Education 245

Education 245: Honors Human Growth and Development

I took Education 245 with Dr. Cosby during my spring semester in 2019. This is the first education course that I took at Longwood.

This course was one of my favorites as it had to do specifically with my major. Throughout the semester, we learned about the various theorists associated with childhood development, as well as characteristics of development from conception through adolescence.

One thing that I really enjoyed about this course was that there was an activity almost every class period. There were definitely some days where we only took notes, but Dr. Cosby always tried to have the students actively participating in some way. Some class periods we would have to create a poster on a certain part of the brain or on a  reading approach. Everything that Dr. Cosby did was intended to be used as an example of something we could use in our future classrooms. For example, instead of simply assigning each group a part of the brain, Dr. Cosby would have different colored paper or shapes that one person from each group would chose from. This helped to make the assignment a little more interesting, as well as gave the students a little more choice or say in their assignment as we were the ones picking our topic. From just simply sitting in the class through the semester I learned so much about how to be an effective teacher and engage the students, which is something that I will definitely take with me to my future classroom.

There were a few projects in this course, the biggest of which was the Three Ages Project. The goal of the Three Ages Project was to compare development across three different stages: early childhood from ages three to six, middle childhood from ages seven to twelve, and adolescence from the ages of twelve to eighteen. This project had three main parts that were due at different times, which helped me to manage my time. The first part was an interview. I wrote two to three questions relating to physical development, cognitive development, social-emotional development, and an area of special interest. I conducted the interviews with each participate and asked the same questions to each participant in order to have a better comparison. The second part of the project was to write the paper detailing the interviews and connecting the responses to the theorists and theories we had learned in class. The final part of the Three Ages Project was a presentation where we each presented our findings to the rest of the class. I have attached both the paper and the presentation below. The Three Ages Project was very beneficial because it allowed me to connect what we had been learning in class to the real world and real children. This allowed me to see just how these theories are applied and what they can show about each individual.

I thoroughly enjoyed this course and learned a lot about human growth and development. However, I learned so much more than just that by simply sitting in the class and observing Dr. Cosby. I was able to observe various techniques and activities that I can use in future classrooms and saw an amazing example of an effective teacher.