Blog Post #10

Do You Teach or Do You Educate?

              This video really made me think about my reasons for becoming an educator. I have always felt like there was a difference in just a teacher and an educator and I use two of my past teachers as examples. One of my teachers in high school was a math teacher and she was really passionate about math and she did everything she could to try to make it easier for me which is exactly what I needed for that subject. But, she is not the one that made me think about going into this profession. She was still a great teacher though and helped me a lot.
              I had a history teacher who was also one of my coaches who really made me think about doing this as my career. The way he taught was so different and he didn't try to do the same things as the other teachers. He enjoyed being the odd man out of the teachers because he pushed for the students to change education. He didn't want the same old normal history papers he wanted some different things. The thing that always stood out to me was he didn't teach just history. He wanted us to stand out outside of the classroom and learn life lessons. He talked to us about different cultures and how we needed to be respectful of them and how the world is changing and we need to learn as we go along. He often said that he was there to change our lives and he was in this for us. He would promise us that if at any point he became one of those bitter teachers who hated their job and took it out on the students he would quit because it wouldn't be fair to us.
             Things he used to do and say are the things that inspired me to become an educator. I want to instill something in the kids that they can carry for their whole life. I want them to come across a situation and say I remember when my teacher talked about this in high school and this is what I should do. I don't want to just educate them about history but, the world around them. I am really excited about being the new cool teacher with all of this different technologies I'm learning in this class. I just really feel like I can make a difference in these kid's lives as an educator and coach just as it happened to me.


Don't Let Them Take the Pencils Home
             In this blog post it was a common case of teachers or administrators worrying more about test scores than the actual students and their situations or their home life. Gertrude was worried about the test scores and said that he shouldn't let the students take the pencils home because students who used took the pencils home had lower test scores. I see this is as a problem as well as  Mr.Spencer.
             He didn't think that you shouldn't take pencils home because he didn't feel that it was the reason for test scores being low. You can't blame test scores on the writing utensil that makes no sense. I like the point that Mr.Spencer made that said that the children see the pencils as toys and not something to write with. They see them as entertainment tools. He also speaks of how the parents of these children don't use pencils in their jobs and don't experience pencils in schoolwork.
           He then explains to Gertrude ways he plans to prevent this from happening. He created a parent pencil program to show parents and students different ways that pencils can be used for learning. I think this is a great idea because he was looking for a solution and not a problem too solve the way these students feel about pencils.
              The last thing that I noticed was that he was a different teacher who was OK with the kids going home and playing hangman. He said there may be more learning that we might not know about. That's exactly how the education of the future needs to be where teachers are OK with different things children do to learn. Things besides looking in their books. The world is changing and education needs to be as well.