lecture went on, and I was reminded of how much I loved taking psychology. After teaching us a certain psychological fact about kids and their ways of processing things, the professor asks us “So what can you as a teacher do to fix this/work with this/make this happen?” and it makes me happy and really gets me thinking every single time.

Everything in that class is just so dang appealing and interesting to me, and I’m constantly looking forward to it. The thing that gets to me in a psychology class is how when I hear or read something, I think to myself “Oh my god, that is so true” or “Woah, I never realized that but now that you say it, I totally know what you mean…” or something of the sort. Now that I’m in this class, I’m conflicted with what I even want to do with my life. All my life I’ve had my heart set on becoming a teacher; obviously not for the money, but for the rewards that come with it. But now, just after two sessions of an educational psychology class, I’m considering becoming a school counselor or something like that. Funny how things work. I guess we’ll see how things go as the semester progresses.