Voices

After reading The History and Philosophy of Education: Voices of Educational Pioneers, I found my voices that I agreed with but there were four that I had many of the same views as. The first educator I agreed with the most was Augustine. He discussed the fact that having a student memorize another person's text book isn't teaching at all. I know many math teachers believe that they need to teach by the book and it's because many schools want them to teach the students the book. But why can't teachers build their own textbooks with their own activities? Teachers wouldn't need the text book to teach the class because they will already know it since they created it. He also discusses the idea of motivating students by making the environment pleasant. I am hoping I can do this for my students, because I'm sure their aren't many kids who wouldn't want to have a classroom they enjoy being in.

The next educator was Pestalozzi. His idea of education was how I veiw motivating children. Students shouldn't feal fear or be punished during their educational experience. If they feel motivated it should be through a pleaseant experience and their interests should be included in their education. I agree strongly in this because if students are interested in what they are being taught then that is a way to motivate them. He also discusses the idea of a loving teacher-student relationship. When it comes to discipline, I will probably have a hard time with it because I am more into "loving" discipline which is really an oxymoron that doesn't make sense. But When I come to discipling students I don't want to do it by giving them detetion or extra homework. I'm hoping I can discipline them, so that they don't do it again but they also don't hate me was a teacher.

The last educator that I agreed with strongly was Froebel. I like his ideas because they deal with the student discovering things on their own but through different ways. he talked about play, particpate, observe and learn. In high school students aren't exactly going to be playing, but if I give them activities where they feel like they are playing instead of doing work I believe that they will learn better from it. They will be more engaged and they will remember the materials better. When I become a teacher, I plan on being as much of a hands on instructor as I can be. I learned a lot better this way and I know many people who do. I believe that it is important for self discovery, and students can be their own teachers, with a little help and guidance.

Discipline

One point that the boys brought up in their presentation was who makes the rules... When I was working on my philosophy paper this was one thing I discussed. I plan on being a student-centered teacher so when it comes to making the rules of the classroom I want it to be something that my students think up, with maybe a little bit of help from me. One thing I was debateable on when thinking about this, was it all depends on who my students are. In some classes I'm going to have students who will think up rules that are simple and will let them get away with anything. In other classes I will have students responsible enough to think up rules where they will respect everyone and everything in the classroom but at the same time they will still enjoy being in the class. Discipline is one of the touchiest subjects for me because I am not good at discipling people and being harsh or standing my ground when I need to. This is one aspect of teaching that I already know I will really have to work on.

It Takes A Village

While reading this article I saw it as a great way of teaching students. I think that students achieve more responsibility when they have projects dealing with the community. When they do projects like this, the question of, when I am going to use this, pops up rarely and students have more of an appreciation for the subject that they are learning. Projects that deal with the community also can bring in the subject integration that we are all learning is a great way to teach. I thought this article was awesome, because it actually reminded me of Teach With Your Heart, but on a smaller scale. When we were reading teach with your heart, a lot of us kept thinking, we are never going to be able to do this, but this article shows us that we can change our students lives, maybe not as big of an impact as Erin was, but we can get close. I’ve always believed that community involvement is a great thing for students, because it draws students closer to their community.
Angela had an opposing view about the article. She thought that the whole big idea of it was just about teaching hands- on, and how we keep learning about that over and over again. She liked the idea that projects like this are more important than just an A to a lot of students. She wasn’t big on the article because she felt like it had been taught to us over and over again and she believes that it is getting old.

Classroom Climate

Classroom Organization-
For my classroom I would like to have tables, not desks but tables, preferably rounded or the half octagon table that you can put together. I really like those tables because you can set them up in the common rows set up, or put them together for groups, or shape them together for a discussion circle. I don’t want my classroom to be the typical math décor classroom. I want to find posters of things that my students enjoy but hidden in it there will be some sort of math. For example I have a poster of someone playing music, along with the person playing a guitar there is a sin curve along with it showing different amplitudes of her playing. Along with my physical set up I have to worry about my curriculum set up too. I’m going to be teaching in Maine so of course my curriculum is going to match in some ways to the MLR’s but it’s not going to be completely based around it. I want my students to learn things that are going to be important to them in the real world. I will still have some of the content where they will be wondering why they are doing this math, but the bigger emphasis will be on the real- world aspect of the math. Right now as an education student I would like to think that I will use creative and exciting assessments for the students to show me what they have learned, but at the same time I may have to squeeze a test or a quiz or two in once and a while. I don’t plan on using test as my major assessment. I don’t want the students so think that if they don’t do well on the tests then they fail. I want them to realize that if they don’t do well testing they will have some other way to show their understanding of the content.

Motivation-
NEVER USE GRADES AS MOTIVATION. I had teachers who did that and it would freak kids out. Some kids get a lot of baggage from their parents if they don’t do well with their grades, so using grades as a motivator can sometimes freak kids out. As a teacher I want to motivate students to do their work by having them do engaging activities. If I motivate them by giving them fun and creative activities to do, that way I don’t need to bribe them with something in order for them to want to learn.

Discipline-
When it comes to my thoughts on discipline in the classroom I have a hard time thinking about my opinion. I hate disciplining, because I have a hard time finding the middle. At the beginning of the year I would like to have my students along with myself come up with the classroom rules. I think that students should be involved with this because it will help them; 1.) Remember the rules better, 2) Respect the Rules more, 3) and maybe adjust them when they see something going wrong in the classroom.

Classroom Setup-
One part of my teaching style that I’ve never been quite sure on is how to group my students when we do activities. On one hand I believe that you should mix students because it is good to have all types of learners mixed together. They can all bring something different to the activity. On the other side of things, sometimes students that are at the higher level of thinking may take over and not give the other students a chance to share their ideas towards the activity that they are working on.

Constructivism/ Reconstructivism

From the first section of this chapter I have learned that I am definitely big on student-centered education. The biggest theory that appealed to me was constructivism. In practicum Beth told me that she could totally see me as being a group activity, hands- on teacher. I like doing things with my hands and I think that is the best way I learned, so I’m sure that’s why I would like to teach this way. It seems a lot of the time students learn very well from looking at things through an activity based lesson. If students are learning about the related rate problems they may remember it better if they see it “in action” compared to just being on the paper.
After class I learned that I like the idea of reconstructivism. I want my students to look into what’s going on with their world around them besides school. Reconstuctivism seems to me like the “ism” that wants the students to build bridges and move mountains. I believe strongly in my students doing extra-curricular activities especially ones that deal with community service or dealing with the community in some way.
One thing that the book discusses is the physical setting of the classroom. I’ve always wanted to have one of those comfy relaxing classrooms but if you’ve ever been in a public high school most of the time they aren’t exactly what I would call “homey”. I plan on having posters of not just math stuff but of bands, and beaches and maybe books or movies. The kids don’t need to repeatedly see math quotes, or formulas all over their classroom walls. Another thing is I’d like to have my teachers help me set the rules for the class and of course if I believe that there are some that they missed that are important then I’m going to write them down and ask their ideas on them. Maybe together we can have the same rules but the students can have them written in their own way.
Two of the types of “discipline” that I liked were the Discipline with Dignity approach and the Conflict Resolution approach. I like the idea of having the students look into what they did and see what they should have done differently. I also like the idea of talking to the students about it and not just throwing a detention their way.

Pragmatist, Existentialist or Both?

After reading on the different philosophies of education I came to the conclusion that I’m definitely a student- centered teacher. I kind of knew this before I took the little quiz or anything because last year during practicum Beth told me after she saw me teach that I would realize that my teaching is based around my students. I came to the conclusion that my philosophy of education is based around the Pragmatist and the Existentialist, (they tied on the quiz). Whenever I planned my lesson plans in Practicum or in Content Lit, a lot of my activities dealt with the students working together in groups, and not a whole lot of the class, if any, dealt with lecturing. I want my students to be able to have a notebook that isn’t filled with my thoughts or information that I feed to them. I want their notebook to be filled with things they have discovered, pictures of things they have worked with, formulas that they have derived themselves with maybe a little bit of my help on the side. I want to be a guide to my students, not a talking website. I want my students to learn through experiments, outdoor activities. I want my classroom to be outside on the soccer field, or in the computer center, or on a gym court or maybe out in the woods behind the school. I want my students to turn into detectives, and explorers when they walk in to my classroom. That would be the reason I am on the pragmatist side of educational philosophy. The existentialist in me comes out because this is how I learned. As a teacher I love having the students work in groups but as a student I wanted to do stuff on my own. When it came to projects and we had the choice of a partner or doing it on your own, I always liked to do it by myself. I liked making my own choices and doing things on my own. It could be the baby of the family in me, because I have always been independent. I also felt like my relationships with my teachers were a bit more personal because I didn’t mind going to see them on my own. I believe that as a teacher it will be good that I am so closely related to both of these philosophies, because I think they are both have very important qualities that will help run a fun, creative classroom.

Experiential Learning

I have to admit I don't know if I learned a bunch today that will stick in my head but I do have to admit I believe strongly in experiential learning. Coming from the math perspective, this is how I learned math. I never did just the straight forward sit down math, we did investigations to learn our math. We would observe different things, we would do different experiments to derive a formula, we would look at pictures and graphs to derive different things, we would build stuff on our own to show that we understood what we were learning. Experiential Learning is a lot of the way that I was taught and, me, personally as a student loved it. I know I learned so much better about math concepts through this style of teaching more than I have been in a traditional classroom. I am hoping that the school that I work at allows me to teach in this manner. I believe it's hard and time consuming to teach this way all of the time, but it definitely should be a part a teaching style.

Experiential Learning

TWYH (the end)

This section of the story really showed me how people cope a lot differently dealing with situations. I’m glad that we touched upon this in class because before we talked I though, ‘Wow, Erin… is not healthy anymore.’ But it’s just that her way of coping and my way of coping are completely different. If my mother who is completely my support system died while I was away I would have done anything to get back home. I would not be able to stand in front of thousands of people and give a motivational speech about education. I’m glad we talked about this though because like Steve said in class, it’s just the way people cope with situations A lot of people who are big time workaholics dive into their work to cope with things and almost to help forget about things, but when I want to cope with something I like to talk to someone and get it out. For example, when my best friend died I needed my mom, I called in sick to work for the rest of the week and I just needed my time with friends and family. I wanted to talk about her and remember her, I didn’t want to go to work and try and forget about her while I waited on people. I think that I would have done a horrible job if I went in to work after she past away.

TWYH 177-227

This section was when I really saw that the students in room 203 had really turned around. When Erin left a lot of the trip stuff up to the students, not so much the planning but like the rules and regulations they acted very grown up. They were the giddy little kids that they were when Erin first started doing all of this HUGE activities with them. They were still really excited but they acted more like college students that were excited to go and knew that they had to plan a lot of things on their own. They knew that they had to prepare for the trip to really appreciate the trip that they were going on. The only thing is that I’m starting to think about what Stacey said in class, John is Erin’s money tree. There is a part in the book on page 192 where Erin and John have conversation that goes like this after she found out that they couldn’t get any sponsors for the trip, “ ‘Why didn’t you come to me earlier?’ John asked,
‘I wanted to prove to you that we could pull this one off without your help’
‘Can you?’
‘No.’
‘How many Freedom Writers are planning on going?’
‘About fifty…’
‘How much are you short?’
‘About two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.’
Without hesitation, John Tu took out his checkbook and wrote a check for $250,000.”
Okay… that’s a quarter of a million dollars. Yes I know the man has money but she didn’t have to tell him that much did she??

Multicultural and Gender Issues

The girls did an AWESOME job today on their presentation I thought. I really enjoyed how they hit all aspects of multi culture. When I think about multi- cultural students I pretty much think of ethnicity or their racial backgrounds. I never think about their religion or their sexual orientation. Stacey and Chelsea showed me a lot of different things about multi-culture that I would not ever think about. For example the video they showed us about those students who wanted to fast in the cafeteria but not around the other students I can see as understandable but why take the jello away? I mean yes it sounds funny and yes it probably isn’t the BEST of snacks for kids, but they love that stuff so why take it away from them because a couple of other kids.

Motivation

I thought the boys did a really good job presenting the information to us today. I think the activities were engaging but I was little unsure about how the types of teacher we were had to deal with how we motivate students. Now that I think about it though, if I’m an authoritative teacher then I’m not going to use a whole lot of positive extrinsic motivation. Another thing is depending on what kind of teacher I am I may not use the “right” kind of motivation. I may think that it is good motivation because the kids are actually showing some improvement in their work but I shouldn’t use things like “grades” or movies or “no class work time”. So, now I realize that what type of teacher you are plays a HUGE role on how you motivate your students.

Promising Futures School

While reading this it was a little dry but I liked how it showed some of the real life situations of how the different aspects of a Promising Futures school worked. I have a feeling something this rather works out really well or it could be just another thing that a school is trying to do that fails. The school that I’m tutoring at is trying to start becoming a Promising Futures school. Some things are working out well like freshman mentors, where the group of freshmen are suppose to meet up with the mentor once a month and they discuss their grades and what ways they can make their grades better. It seems to be working for some of the students, especially the ones who have mentors that are really involved, BUT for the other students its just another thing they have to go to. I think the idea behind Promising Futures is an awesome idea but I think that you need to have the teacher and student support behind it also.

TWYH Chapters 20-25

These chapters were probably my favorite because the story is starting to be more about the students than about just Erin. The most influential part for me in this section of the book was when they got off of the bus. Here they are coming back from doing something so spectacular in Washington to getting question about a racist act. I couldn't believe how Erin was able to handle the situation. As a teacher I wouldn't know what to say to the students. Some people say that silence is sometimes the best in situations like that because there really is no words for things sometimes.
This book is showing me that there are going to be so many situations where the kids are going to be looking to me for answers and I'm afraid that I won't have them. There's more to being a teacher than just answering math homework problems, that's just a small portion of the answers I'm going to be asked.

Cirriculum Integration

I have to be honest, this is how I want to teach. When I first started out in the Education program here at UMF I always had difficulties thinking of ways to integrate other subjects into mathematics. Since this has been a big discussion in a lot of our EDU classes I'm always thinking of different ways to integrate other subjects into mathematics. For example the other day we were talking about the history of Geometry in MAT 320: History of Mathematics, and I actually day dreamed about how I could use this as a teacher when I'm teaching a unit on proofs in Geometry.

I would really like to do an Integrated Classroom with someone else like we saw in the video that Eileen and Steve showed us during their presentation. I would like this because like I said earlier I do have difficulties trying to put other subjects into math but if I was working with another teacher I think that would be awesome and like they always say, "Two heads are better than one".

Another point I've thought about it how you don't need to integrate your entire curriculum but projects dealing with other classes are awesome ideas. But I agree with the point that Eileen and Steve made was don't make it over-whelming to your students. A good way to start it is by making them individual projects for each class with out the students knowing that there is a theme with the other teachers, then kind of guide them into the bigger project. Start off small for something that could be really big.

TWYH Pages 104-140

Erin's second year was just... WOW. She dealt with students who have dealt with death, students who live in poverty, and others who are with gangs. I've always thought about how would I be able to deal with the situations of the loss of a student, or students who have dealt with hardships that I never had to deal with. Like when Tommy told Erin what ended up happening with his cousin and his best friend. A situation I've thought about was what about deaths that are results of accidents. For example, in high school a well known girl died in a car accident and the person driving was a peer of ours. As a teacher it would obviously be hard dealing with the loss of a student and her friends but how do you treat the kid that was driving? If it was me I would want to help him/her in anyway that I could but what do you say to them??

Another part that hit me in these chapters was when Zlata and her family came and they had that huge ordeal of a celebration. The kids were like many of us were back in Elementary school when we had open house or some special event for school. We were always so excited to show our parents what we had made or learn and we wanted to introduce them to everyone. That's what these guys reminded me of, but I was thinking about the fact that they probably didn't have the feeling of being proud of themselves at that age like I did.

TWYH pgs 39-103

Before the discussion we had in class I really didn't think about the other causes of anxiety I would be dealing with while I was teaching. I've always thought about how am I going to get my students to be interested in me as a teacher while still learning. I always worried about if I would be able to teach the kids or if I would confuse them even more. After reading this semester of Erin's first year as a teacher I see that there are a lot more things going on then just whats happening in the classroom. I never thought about having to okay things in my lessons, or ask permission from the Department Head to do an activity with the kids. I never thought about what age level I was going to be put in to teaching. I have to admit if I was told that I had all freshman classes my first year as a teacher I would be a little... nervous. When I was teaching the Freshman classes during practicum I didn't mind it because I had a mentor teacher there helping me "control" the kids. From my experiences I have learned that some freshman like to walk all over the teacher as much as they can, almost like a four year old who knows that if he tells the babysitter, "well, mom and dad let me do it.." then they will get their way. I have a hard time with my classroom management skills so when I'm put into a situation like that I may have trouble. One other thing that I thought about while reading these chapters was about my support system. I need someone to "let it all out" to and that has always been my mom. Like Erin's dad my mom is the one I always go to advice for and if I'm having a bad day or what I think to be a bad day I always run to her. Sometimes she'll give me advice that I want to hear but sometimes she'll day "Steph, it's not that bad you'll live." I wonder as you get more and more into teaching if you still need that support system as much because when I'm 50 and still teaching my mom may not be there for me to "bitch" at and I'm sure my husband's not going to want to listen to it, so what am I going to do? (There's another anxiety I thought about).

TWYH Pgs 1-35

The first five chapters of this book have scared me just a little bit. I'm a small town girl, that has not seen much of the world. I've seen a lot of New England, but nothing to the extreme. I've been to the White Mountains a lot and places like Burlington, VT and Newburyport, MA but nothing like Boston, MA or New York, NY. I haven't been to majorly diverse areas. My schools weren't exactly what I would call a cross- cultural experience. Now coming from the background that I have, I don't know how I would be able to handle a situation like " Mrs.G" does in the book. She is a teacher that I want to be and am hoping to become, but I don't know if I could handle the situations that she is handling. In our background statement there was a question about what we believe a superior teacher is; Mrs. "G" is a prime example in my eyes. She was someone who would do anything for her students so that they could open their eyes to learning. I don't believe that in order to be a superior teacher you need to buy books for your students or take them to the movies and one of the finest restaurants in town but you need to try for your students. You need to push through barriers so that your students can learn. People like Mrs. "G" are the educators who make me want to become one. I'm hoping that I can reach out to my students like she does in this book.