Chapter 6

The "why". I thought it was great that they acknowledged the importance of the why of learning a concept or strategy, when the chapter discussed the strategic and affective networks. Just last night, in a different class, we were discussing our personal experiences with learning math, and many students in the group I was working with spoke of their dislike of math as being related to the fact that they felt they were just learning how to do steps (especially in math classes like calculus) but never felt they understood the "why." Why should we learn this? How will I be able to use this in my life? I think it's important to address these questions, especially in the later years of education, as this will really affect students' motivation.
I decided that rather than just summarize the chapter and it's interesting points, as everyone will have read the chapter and doesn't really need me to do that, I'd instead bring up some questions and issues the chapter brought to mind for me. In the beginning of the chapter, they gave examples such as the Civil War and architecture and even later on they spoke about UDL for economic models. However, it seems that every time the textbook gives an explicit model of using the principles of UDL in a classroom situation it always focuses on elementary school and therefore elementary concepts. I think this is a problem for numerous reasons. First of all, I personally find the principles of UDL a lot more difficult to picture in a high school or middle school situation, so could use an example of it being implemented. Additionally, I think that the textbooks avoidance of using these types of examples, would make a potential middle school or high school teacher possibly believe that while UDL is useful in elementary school it is not a curriculum framework that I can or should use in my classroom. Does anyone else feel this way?
I believe that part of this feeling of inequality stems from my own experiences. I think back to elementary school, and I remember the use of computers in the classroom, and especially beng a teacher now, I haven't seen any elementary level classrooms without at least one computer. However, even though I went to school in a wealthy district, I don't remember any computers in classrooms during high school or middle school. Maybe this has changed now, but if high school and middle school classrooms still lack computers and, at least in this chapter, the use of UDL is focused so intently on technology, then how could high school or middle school teachers really implement these principles? The only option I can think of is to have different technologies available on a class website of some sort, but even this isn't very UDL. First of all it would still mean class time lacks the components of UDL that are only available on the computer and would therefore likely be very text and lecture based and it would also only work if every students had a computer at home, which is not an assumption we can make. So, I pose some questions...Is it possible to really use UDL in higher grades? And if so, how? And if not, then how can we make it possible?