Tyson Jensen

I can say that I have taken quite a few gems of knowledge from this class and I have every intention of putting them to practice.  The first gem was actually teaching comprehension to students in a way that will make them successful in my class.  For example, before sending students home to read from certain texts, I am going to teach them how to comprehend the reading in a way that I would like them to. I, too, would have been a teacher that would have assumed that the students could pick up a psychology textbook and understand what I want them to.  I was glad to gain that sense of awareness that will help me effectively help my students comprehend textbooks or any other form of input I am using to teach my content. Another gem was hatching over ideas of critical literacy.  We couldn't have discussed them at a better time.  I was thinking and hatching over how I can manage my Spanish class while speaking solely in Spanish.  As we were talking about critical literacy, I thought o

Thinking about writing in the field of psychology, I had many opportunities to express myself.  Psychology is a heavy reading and writing field and it was no different for me.  However, my desire to know more about psychology was fostered by my father who also loved to learn about why humans do certain things.  My first exposure to psychology was in a Psych 1010 class at the LDS Business College.  It was an engaging class that required only summaries about each chapter we read.  I can't say that I enjoyed the writing, but I did enjoy the reading.  When I went to Southern Utah University, I took all psychology classes except for a couple in the two years that I attended.  A few of my classes had us take essay-based exams.  Studying for these exams was a very worthwhile experience as I had to be able to, in detail, explain the key psychological concepts and give examples in writing.  As daunting as an experience as that was, the information has truly stuck with me much better than mu

In thinking about how I feel about writing I can affirmatively say that I am not much of a writer and prefer to express myself orally.  However, I have found some joy in writing, and on occasion, will do so.  Growing up I did not like writing at all.  Looking back at my high school writings, I notice that I was a pretty good writer though.  I understood the process and how to construct papers in a way that would help the reader understand what I was trying to present or argue.  Most the writing assignments that I did enjoy, I enjoyed because I was interested in actually doing the research and making the effort to write it.  I never really wrote recreationally growing up.  If it wasn't an assignment, I didn't write it.    Overall, I simply found writing uninteresting and couldn't sit long enough to actually write stuff.  However, I do have to admit being pulled into the whole note passing thing with my girlfriend in high school.  I did that only because my girlfriend did and

My home life truly fostered my development for my desire to teach Psychology.  Growing up, I remember my parents and father in particular reading all kinds of psychology-based books.  Occasionally, when he knew I could understand the concepts, we would have discussions about them.  These conversations and my own desire to understand human behavior led me to begin creating my own theories about why people do certain things.  I would discuss those theories with my father occasionally.  As I grew older, I began to confide a lot of things about my life to my father.  He was like my own personal therapist growing up.  I knew that he knew a lot of information about human behavior, having read a lot of books about it.  I felt comfortable and I found that he helped me gain more insights into my own life and why I did certain things.  He helped me see different parts of my life that I may have not payed much attention to.  Having "ah ha" moments about my own behavior created a distinc

My name is Tyson Jensen and I consider myself to be from West Valley City, Utah, which is right near Salt Lake City, UT.  I love all kinds of sports, whether its playing or watching them.  I am a pretty avid Utah Jazz and BYU football fan.  I spent two years on a LDS mission in Italy.  I am generally a pretty energetic person. I love the fact that I lived in such a diverse place (for Utah) and that I could spend some time overseas.  It gave me opportunity to be around and associate myself with people that are different than me in many ways. It paved the way for a lot of the things that I believe in about people.  I hope to teach Psychology in this class because of the fascination I have with people and why they do the things they do.  I love every aspect of psychology because of the experience it was for me to learn and continue to learn.  It has made me more self aware of why I do certain things, which in turn I hope to help others receive that same knowledge and awareness.  Psychol

In this blog, I am going to discuss a few ways to implement technology tools in my own high school psychology class.  Throughout this last semester, I was able to gain some experience and use a lot of the tools that are out there for teachers.  A lot of the tools were quite fascinating and will give me more ways to engage the students in the course work.  I am actually excited to be able to use some of them.  However, since Utah doesn't have set standards for psychology and, as a psychology teacher, I have quite a bit of room to do what I choose, I will use a set of "standards" that the Davis School District has given their teachers to help them organize lessons.  I will mention three specific standards and which tool I can use for each. One "standard" is the biological bases of behavior.  It is really interesting to teach about the brain and how it contributes to behavior.  The one tool that I thought of that I could use to teach this would be Wikis.  In parti

Interesting video on what attracts some women...