Reflection # 3 EDF 2085

Shaniece N. Jeffers
EDF 2085
September 9, 2009
Reflection # 3
Prof. Joseph McNair

A paradigm is a way to help describe the way someone thinks and feel about something or someone. It can be used as a pattern or a model to help someone understand the point that is trying to be made. A paradigm can help a person overcome a situation based on how it can shift from one culture to another, or a different nationality to another. Values and assumptions play a major role in a paradigm, because it can help separate someone from another culture. Meaning that people can tell where you are from just the way you may look, dress, and what you may eat as well.
Paradigm shift is no different to a paradigm they both have the same concepts, whether it’s using a model, chart, or line graph. They both help us as humans perceive our intellectual meanings and ideas. Throughout the years looks how technology has changed from not being invented to now being the biggest influence in how we translate communication. It came a long way from mailing letters to now using computers to send information to love ones, that’s not even all you can take pictures and send them all over
the world. Cell phones are also playing in big role in news, when people take pictures of events happening and sending the pictures to the broadcasting studios. People are no longer waiting for the news to come to the, they are seeing the news happening right in from of them.
Many of us go through a paradigm or a paradigm shift throughout our lifetime whether it was in the future or the past. It doesn’t have to always be something bad, it can be something that betters you throughout your life. Just by making one change in your life, can make a difference in it, whether you believe it or not. One decision can change that individual that you no longer want to be, to the person you want to become. Paradigms are in our world for a reason, even if it helps bring changes and the way we perceive things.
As a working teacher in progress, paradigms are very useful to in society today especially in education. Teachers must always have an open mind about a situation, especially in the classroom setting; whether it’s dealing with the students, faculty, or teachers. They have to know what to say to the students without saying he wrong type of words or painting the wrong picture in the child head. Young minds are always acquiring everything that is being taught to them at such a young age. We have to remember that all of our students weren’t brought up in the same home, lifestyle, culture, religion and values from others.
My paradigm shift was moving from St. Thomas U.S. Virgin Islands to Miami, FL at the age of 19yrs old on my own. I must say that was the most drastic change in my lifetime, moving from a small island to a fast pace state. Another change understood the different culture to another, coming from a Caribbean atmosphere to an American lifestyle. I had to learn the different foods they eat and the way they dress, even though Miami is diverse; I still had to adapt to the American ways. I must say I’m getting use to the whole American lifestyle on my own because of how I perceive things on my own.