Responsibility

I feel that as an educator I have the responsibility to know and understand other cultures. It is my job to teach students from these cultures therefore I must have a good understanding of their cultures, but I am not sure how comfortable I must be with these cultures to teach them. Understanding and being comfortable with other cultures, to me , seems quite different. I think that I want to make every effort for both students as well as their parents feel comfortable and welcome in my classroom and I want to accommodate their individual cultures, but the fact remains that I have my own culture and beliefs that make me as individual as those from cultures other than my own and you can't force anyone to be comfortable with different cultures.

Reaching Out

I think that no matter where or what situation you teach in you will have students that are either high risk, live in poverty or are ESL. This is something that any future teacher should be prepared for. As a teacher, you have a responsibility to be a positive role model for all of your students, not just the ones that are high risk, poverty or ESL. But to go beyond that, you need a way to reach out to those students that need more.

For students that live at poverty level, often their parents don't know what resources are out there or how to access those resources. As a teacher you can provide assistance in order to lead these parents in the right direction to access the resources that exist. If a student isn't eating lunch, you could send home an extra free/reduced lunch form. If a student doesn't have appropriate clothing for the weather you can have the school nurse, who usually has resources for these situations, help out. There are community services that help out with glasses for kids, medical assistance, food banks etc. It just may be that the parents don't know about them. Maybe parents don't have the skills to fill out the forms necessary...this is something that I as a teacher can help out with before or after school.

As far as ESL students go, I can try to provide an interrupter for parent teacher conferences in order to encourage parents to attend. I can translate news letters home into their native language so that parents are aware of what is going on at school. Even if you don't have a person at school who is willing to translate these news letters, you can find, online, several websites that translate words or phrases for you for free. It may take a little bit extra time on your part, but it is worth it in the end.

Student Voice

I have to say that this topic was a bit of a struggle for me. I think that students should have a larger voice in their own education. I feel that this would give many students much more ownership and even accountability for what is being expected of them. My struggle is that many of the students that choose to have this voice are the students that all ready have a voice. They are the kids that are active in many extra-curricular activities such as student council, drama, speech/debate team. The kids that really need a voice to succeed are often the kids that aren't involved in anything...they are the kids that pretend that school sucks and want to go unnoticed in classes and school. I wonder just how we can get these kids that need a voice to believe that their voice matters and counts. You can tell them until you are blue in the face, but until they see that their voice is being heard, they will never believe it. I have one of my kids (my 14 year old) that is one of those kids that has a voice. My oldest(17) is the opposite. He pretends that he doesn't care. Truly, I struggle daily with him and having him believe that he has a say and his say matters. The only thing he says is "let me drop out of school, if I have a say and it matters". How do we reach these kinds of kids? They are the ones that NEED a voice.

Critical need for Quality Teachers

After viewing the video I felt like the greatest need in teachers is to have teachers who are highly qualified and those that want to stay in the profession of education. While it seems that one large factor in the high turn over rate of teachers is low pay, I feel for myself that it is a step up in pay. I have been an educational paraprofessional for 17 years. My job pays about one-third of what teachers make. Also in my job, because I have so many years experience, I spend the majority of my day "teaching". In my opinion, I am all ready a teacher, I just need a degree to tell the people hiring that I am a teacher.

It sounded like some states are seeing the need for dedicated people to work and stay in the teaching field and are offering incentives to teach in some of the less desireable places such as student loan forgivement and signing bonuses. In District 6 they offer a program for classified employees (that would be my job) going into education. This fellowship pays for up to 4 years of school at an accredited university as well as $150.00 for books each semester. (I know that is not a lot, but every little bit helps) In return, you must work for District 6 for 3 years and all monies are forgiven. If you work less than 3 years, for each year you work, 1/3 of your tuition is forgiven. I plan on applying for this fellowship as soon as I complete my AA at Aims. I think that I have all ready proven that I am dedicated to staying with District 6, especially after 17 years of previous service. I also think that I have built a good reputation for myself and that should be very helpful in my future prospects as far as getting hired in District 6 after completing my education.

One last thing that the video touched on was that lack of diversity among teachers. Unfortunately, that isn't something that I can change about myself. I am an Anglo, female. Not much diversity there, however, I feel that I am willing to learn what I need to learn to fill my students with culture and diversity. I do not discriminate and I am fascinated to learn about other people's cultures.

So Much

I would love to read the book So Much by Trish Cooke to my students. I found the dialect that the book was written in very reflective of the family it represented. Even though this is not the way we tend to speak here, it is a good way to expose students to the way that other people speak.

I feel like this book has many different things that students can learn from it. Since Greeley has such a low concentration of African-American people this would be a good way to introduce the African-American culture to students around here. Students can also learn that no matter what culture you are from, families are still pretty much the same.

This book would be good to use in a lesson around Thanksgiving when we seem to focus a lot on families. It could also be used to introduce the African-American culture when learning about Kwanzaa, or even in January when learning about Martin Luther King Jr. In using it for a lesson about families, you could begin to talk with the students about family members, traditions, and get togethers that their own families may have. Then introduce the book about a family and their get together. After reading the book, as a class, create a Vin diagram to include similarities and differences between this family and their own families. Be prepared that the Vin diagram will probably need more space in the center than on the different sides. Point out to the students that even though this family may look and talk very different than their own that families are usually very much the same. As a follow up activity you could have students write or draw, depending on their age and level, their own favorite family tradition.

First Pass at an Educational Philosophy

I feel that the environment that a teacher creates is essential to successful student learning. I want to create a warm and inviting environment...not just for students, but for their parents as well. In order to do that I want my students to know that I am there for them and that I care about them. It is important to make a personal connection with each and every child that you come in contact with in your classroom. I want to know about their interests, family and home life. Those connections may be the only thing that keeps a student as your ally and not your enemy.

To me teaching, schooling and learning are three different things. I believe that teaching is more of a sharing of knowledge and information between a student and a teacher, a teacher and a student. Schooling, to me is more of the actual place that you go to teach and learn. Learning is the actual knowledge that you acquire and take with you into your future. I believe that we are all teachers, students included, and learners and we will always be.

In my future, I would like to teach middle school. This is such a critical age for kids. They don't know who they are, or even what they want to be. There are too few "teachers" that really like this age of kids. I think that kids this age are still young enough to be influenced by positive role models and old enough to begin to make decisions that will effect their entire lives. It is our job, as educators, to guide them towards positive choices without being judgemental or overpowering. Middle school age kids have begun to see teachers not so much as heroes, but as real people. In turn, these kids really just want to be treated like real people. They want to be treated with the same respect and dignity that we expect to be treated with as adults. I think that I have the passion and commitment that it takes to teach these kids.

I believe that students should be taught in a caring, compassionate and comfortable setting. I also believe that you should have a love and passion for teaching as well as the students that you are teaching. Without that, your teaching will not have a long lasting or even an immediate effect on students.

After many years of working in education at the elementary level, I have recently been given the opportunity to work with middle school students. This experience has led me to believe that my passion is with these needy yet completely lovable kids. Once you break their insecure, and unsure personalities you will see that they are nothing but BIG children. Children with the same needs as a 2nd grader just not as sure of how to go about seeking to get those needs met.

One of my personal strengths is that I truly love kids. I love what they give me as much as what I have to share with them. I feel that one of the best things that I have to bring to teaching and education is my passion. You have to be willing to share yourself with kids in order to impact them.