DUNSTER - Coyle 10 + Epilogue

 In chapter 10, Coyle talks about forming connections with your students. This was something I found interesting because he made it seem like you would be able to form a connection to any student regardless, or I suppose that is the ideal at least according to the example of the football coach. It is certainly ideal, however some students just won't connect to some teachers, and in that case teaching does become more difficult. However, learning to try to connect with your students because you do care about them is a good skill to learn. It goes along with being able to read a student and understand their needs. 

The epilogue had some interesting bits that stuck out to me. One part was where Coyle talks about the U.S. being divided in opinion over whether phonics, learning a language by groups of sounds, or Whole Language was better for students to learn to read. This was interesting because, in my linguistics class, we recently discussed almost this exact debate, where people theorized that we are born with a "language organ" of sorts and that all (human) language follows a certain pattern, hence we are essentially born being able to understand language, so just looking at the whole language would trigger the "language organ" to work and properly process that information. Other people disagree and say we don't fully comprehend the amount of information taken in by a newborn or small child, specifically with language, and that they are able to figure it out from being immersed in the language around them. Hence smaller chunks of sound in relation to the letters that make them are a better way to learn according to this side.