Blog Post #10

Do you Teach or Do you Educate?
This video does a great job of showing the difference between being an educator and a teacher. It shows the importance of educating students and making an impact. It is not just about teaching facts to students but really impacting students futures through empowerment, enlightenment, and inspiration. I want to be a teacher that guides students and encourages them along the way. I do not want to just teach them information, give tests, and then be done. I truly want to help them learn and grow. It is not about test scores, but about what the students take away from the class.
They need to be prepared for the future. My students will be encouraged to think creatively and always strive for the best. As their guide I want to help them in anyway possible. They should know that they can achieve anything with hard work and determination. I want to be their guide and mentor throughout the learning process. It will be a positive learning community where questions are always welcome as well as encouraged. We should learn from each other collectively and work together to continue to be more successful.

Don't Let Them Take The Pencils Home!
In this post a story is told to portray a specific message. In the story, the school curriculum specialist comes in to the classroom and tells the teacher the students should not take home pencils and paper anymore. Test scores are lower and they believe this is the cause of the problem. The teacher says that this is not so and explains to her how pencils are effective tools and his plans to teach the proper use. Her complaint is that they will just play games with them, which she sees as pointless. He points out that those games could actually teach them something. Learning could be taking place that may not be seen from the outside.

One of the main points that I think he is trying to make is that we as educators should not be afraid of what the children will do with technology as well as their own creativity. We need to encourage them to engage their minds rather than just focusing on memorizing facts. Even if they play games like hangman we can use it to teach skills and information in an exciting way. Most anything can be used to teach we just need to be open to new methods. New technology is also something that needs to be embraced rather than discouraged.

It also shows the importance that gets placed on test scores rather than the students' education. It should be about helping the student to learn and be successful rather than having high test scores. A bubble sheet with questions is not a measure of real learning. Schools also tend to say "your" to the teacher when referring to the students' scores. This is not an accurate statement considering how the students are the ones being tested not the teacher. This is an example of how they have taken the student completely out of the equation. When in reality it should be all about their success in the first place.