EDF 1005 Reflection Paper#2

Jackie Lawrence
Reflection Paper # 2
EDF 1005

As an aspiring school psychologist, paradigm shifts, framing, and reframing are all extremely important terms I need to be familiar with. People’s perceptions are based on their experiences, and these experiences are processed by the brain and stored into their memory. As a generalization, most people can be pretty stubborn, and once they generate a belief, in their mind, it becomes a fact. Education majors must acknowledge that their classroom will one day be filled with thousands of opinions, which to the students, are factual. For instance, not to be disrespectful in any way, shape, or form…I was told you were TOUGH. My fellow classmates last semester mentioned your name quite a few times, and expressed how proud they were to have gotten through your course. One girl, who knew more or less my job obligations, took a look at my schedule, and exclaimed, “Jackie, you will not be able to do this! What are you thinking?” Of course, I was intimidated. But my dad has always taught me to challenge myself in every way possible, so here I am. Imagine if primitive humans never invented weapons. They would have all starved to death, caused a mass extinction, and none of us would be here today. Thank goodness somebody back then experienced that paradigm shift and realized they needed to eat to survive. Imagine if the wheel had never been invented, or the light bulb. We’d all still be riding horses to work and sitting in the dark, bored, at night. Technology today is expanding just about as fast as I’m typing these words, and that’s because people are out there reframing and trying to make the world a more efficient place. We can never know what we are capable of doing until we think outside of the box. As a future educator, I believe it is very important to stress creativity. Encourage students to investigate deeper into what they are told, and even into what they already think they believe. These students are our future, and we will need them to continue on the right path as we get old. I experienced an incredible paradigm shift after a rough couple of years. If I hadn’t had those bad experiences, I never would have learned from them, and I wouldn’t be the person I am today. Our experiences are what make us unique, and that’s what makes the world so interesting. If nobody ever reframed, there would be no art, no religion, no music, no opinions on all the questions of the universe that we all have. And what a boring world that would be.