In my years in school, I discovered a pattern that has from then on been a guiding force in the way that I think about teaching; the pattern is that I did best in a class when the teacher resonated with me in some way.
In school I wanted to have a teacher's respect. I didn't want to just be seen as another student to them; I wanted to be seen as a person who had potential, and I wanted the teacher to make that potential known to me. If I got that kind of respect, I would do everything in my ability to show that teacher that they were right about me; and on the other hand, if I didn't get that respect, the teacher didn't have mine, and I would often end up resenting the class. For me, that feeling transcended all other factors. It didn't matter what subject the class taught, or who my classmates were, or who my teacher was; as long as I got that individual attention, I was hooked. Now, that's just my own personal learning style. In a classroom, you can expect every student to have a learning style that's just as detailed and seemingly erratic. One student may need individual attention while another doesn't want any students getting individual attention; another student may prefer hands-on learning, while yet another learns best aurally. This is why a teacher's job is so hard: it's your responsibility to balance every student's personal preferences in a way that will make the classroom a positive learning environment for everyone. These preferences originate from Howard Gardner's idea of Multiple Intelligences (MI). MI refers to the different balances of intelligence types that every person has (someone can, for example, have very strong logical thinking and mathematics intelligence, but very little linguistic knowledge. When I took an MI questionnaire, my balance placed my highest intelligences as inter- and intra-personal, visual spatial, and linguistic. This made a lot of things clearer for me: it explained why I love english class, why I learn more from videos than anything else, and why I needed a personal dialogue with my teacher in order to maximize my learning in a class. The main takeaway from this idea of MI is that there is no objectively "unintelligent" student. Sure, some students may not thrive in a certain classroom setting; but in most cases, they will thrive if you simply move them to a classroom that's more tailored to their intelligences. Unfortunately this can't always be done, so it's the job of a teacher to do everything in their ability to make their classroom a space that feels tailor made to every students multiple intelligences.
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In today's teaching environment, learning how to use diversity as a tool to enhance the classroom environment is an invaluable tool. As a teacher, you want to create a culture of acceptance in your classroom, where all students will feel safe. And by teaching tolerance in our schools we've been trying to achieve that. Because, after all, tolerance is the best way to dispel the tension that diversity may create, right?
Not necessarily. Sure, teaching tolerance is one way to attack this issue. To tolerate something is to allow it to happen, even if you don't agree with it; so when we teach tolerance, we're basically telling our students "hey, there are people in this classroom that are different than you, and you should accept that." Teaching tolerance to students is by no means a bad method, but it feels like the bare minimum of what we could do. What if instead of teaching students to be neutral about the different cultures and ways of life that exist in the classroom, we presented it as something that adds to the classroom? What if instead of what we're saying when we teach tolerance, we say "hey, you have classmates that are different than you, and that's amazing!" Instead of taking diversity and neutralizing it with tolerance, let's turn it into something that makes the classroom a hotbed for expanding students' circles of awareness. Because in today's globalized world, diversity is a beautiful thing. "Those who can't do, teach."
-Someone who doesn't know what a teacher is My dad is a teacher at Mooseheart Child City in Illinois. Every weekday he is teaching kids from all backgrounds about the value of history. And it's a struggle, he says. I remember one night he came home a huge stack of essays to grade. I watched him as he sat at the dining room table, red felt tip pen in hand, marking each essay with correction after correction. It made me upset to hear my dad's deep sigh with each paper that he pulled from the stack; I was sympathetic to the frustration he must be feeling while reading student essays that don't reflect the work that he put into them. I walked into the dining room to tell him this, and I was surprised to see that he didn't look upset at all; he actually looked happy. And when I asked him if something was wrong, he said no. These essays tell me that I'm exactly where I need to be, he said. Early on my dad instilled in me a love for reading, which I never let go of. I'm thankful every day that appreciation for art and writing is in my life, because I simply can't see life without it. The expression of the written word, the manifestation of thought, is essential to the world we live in; it's what gives us the tools to think for ourselves, the tools to put into practice the humanity that makes us who we are. That's why I want to become a teacher. My dad set an incredibly positive example for me, and I can find no more valuable way to give my time to my community than to give guidance, care, and knowledge to those who will come after us, those who need it most, just like my dad does. Similar to him, I want to teach at a high school where having these tools will bring the most value to the community. There are school districts out there that desperately need passionate teachers, and they don't get them because they don't have the same resources that other more attractive districts have; that's where I want to go. Most of all, though, I want to contribute something of worth. We'd be nowhere without teachers, and we're going to need good ones in the future. That's why I want to teach. |
AuthorDrew Ehrler is a student at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. ArchivesCategories |