...continued Postville Blog

This is an extention on my thoughts about Postville. If you were a teacher in Postville how would you deal with the challenges of first, communicating with your students who are Spanish speakers, and second how would you go about real world applications for students whose heritage and culture are so dissimilar? This is where Ed. Psych. comes in. By involving the community and understanding what it is that a certain culture knows you will see more success in your students. We as teacher are not put into a classroom to tell children about what we know, we are there to guide them on their path to knowing more about themselves and to show them the best ways to understanding new information and aquiring a better understanding of "why things are the way they are". I believe that my students are going to teach me more in my first years than I could teach them. What a beautiful thing to look forward to, teaching is much more than classroom control, meeting standards, and learning new facts. That will be the greatest challenge, and also the reason that being a teacher is truly the greatest profession, is our ability to balance what is important to us as teachers, with what is important for each individual child and what the government has deemed important. A system that is continuously restricting a teachers ability to run the classroom the way he or she wants to is the kind of system that a truly great teacher can manipulate. Sort of a meeting standards collides with real world applications and genuine inquisitiveness about the world in which we exist.

Postville Panel Reaction

What happened in Postville is something that should awaken us to the importance of a good education. On May 12th of this year 900 armed men came into Postville and arrested 389 people. Is that an excessive amount of men with semi-automatics to apprehend working people? I think so. Our government has treated them as criminals, they have been accused of ID theft and being in the country illegally. There is so much about Postville that I did not know until I went to the Panel. This is where I see teachers work become important. It is my job as a future educator to encourage my students to be lifelong learners, and as a teacher to be a lifelong learner myself. So many people do not know what happened, why it was significant or the means by which it was done. Things have not just gone back to normal there, it is a city that has been devastated, the people are devistated. Imagine coming to a country where people are supposed to be safe and experiencing treatment similar to that which you were hoping you had escaped. Many, many children do not know where their parents are, much less know when or if they will ever see them again. Families have been ripped appart and the women and children have been left waiting... They cannot work and they cannot leave, forced to remain in the place where they are constantly reminded of the horrors of that day they have nothing contructive to do. Now should we want to know why our government handled this situation in this way? Yes. How do we go about understanding our response and the actions we have taken on illegal immegration. We must look to the past to understand policies today. My generation and the generation for whose education I am responsible for can change policies. It is my job to encourage my students to learn so they might contribute to improving society.

Beginning Blog

My days as a blogger have just begun and let me tell you, my thoughts don't always make perfect sense, the way I work through issues is to talk about it aloud or to write about them. My grammar is not perfect either, much less my spelling- and I want to be an Elementary Teacher- go figure. I have been learning an awful lot about what makes a good teacher. In class we have also been talking a lot about why do we teach? For what purpose do we obtain our education, this is the most basic and essential question to answer; if you do not know what it is you want your students to learn, they will not be successful. It is this question, WHY? that influences legislature and laws about education. No Child Left Behind is an extremely controversal law that was signed in 2002. The philosophy behind it is wonderful, meaning that no child, no exceptions, no excuses should be behind in learning as a result of the instruction they receive. It is important to hold teachers accountable and to continue improving a system that perpetuates the racists and discriminatory beliefs at a bureaucratic level, regardless of discrimination and racism on a personal level. So what do I hope to gain from this class? I hope to have a better understanding of the legislature that will affect my job, I hope to have a sense of purpose when I enter my classroom. I hope that this class answers questions I have not yet thought of.

Lions For Lambs

What makes a good teacher? There are many traits and characteristics that when combined in one person make a great educator. What is the public schools role in our society? Is it a place to educate our children and prepare them for real life, a place to fill their minds with facts and data, a place to send them to keep them off the streets? Lions for Lambs really illuminated for me the importance of shaping and preparing our children to contribute to our society; we must equip students with the skills to think for themselves, to improve our future and most importantly to instill our hopes in them. Their choices can and will change policies, customs, rules, practices, and much more in the world. I think the most compelling scenes in the movie were the dialogues between professor and student. Is the professor a salesman and what is he selling...the student to the student, or the person to themselves. It is our job to find the potential in every person and convince them that they are worth something. Sometimes as students we become so caught up with seeing things from other peoples perspectives and learning about the next and greatest things we forget to reflect on our own views. As a teacher I want to have morals and philosophies to live by, that way I won't wake up one day and ask myself what I have been doing the last 20 years.