Three Questions?

This week in AEE 412, our weekly readings focused a lot around students engagement, intrinsic motivation, and student mindset about learning and how teachers can actively change each of these for the better with how they teach.  Speaking and molding instruction around student interests and action and learning rather your creation and delivery of activities and instruction.  I really enjoyed reading this week's readings because they they pointed out some flaws in my current teaching/mindset toward teaching and also things that I can intentionally do in my future classroom.  However, such mindset-changing ideas have set a whirlwind of questions rolling through my mind.  A few of them are listed below.  If you feel the need or know the answers to any of these questions feel free to drop a comment below!  I would love to receive feedback and continue learning about teaching!

A question for my future students and/or future school administrators:

Am I allowed to use 20% of my weekly instruction time in a class to allow students to pursue and research any area of interest pertaining to the course and its related content areas for interest and career exploration?

A question for my cooperating teacher and/or university supervisor:

In your experience, have students invested more of their time and motivation into an assignment if they were allowed more freedom and creative liberty in the project?

A question for my cohort:

Did any of you start to look at teaching differently after reading this week's readings? That instead of us being excited to teach the content, we should be excited to get our students excited to learn the content.

Soldering and glueing piping in AEE 350.  An example of a demonstration and student practice to acquire a skill.