Course Contract

• My goals for this course include learning how to best connect with teenagers, how to vary assessment appropriately to meet my objectives, and to survive such a short semester without too much stress. 
• Two long term goals that this course may assist me with are becoming a more efficient learner and becoming a good teacher.
• Weekends will be my primary time to prepare for this course. I will do the readings and study guides for the following week on Friday. On the Saturday I will work on the forms of assessment that we covered during the week to compile at the end of the semester into the key assignment. I will collaborate with Anne using Googledocs. I will also work on any major papers during the weekend. On Monday and Wednesday after 11 I will do my field experience because those are the times I am not in class. I will also take care of any small assignments that come up during the week that I didn't know about prior to the weekend on Mondays and Wednesdays.
• A few strategies that I will use to understand the material are interactive reading (making sure to look things up online that I don't understand from the book), and spreading out my field experience. I'm going to look for a specific thing that relates to what I've been learning each time I observe, and if there's not something that relates I will study the information regarding the journal question I answer before I observe so I know exactly what I'm looking for. When I am reading the text I will use Ready, Read, Reduce, Retain strategies that we learned in class.
• If I do not understand a topic I will Google it. Hopefully with my prior knowledge of psychology and a well written textbook I'll be able to understand everything. I will ask my classmates before class if they had trouble with the same concept and if there are a lot of us that don't understand it we will ask our awesome teacher. If I'm the only one who doesn't understand it after exhausting other resources I will go to office hours or ask before or after class.
• I will reach my goals in this course by being an organized, engaged, hard working, low-stress student who asks questions and uses resources effectively.