General Article

Your Students’ Beliefs and How They Influence Learning

Your Students’ Beliefs and How They Influence Learning

When an adult enters a classroom, whether it is a traditional, corporate, or online classroom, a factor that can have a direct impact on their level of involvement in that class is their beliefs. Facilitation of the adult learning process may be more effective if the power of these beliefs is better understood. An adult’s beliefs can include what they hold as truth about their ability and their potential to learn. These beliefs may be subconsciously held and consciously recognized, formed through a process of ongoing interactions and prior experiences. Adults often seek confirmation of these beliefs, rather than question why they believe what they do, which in turn may determine the actions taken in the classroom, including the time, energy, and effort they devote to the process of learning.

How can an instructor directly influence, guide, and help shape the adult’s beliefs, especially if they do not have a positive attitude about their capabilities? This can be accomplished by helping the adult learner discover that they have a greater capacity to learn. An instructor who effectively guides the adult learner may shape their beliefs by engaging them in the process of learning, by encouraging their efforts and attempts to participate, and finding resources that help to meet their developmental needs. In contrast, an instructor is likely to find that simply telling the adult learner they must become an active participant is a less effective approach than one that involves guiding them through the process. The adult learner is self-directed by nature and they often come to the classroom with specific needs, which are influenced by their beliefs about what they are capable of doing.

Changing a belief system, especially one that has been held for a long period of time, may not happen overnight or within a short period of time. It is the accumulation of positive experiences and meaningful interactions that can change the adult’s beliefs in the long run. A facilitator who encourages self-discovery and reminds the adult that they have a greater capacity to learn will likely find this approach is much more effective in shaping their beliefs than demanding participation in the learning process. An adult is more likely to be engaged in the class if they believe they can learn and that it will meet their needs. This is an example of the power that beliefs can hold for the process of adult learning.

Websites For Education

Paralegal Job Outlook Information Overview

Many people are interested in the paralegal job outlook in the years to come. People have a rising level of interest because they want to make sure that they have access to a regular income. Statistics seem to indicate that the legal field is going to continue to grow substantially over the next several years.
The income of a person involved in the legal profession is usually very substantial. Their income tends to be higher because of the various things that a person must learn in order to be competent at their job. The educational process is usually very expensive for someone that is going to go into this field. The hourly wage normally offsets the educational expenses in the long run.
It is entirely possible for a person to get a job in the private sector. Most individuals choose to work for law firms providing various legal services. Individuals that are trying to have more job security may very well look for a job within a government agency. Working for a government agency will provide job security for any person.
It is entirely possible for an individual to start out as a paralegal assistant. Sometimes providing assistance to these individuals will help to inspire a person to continue their education. There are many law firms that are attempting to cut their expenses by hiring people of this profession so that they do not have to pay a full lawyer salary.
People can specialize in all kinds of law. Statistics seem to indicate that going into health law is a good idea. With healthcare being such a major issue worldwide, having legal knowledge relating to the health field can be very profitable for a person. It is also possible for a person to work for a private agency as a legal representative.
People that specialize in corporate law should not have any problems working for any number of corporations. Having so many job options is advantageous for individuals that have chosen to get a law related education. Sometimes people have to go to school for many years in order to reach their entire earnings potential.
It should be very easy for people to understand the paralegal job outlook. The law industry is constantly growing. Nearly every day people continue to require legal services for a variety of reasons. A person that is involved with this industry usually will be able to find a stable form of employment without much trouble.

Quality Education

7 Reasons Professionals Need An EBook

For the past fifteen years or so, companies in most industries have been trying to cut back and eliminate their reliance on internal employees. This has had a number of effects on managers in those companies.
But for professionals seeking a job with those companies the effect has been nothing but negative.
Most professionals deal in technical knowledge. Whether that knowledge is accounting, IT, legal or even sales and marketing it has a heavy technical component. Unfortunately, that means that identifying and rating skill requires an equivalent technical knowledge. For that matter even interpreting one’s resume requires an equivalent technical knowledge.
Unfortunately, as companies reduced staff, technical managers became busier and busier. It became necessary to offload the search for employees to HR who were not trained or capable of making the appropriate technical evaluations. The result has been a steadily deteriorating professional job market.
So what’s a poor professional to do?
EBooks are one solution that every professional should consider. Here are seven reasons that every professional should consider writing eBooks.
1. Resumes no longer work if they ever did work. Bluntly resumes are designed to log the work you’ve done. They do nothing to convince people that you can do the job. Or that you have the skills that they need.
2. Managers are too busy to be as involved in the hiring process as they should. As we’ve discussed already technical skills are needed to evaluate and interpret resumes of professionals. Skills are often interchangeable and often related or counter-indicated. Unfortunately, HR recruiters are typically unable to properly interpret resumes for technical staff.
3. Business cards get lost or are misplaced. And after a while they all tend to look the same. eBooks help you to create a true differentiation between yourself and other professionals.
4. After a while everyone looks the same. As a professional you need to differentiate yourself from everyone else who is applying for the same position. The technique is called personal branding. EBooks are one way of ensuring that you have differentiated yourself.
5. eBooks can establish credibility by providing an example of your work. Unlike resumes which simply list the work you have done, eBooks demonstrate those skills.
6. eBooks establish expertise and knowledge in a particular field. Because they are an example of the use of the skills and knowledge they are more likely to be received and believed than a resume.
7. eBooks establish the ability to apply knowledge. One of the issues that professionals face is that having the knowledge isn’t enough. In fact, having too much knowledge of a particular area can lead to that well known phenomenon of “ten years of experience or one year repeated ten times”. What every employer wants is the ability to actually apply the knowledge which every professional is supposed to have. An eBook helps prove that you have the ability to apply knowledge to a specific problem.

Current Events In Education

Where There is No Vision!

My People perish for lack of knowledge…. (Hosea 4:6a)
The waves of cunning and craftiness, embedded in Christianity today, are making the multitudes fall in the traps Satan, who has seduced many gifted men and women into his nest with sweet promises of glory and triumph. Satan tried this trick with our Lord Jesus (Luke 4:5-6), and I am sure He tried many other tricks with Him, but this particular one is recorded in the Bible as a warning to those who would follow on Jesus’ steps.
The truth is that if our leaders were instilling in the brethren the profound knowledge and wisdom of Christ, the situation would be different. Yet our churches are rather spiritually disheveled and unkempt, bent as they are instead on social activities, on holding on to traditions, on going with the waves and trends of modern worship and ministering.
Yet true freedom has been sacrificed to a pantomime of faith, which focuses on almost anything except the true knowledge of Christ.
Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keeps the law, happy is he. (Proverbs 29:18)
But how could there be a vision if the knowledge which drives that vision has been cast away from the pulpit.
How could there be a vision for souls, a vision for learning, a vision for service, a vision for missions, a vision for stewardship, a vision for ministry, when the church of Christ Jesus is turning into an entertainment network, when the many have turned to the seductive attraction of power and fame and appeal and popularity, when the glory of God has been stolen and set on stage for the glory of men.
It is no surprise that so many mega churches continue to flourish and that so many television evangelists are becoming so powerful. (I must clarify, some of those mega churches might be doing a good job for Christ and maybe a few of those television evangelists might be honest about their commitment to Christ, yet although I have not made a study to this respect, most of those I have observed so far are no more than simple merchants of lies).
The traditional church however has gone flat and it continues to shrink. It has lost power, the power and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and this is happening because there is no true teaching coming from the pulpit.
The Job of the pastor is to equip, it is to prepare, and it is to build up, to fatten the brethren for ministry, and to motivate their desire to serve.
to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:12-13)
And for the lack of that knowledge, for the absence of powerful guidance and teaching, and for the lack of preparation, the Body of Christ is being quickly overtaken by a devastating disease.
I have seen around me great ministers who have fallen in the trap of this aberration, who have fallen victims to the seduction of Satan and who have tossed the Bible aside, to teach their sheep their own doctrines.
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. (Colossians 2:8)
This warning is for you Christian, and for you Minister of the gospel. There is only one gospel and one Spirit and one body of Christ, there is only one god and Christ, and his teachings are fat with instructions to stay away from the deceptions of this word and of the artful men and women who have sold their soul to the Devil in exchange for carnal glory and riches.
Soak yourself in the knowledge of Christ through the only true inerrant guide to his life and philosophy, the Bible. And submit any teaching of this world to the knowledge of Christ. For God will never say a single word against His written revelation.
(Revelation 22:18-19)
May the Lord of knowledge, continue feeding you with the knowledge of His will, and may He put around you a shield of revelation through His word, against the foolish knowledge of this world.
Rev. Jose A. Luna
A servant of Christ Jesus

General Article

Adult Education Instructor

Adult Education Instructor

Hello, I work in the adult education industry teaching English and literature to adults who want to better their chances at a good job. My clientele, because of the nature of my profession and my location (Los Angeles, California), means that I have a great deal of students who have just become a part of this country, and so speaking Spanish as well as English (And some Chinese) is an absolute must. I have 15 years of experience at this work, and if I had to describe myself in only three adjectives, they would be “patient,” “thoughtful,” and “curious.” I hope that I do not do myself a disservice by bragging about character traits that are actually less developed within myself than I myself may see them.

I am of full Mexican descent, which seems to help me in my profession at this particular location, because many of my students are Mexican, so I can not only understand them linguistially, but culturally as well. Knowing the slang cuts through a lot of the learning curve of translating Spanish based things into English based things. English is one of the slangiest languages in the world. I am male, which I don’t know if that helps or hurts. I know that being male is less productive than being a – beautiful – woman. It has been proven that people of both genders listen to beautiful women more frequently and with more intensity than anyone else. I have experienced what I perceived as slight discrimination against me because of my race and culture, as in I was passed over for a promotion. A much less experienced person got it, even though I was definitely the favorite among staff and students.

I would describe what I do as teaching the nuances of the English language and also important books to my students – things that will be relevant for them to communicate with employers to find work. The most common misconception about what I do is that it is dry and boring and literal. I deal mostly with psychology – both the psychology of my students and of the employers that they will face. I teach Rocky movies as well as Shakespeare. Why? Many employers in blue collar professions can relate to Rocky. I teach them how Rocky’s broken English is sometimes more influential than perfect English. It’s in the communication, not the perfection of linguistics.

I have a high job satisfaction now; I would put it at a 10. As you can imagine, my teaching techniques were not quite the most orthodox, and so faculty fought them on occasion when I first started. However, my theories about the psychology of people have proven to be very close to correct in many cases. I have helped people get work. I am proud of that.

This job absolutely moves my heart, because I can see the work that I do and the positive impact. I have letters from people that I have taught who say that they have the money now to take care of family members and bring their children over so that they can be with them again. I can not imagine a better job. And I am good at it, so I have definitely found my sweet spot in life.

I suppose that something unique that readers should know about me is that I was thought retarded when I was born because I took an incredibly long time to speak as a child. When I did, I spoke in sentences that many people could not understand. I was ridiculed as a child because I often spoke in analogies rather than straightforward. However, these are things that all help me as a linguistics teacher.

I got started in this line of work by falling in love with one of my teachers, actually. The whole thing above about beautiful women? Well, my 8th grade English teacher was incredibly lovely, as well as incredibly learned. I had a crush on her, well, I think I still may have a crush on her. I won’t say her name because I don’t want to get in trouble from her husband! He even knew that I was in love with her back then! I always knew that I wanted to be a teacher after that – to instill the same feelings in others that she had in me. Not love necessarily, but the intensity with which I studies and the amount of information I was able to take in that year – incredible. No one made fun of my language skills after that, because she not only taught me linguistics, but she taught me how to communicate with people.

In the working world, there are many things that you will have to deal with that have nothing to do with your mission at your work. However, others will make these things seem superlatively important. And they probably are – to them. However, what I have found is that most people tend to try to project their weaknesses and their inability to do their own work onto you. Do not let them. Do your job the best you can, and no matter how much you want to help someone else, trust that the best way to help them (even if it is a boss) is to let them help themselves. Always stay true to your unique mission and never doubt your ability to complete it.

Education In The World

Personal Finance Basics – Do You Know What APR Means?

Have you looked at the ads for credit cards? If you have with even minimal attention you will know that one of the most prominent things they display is the APR, or the credit card rate. Lots of people simply choose the card with the lowest APR rate, which is a good first step. It is correct that the APR of your credit card is one of the most important factors you should consider when choosing your card (although it is not the only one). So, if you do not understand the APR you really should start improving your personal finance basics by gaining a proper understanding of them.
The APR on your credit card is the rate if interest your supplier will charge you on the amount you owe them. So obviously, the lower the APR, the lower your payments, unless you pay off your card in full each month. If you do clear your card monthly, the APR will not be as important as it is to those who do not clear their cards each month.
Each month your card supplier will send you a bill stating the full amount you owe them and the minimum payment you must pay by the due date. If you do not meet this date you will be charged a late fee and perhaps other penalties depending on the terms and conditions of your supplier.
So you can pay the minimum amount specified, or the whole amount, or any amount in between. The important thing to understand is you will NOT be charged any interest if you make full payment.
But, if you do not pay off the whole amount, you will pay interest charges on the amount left. This interest will be added to your next bill. The interest you will be charged is that you agreed to when you signed up for your card. And compared to, say, a bank loan, the interest, or APR, is very high.
So it is possible to start a spiral of debt in this way if you do not know how these things work. Always borrowing on your card without paying it off each month will accrue high interest charges which you will have to pay eventually.
Do not misunderstand me here. I am not saying you should never use your card if you cannot pay it off in full at the end on the month. I am saying your personal finance basics should be good enough to inform you when you can do this and when you should look for another source of funds.