Anna

Who is this teacher I am?

The teacher I am is concerned in the first place with the growth of young people both as individuals as well as empowered, informed and responsible members of a whole. As a teacher, I will be mainly a resource for students, providing intellectual guidance as well as opening doors to opportunities that would serve as real life experiences based on each student’s interests. I am becoming increasingly convinced of the power of dialogue, and would work to run an idea-mill type of classroom: where unique ideas are encouraged, conventional thought challenged, and every student’s opinions welcomed and respected.

-        How is my teaching affected by my experiences?

o      My reason for wanting to enter the education field in the first place, and the reason for my perception of what constitutes a good teacher, is a result of my disappointment with my own experience in the school system as well as key characteristics of my upbringing. In the first place, I have always felt capable of doing whatever assignment was given to me in school (largely because of the encouragement I received from my parents). However, in my middle and high school years, I hardly engaged in any of my classes. I cannot remember feeling excited or interested in any of the material my teachers were presenting to me and therefore did not internalize much. As a result, I struggle daily with the feeling that I am deficient in a certain basic level of knowledge. In contrast to my frustrations at school, I was raised in an urban city where diversity was prevalent. I was exposed to cultures that were greatly different than mine, and over time have come to have an appreciation, understanding and sympathy for groups that are historically disadvantaged. These two aspects of my own experience have made me want to contribute to two aspects of school that I have come to see as lacking: Meaningful learning and a focus on global, social and institutional problems of oppression and injustice.

-        What are the best ways to help students understand what they need to know and be able to do?

o      I believe one of the most important techniques for helping students know what they must be able to know and do is to be as consistently straightforward with them as possible about the issue. In my classroom, it will be a priority to consistently remind students of what the main ideas of the lesson are and why. In addition, I believe it is important to have discussions about how the information connects with previous information we have learned, in order to place the material into a meaningful context. Linda McNeil makes the observation that teachers often avoid making such connections- even reducing complex issues into oversimplified “facts”- in an effort to maintain control of the classroom: “The simplest and probably most notorious lecture technique among social studies teachers is the reduction of any topic to fragments or disjointed pieces of information-lists. A list lets a teacher avoid having to elaborate or show linkages, and it keeps students, especially those weak at reading and writing from having to express ‘learnings’ in complete sentences or paragraphs. No one is called upon to synthesize or give a picture of interrelationships (McNeil, 12).” However, without the ability to place information into a context, into a bigger picture, it is easy to lose sight of what is being studied in the first place; the lesson becomes a broken series of facts, easily dismissed and forgotten, instead of an intricate and interdependent system of information. One example I have of this is from my tutoring experience with Jasmine, an eighth grader who was behind in her history class despite the fact that she was fully capable of comprehending the material. In one of our first sessions I asked Jasmine what she had been learning in history class recently. Until she looked at the title of the assigned chapter in her history book she could not tell me, even generally, what she had been learning, and she certainly had no concept of the details, context or reasons for the lesson. I believe it is a common assumption of history teachers that students will naturally follow a lesson plan and make meaningful connections on their own (a technique that comes so naturally to teachers as experts in our respective areas as well as higher-level learners) even when this is not necessarily the case.

What is literacy and who is it for?

-        What do I think literacy means?

o      As a result of my life experiences thus far, my personal definition of literacy has become attached to the Critical Literacy of Paulo Friere, Henry Giroux and Karl Marx. “…Those who advocate critical literacy focus on empowering people to criticize and change political and economic oppression (Tozer, 17).” The idea of education as an agent of social change is exciting for me, because I am excited by the idea of social change itself and believe the school system is a way to affect a mass amount of citizens. Subsequently, I believe literacy is for every person, including but not limited to those who have historically been disadvantaged by the educational system or other factors.

-        What kind of literacy do I want to foster in my classroom

o      I have come to have some difficulty with the notion of Critical Literacy. It has become apparent that most educational systems throughout the world, including the U.S. system, are very much institutions of indoctrination-of social engineering. It is not clear whether this is intrinsically characteristic of the system or if this system has been created in order to manipulate the masses in order to perpetuate interests of a specific group of people, and to entertain a certain ideology.  I have realized that my desire to prompt my students’ critical assessment of societal structures would consequently be another form of indoctrination. However, passively accepting societal norms is a more destructive social engineering pattern. The kind of literacy I would want to foster in my classroom would be similar to Burbules and Berk’s notion of critical practice. This is the notion that a person should have the skills that make it possible to think critically about an issue, while realizing that there are limitations of such skills. Critical practice is the ability to think outside of conventional and accepted “realities.” I will work on encouraging my student’s to think and act on a higher level, thus effectively making critical decisions that are right for them as individuals. I believe this type of literacy would be beneficial for every person, including but certainly not limited to the disenfranchised.

How does one motivate reluctant learners?

-        What are the best ways to find out about students, including their knowledge, skill and motivation

o      Ask them! I would talk to my students in a straightforward way about what subject areas they like best and in what situations they learn best. This will have a twofold effect of providing insight into how to go about working with that student as well as giving them a sense that they have control over the way they learn and that their opinions about education are worthwhile and absolutely legitimate, which will increase the student/teacher level of trust. Once an understanding of learning patterns is attained and trust established, I believe one of the most important things to remember about motivation is that it involves emotional and personal development. Motivation that lasts cannot be instantly sparked. It is a process. I believe in order to motivate a reluctant learner, it is important to be a model for the student to see how learning can be enjoyable and beneficial, both internally (the way it makes one feel) and externally (the way in which it improves daily life). In addition to being or providing a model, it is important to set up assignments in which the student(s) can experience for themselves the internal and external benefits of learning. Lastly, the learning process and experience should be discussed, reflected on and questioned on a consistent basis in order to subtley transmit to the student that the material is worth knowing, as well as to provide them with a space to realize the enjoyment of conversation and active use of knowledge. Brophy puts this nicely in “Socializing Alienated or Uninterested Students.” He suggests: “Keep focusing them on the self actualizing potential of learning experiences by asking them questions about the content or by making assignments that require them to think about and appreciate new insights, to form and explain opinions, to develop explanations, or to make connections or applications. (Brophy, 8)”

What do we want from our schools?

-        What do I think is the purpose of schooling?

o      For me, this question conjures up the word curriculum. I find it difficult to speculate as to what a school should be, what kinds of things we should be aiming to teach children. Any curriculum is going to shed light on certain aspects of life, silencing many others. Ideally, I think what might be beneficial would be if we as teachers could foster the critical practice skills espoused by Burbules and Berk, as well as work with students to help them realize the value and enjoyment of learning. In this way, we would not have to perpetuate any curriculum in particular, and learning would be on the terms of the student. We would literally be giving children the tools they would need to educate themselves and letting them make decisions about how to utilize those tools. This seems like a radical statement, but the more I learn about the current educational system, the more I think it has become so intricately flawed that major renovation is necessary. For instance, Labaree paints a bleak picture of our current system, where the purchasing of credentials has replaced meaningful learning and knowledge stratification is the name of the game:  “One result is that pressures for intensive competition and radical stratification of education are likely to come more strongly from those at the top of the social scale than from those at the bottom. It is elite parents that see the most to gain from the special distinctions offered by a stratified educational system, and therefore they are the ones who play the game of academic one-upmanship most aggressively. It is they who can afford to bid up the price of a house in the right school district and of a diploma from the right college. In fact, the social mobility perspective often puts groups in conflict with each other…(Labaree, 17).” This indicates that there are societal and socioeconomic factors at work that are making our current educational system an inequitable and, in my opinion, ineffective-even detrimental- institution. Therefore, there must be a paradigm shift in the way we view our schools. Instead of a mode of stratifying knowledge and separating those worthy of good quality of life from those worth nothing, schools must be viewed as a place for children to have equal access to resources, opportunities, respect and knowledge, without hidden motive or agenda.