Reflection 1.1: My vision of myself as a fantastic teacher.
My vision of myself as a fantastic teacher is that I will have the means to facilitate a classroom that promotes multicultural learning, student involvement, personal growth, and a fun atmosphere. In order to do this, I have to build a positive relationship with my students, continually developing teaching methods that are challenging their individual needs and making the curriculum interesting and relevant. Building lesson plans that are multifunctional that allow the students to develop mentally and emotionally by intertwining social issues, multicultural awareness, and different points of view to facilitate a platform for them to develop their own opinions based on facts, not assumptions. Also, for me to think of myself as a “fantastic” teacher, I need to have a positive relationship with teachers, administration, and school staff. To have the opportunity to go to them for advise or they can to me for help.
Reflection 1.2: List reason for wanting to become a teacher.
1) Love(ing) children means providing leadership, respect, nurture, and guidance. However, I think there is a difference between loving my child and loving other children. The main difference is physically showing my love for my child versus a student. Other than that, I feel that I will treat students with the same admirations and care as I would my own children because I want them to be the most successful person they can be.
2) Want(ing) to help students’ means having the desire and will to make a difference in a child’s life through multiple avenues of education. For example, helping a child goes a lot further then the classroom, it expends socially, mentally, physically, and emotionally.
3) Another reason I want to teach includes having the ability to coach students in athletics. Sports have been a huge aspect of my life and now that I am at the age that my physical participation extends to only city leagues, being able to coach other children that have similar passion, enthusiasm, and desire gives me a satisfaction equivalent to my passion.
Reflection 1.3: What will sustain me?
1) Loving children…
a. Will sustain me by the feeling of satisfaction of making a difference in children’s lives.
b. Will not sustain me trying to love and care for students become too complicated with rules, regulations, and standards, in which a teacher is too worried that they are going to offend or break a rule to help students.
2) Wanting to help students…
a. Will sustain me by having the ability to make a fun learning environment that makes teaching enjoyable for my class and myself.
b. Will not sustain me if the satisfaction I receive from teaching is less than the heart ache of dealing with the negative aspects of teaching, i.e. children’s bad attitudes, unsupportive administration, bad parents, class size, etc.
3) Another reason I want to teach includes…
a. Coaching will sustain me if I enjoy working with the students and it does not take away from too much time away from my family.
b. Coaching will not sustain me if I have a bunch of kids that have poor attitudes, do not give a hundred percent at practice, and do not respect their teammates, opponents, school, and self.
Reflection 1.4
1) Love and help reexamined
a. Similarities between the statements
i. Giving and receiving love or help to/from students is equally rewarding and makes a person feel privileged and committed. Help and love are blind; they do not depend on race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc…
b. Differences between the statements
i. Just because you give love or help does not mean you are giving the other. It takes hard work and devotion to truly give somebody that type of trust and respect. On the same token, you may know how to love your students, but you may not know how to help them and vice versa. It is tough growing relationship with students and convincing them to trust you.
Reflection 1.11
1) Dale Spender’s or Sojourner Truth’s new interpretations
a. Spender suggests that that the interpretations of past events are in accurate because they do not consider the role of the woman. If these events are to be recognized than women need to take make it, “…we also accepted that if we want knowledge, from the perspective of women’s existence, we would have to make it ourselves” (Grant, C.A. & Sleeter, C.E., 2007, p. 17). I feel Spender is implying two aspects to this quote; first that women need to go out and make history, second, if they want to have this history recorded, they need to take it amongst themselves to get it done.
Reflection 1.12
1) Your philosophy of education: How would you answer the following questions?
a. What is the main purpose of schools?
i. To provide a safe environment for students to receive an equal opportunity education under the supervision and guidance of a teacher.
b. How does this purpose relate to or serve a diverse society?
i. This serves society because it does not segregate based on the cultural differences. Schools are designed to provide for an equal opportunity to receive an education regardless of a child’s race, ethnicity, gender, religion, etc.
c. How does this purposed relate to or serve a socially stratified society?
i. This is does serve a socially stratified society because it is designed for equality. In socially stratified society is based on hierarchy of power and wealth, suggesting, those who have more money and power will receive better education and opportunity. Although this is true for families that can afford to send their children to private or charter schools that can provide a better education than a public schools. Schools are not designed to promote division amongst society.
d. What are the implications of what you wrote above for the work of a teacher?
i. If the role of a school is to provide an equal opportunity education, than it is also the role of the teacher to provide an equal opportunity for his/her students. As a teacher, it is my duty to educate the individual student based on ability and will, not on their cultural difference.
Reflection 1.13
1) My vision revisited
a. As a teacher I envision myself being very involved in the lives of my students and school. Although, my essentialist views believe students should receive specific core subjects for their education, such as math, reading, and writing, it is also necessary to receive other diverse subjects, such as, creating in the arts, music, and physical education to promote a well-rounded student. I strive to show aspects of progressivism and social reconstructive by promoting students to become active within my classroom through discussion and social involvement as we learn about the curriculum not only through the textbooks, but through literature, students personal expediencies, music, current events, or whatever will aide in teaching the lesson.
how will you use social issues in a math classroom? i have never been in a math class where teachers have done that so i am interested in how will you do that.
ReplyDeleteTony,
ReplyDeleteWhat are some ways to hope to promote multicultural learning in Math? I share your feelings towards coaching. I began coaching football 3 years ago and it was the primary reason I chose to enter the teaching profession.
I appreciate your idea of lessons that are "multifunctional". It sounds like you are trying to address your students very holistically, a very humanist approach. Do you have a sense yet of how a lesson might need to be constructed to achieve some of those goals? The idea of "loving" your students in high school is a bit foreign...but as you say, it is very different than love of your child. What do you think are dimensions of this type of love? Is it different in a coaching context than in a classroom? The idea of equal opportunity is an important one. It doesn't mean equal success, because there is an element of students' responsibility to take advantage of that opportunity. What is your responsibility?
ReplyDeleteSteve,
ReplyDeleteNow that I understand the set up of West Salem High School and how the math department conducts their program, I have a better understanding on how to set up my lesson plans to engage all my students. The desks in my classroom are all bunched into groups of four, therefore, right off the bat that is encouraging social networking and students-centered learning environment for my kids. Depending on the curriculum for the day, I think the most common approach to teaching math is direct instruction. This method will engage the students that like the teacher to give examples and explanation prior to doing the assignment. However, some other methods I am toying around would be playing some soft music in the background of class during individual work time to stimulate the kids that musically stimulated or using a few students to act out a lesson and physically demonstrate how a problem works. I think that would spark their interests and reinforce their spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal intelligences.
I think using the word love is not as appropriate as the word "care for". My implications to that statement meant that I my duty as a teacher would go further than teaching them math. I would also feel responsible for making sure they were not just mentally healthy, but also physically, socially, emotionally, and psychologically healthy as well. I also would be expecting them to give me 100% everyday and attempting to reach their goals everyday. I would be encouraging them to not just being better students but also better individuals through these standards.
Aside from these responsibilities, I also feel that it is my duty to make all my lessons as applicable to reality as possible, to give my students every chance I can to teach them their lessons, and to treat them fairly and reasonably, but it is not my job to treat them equally, but to treat each student individually and providing them all with the equal opportunity to exceed in my class.
Nicole and Jared,
ReplyDeleteI have been thinking of different ways I can use multicultural learning and social issues in my math classes and I think one of the easiest ways is to incorporate certain issues when using examples in my curriculum. For example, if we are learning about percentages, I could use social class and unemployment rates as statistical information or the diversity of the school. Other ways maybe through different group activities and how I make the groups or how they conduct the activity. However, I feel that what ever is relevant at the time could be incorporated some how into the lesson by using it as the example for the problems in class.
Tony,
ReplyDeleteIn addition to the previous comments, I had a couple more to include. You mentioned the importance of building a positive relationship with your students. How might you achieve this goal? I completely agree with the LOVING children statement. I expressed to Steve my discomfort in saying I love my students, but I genuinely care about them as individuals and will work to help them reach their goals in life even after they’ve moved on from my classroom. However, I don’t agree with your statement that private or charter schools provide students with a better education then public. While some aspects hold true (i.e. more resources) they often fail to expose students to diversity and social differences which are equally important in education.
Jared