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Rachel WinslowDecember 2, 2013EDU 215#MU2152My Past, Present, and Future in the Education WorldThe first time I realized I wanted to be a teacher was at a very young age, I knew when I was in kindergarden. I loved my teacher that year and I could not see myself doing anything else with my adult life. Throughout my years of school I never thought about any other career, whereas most people changed their minds all the time or had goals of fame, but not me. I wanted to be a teacher. I want to help students, and as stated in Outliers (2008) by Malcolm Gladwell, no one gets through a situation alone, my students will also not get through anything alone. I went to Hershey Montessori School in Concord, Ohio from preschool to third grade I then transferred to public school for my fourth grade year. Dr. Maria Montessori devoted her life to the study of how children learn. Hershey Montessori School (2013) explains what Dr. Maria Montessori has discovered when creating her schools, Based on her scientific observations, she developed a child-centered approach to education founded on the following principles: Education should prepare children for life - intellectually, emotionally and physically, Children learn best without undue interference, motivated by their innate need to explore and discover, Specially designed environments facilitate children's development to their fullest potential (Hershey Montessori School, 2013). Montessori learning involves children being allowed to progress at their own pace, regardless of ability level or age. Also in my Montessori school we had many different cultures of people as well as both genders, male and female. I remember I had a boy who moved to the United States from India in my class. We as a class were always curious about his culture and how he lived his life in India and how it was different from here. I liked learning about other cultures. We always read books from authors of different ethnicities; our curriculum was multicultural because I feel that the Montessori way of teaching was very life based. Everything we learned about was to make us better people, what we learned was not just state standards, what we learned had meaning to me. It was not just information the students did not care about, it was relevant to us as students and as future people of society. As Gladwell (2008) explains in Rice Paddies and Math Tests, “What redeemed the life of a rice farmer, however, was the nature of that work. It was a lot like the garment work done by the Jewish immigrants to New York. It was meaningful” (p. 236). The rice farmer worked hard all day, every day, to produce a crop of rice that he sold to other people to make a profit. The Jewish immigrants also made clothes and sold them on the streets of New York for money. These examples from the book show that these groups of people became successful in their trade because they were doing work that was meaningful to them. Rice and clothes were their funds and they would work as hard as they could to produce those funds to support their families. The activities we did in the classroom were things such as cleaning up your dishes after you ate lunch, sweeping the floor, building blocks, and organizing objects into categories. Activities such as cleaning is considered to be a stereotype of women today, but throughout Montessori schooling the activities are taught to all the students no matter what the gender so that the stereotypes of gender roles do not surface into further generations to come. Life teachings like cleaning and organizing help the students throughout their life to help around the house and to be better people. The Montessori teachings were geared towards meaningful work; the topics the students learned about were meaningful to them, making them interested and wanting to learn. My kindergarden teacher’s name was Hester. I honestly do not remember her last name because I was only five years old when I had her, and because I attended a Montessori elementary school, and there the students call their teachers by their first names. Hester was a sweet older woman who taught me so many things growing up including how to tie my shoes, to read, and to wash dishes and clean up after myself because those are the kinds of things Montessori schools worked on at a very young age. I was always excited to go to school in the morning and never wanted to leave at the end of the day. My first day of first grade was an eye opener for me at Montessori schools; I walked into a classroom with not only first graders, but second and third graders as well. It was a combination classroom, and my classroom was mostly female based, my grade had 5 people in it and it was 4 girls and 1 boy. I realized very quickly that I would not get the same amount of attention as I did last year in Hester’s class. My teacher’s name was Lori. She was a nice teacher too, but she had to be more of a harsh teacher because she had three different grade levels to teach and watch throughout the school day. The classrooms were set up in a way that there was more than one grade and age level in each classroom. The students in a way played a teacher role among the other students. The younger students looked up to the older students in the class. Usually if a girl student had a question they would ask another girl and if a boy had a question they would as another boy. Cooties were in existence for my younger school days. At my school, the girls were considered to be the more knowledgeable students of the school because we were more organized. we always knew what we were doing and what our tasks for the day were. The boys of the school were considered to be the clowns and the ones to crack jokes. That was not true for all the students of each gender, but it was a stereotype among my school. If a first grader had a question about an activity or did not understand how to do a task, the older student such as the second graders or third graders would help out the younger students. Going back to Outliers, no one does anything on their own. As Gladwell (2008) States, “It is impossible for a hockey player, or Bill Joy, or Robert Oppenheimer, or any other outlier for that matter to look down from their lofty perch and say with truthfulness, ‘I did this, all by myself’” (p.285). The first graders would not be nearly as successful if the second and third graders did not help them out when they needed it. The students work together towards a common goal, and that is success. Whether that is their own success or the success of another classmate the students will strive for success. As Gladwell (2008) also states that, “Superstar lawyers, math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don’t. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky–but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier, in the end is not an outlier at all” (p.285). Gladwell is saying that all the successful people in the world has not only worked for what they have achieved, but they were also helped by their upbringing, their gender, their opportunities, and their peers to reach the point they are at today in life as successful human beings, they did not become successful on their own.Our typical classroom activities were spelling, reading, writing, math, history and sciences just like other classrooms in a public school, but Montessori was different. My teacher, Lori, never stood at the front of the classroom and taught, that is not the Montessori way. She takes a few students, a group of about six, and taught lessons in groups. I would assume she broke us up into groups by our level of learning and I do not think it mattered what grade the student was in. While the group of six students were working with the teacher, the other students were around the classroom at different stations working on whatever they wanted. If the groups were predominantly female the group sessions went very smoothly, but if the groups were predominantly male, well that is a whole different story, the group session would take twice as long because the students would not cooperate to the expectations or like the females did. It could have been that our teacher favored the females of the class and not the males because she herself was of the female gender. I did not realize this situation back then, but now knowing what I know she could have been gender biased against the males yelling at them more often because they favored males. Montessori schools are student centered; there was hardly full attention on the teacher, unless she was giving directions for an assignment. As Gladwell (2008) States, “Practice isn’t the thing you do one you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good” (p.42). In a way, the teachers not paying as much attention to the students could be viewed as the students having more time to practice what they have learned. Since the teacher never really told us what to do, usually I did the same activity everyday; I never challenged myself, which could also be said as non-learning. In Herbert Kohl’s (1994) book, I Will Not Learn From You, he states, “Learning how to not-learn is an intellectual and social challenge; sometimes you have to work very hard at it” (p. 2). I used not-learning in elementary school by refusing to do other learning activities, which in the long run hurt my education at Montessori school, but I did not care at the time. Now I regret my decision. I refused to do a different activity because I liked my regular one and it was fun. My teacher never told me to do something different so I did not. Teachers mostly observed, and did not tell students what to do. In a way, I did like that way of teaching, but for a child like me, I did not learn very much in a Montessori classroom setting. I did not fit in very well with my genders stereotype, which was the more knowledgeable student. I was a go with the flow type of student; I was simply an average student of the school. I do not recall being bullied for not fitting my stereotype though like the little girl in the video we watched about the tomboy girl. Teachers should let the students figure out problems and activities on their own, but I also think that a teacher should put down a foot and tell the students what to do when needed. Usually the students who attended a Montessori school are privileged with a family that can afford to pay for such an expensive school. Teachers know we as students attending that school have the funds to go there, so they know we don’t know any different from they way we grew up. Gladwell (2008) explains about the ten thousand hour rule, “Ten thousand hours is an enormous amount of time. It’s all but impossible to reach that number all by yourself by the time you’re a young adult. You have to have parents who encourage and support you. You can’t be poor, because if you have to hold down a part-time job on the side to make ends meet, there won’t be time left in the day to practiced enough” (p.42). Attending a Montessori school and growing up in a privileged family, gave me an up in the world in certain aspects because my family had the money to send me to a school that made practicing what was learned so important to the classroom environment. The teachers make a point to educate us on other ways of life and how other people live. I did not know as well as I do now how other people live and how other people live throughout their lives. Back then, I knew some people did not have a home, or food, and some parents could not make enough money to support their families. At the school, we did food drives for the local food pantry and the Cleveland food bank a few times a year such as in November for the holiday seasons like Thanksgiving and Christmas time. I was aware of those sorts of issues among people and my school as a whole helped me learn more about it. But the ideas I did not know about that I know now are family issues such as divorce, drugs abuse, and physical abuse. Now I know that those situations happen and when you are a teacher you run into these situations. In a perfect world all of your students are great smart students with successful families, but that is not the case. There will always be hard times in some ones life and in your own as a teacher. An early childhood education teacher has to be a counselor and a teacher at times. A student could be going through hard family situation such as their mother is a drug addict and does not care about their education. That is a tough situation that a teacher and the student has to go through. The teacher has to talk to the student about their situation, see how they can overcome the situation and continue to learn even though there is a bump in the road. Each gender responds differently towards family situations. Males for example may act out during class because they are bothered by what is going on in their home life. A female may respond to a situation by keeping to themselves, and being very quiet. Females are taught to be scared of situations and males are taught to fight situations. For example, in the book A White Teacher Talks About Race (2009) by Julie Landsman, she is the narrator of the story and it is stories from her life as a teacher. In her book, she is scared of white men and being “the only” because she was rapped (p. 3) Landsman was scared of being “the only” girl in the room, the only girl walking outside, the only white girl, but in reality she is not the only one. Anything that has happened to you it has probably happened to someone else as well, it was just not talked about or brushed under the rug, which does not help anyone. Silence does not stop violence. In this type of situation all women have a fear of being taken advantage of and usually it is not talked about. What is talked about is how to prevent this from happening. Girls are told what to do to not let that situation happen to them, but males are not told anything. We as females are vulnerable and scared of that situation occurring to us, and males do not realize that situation goes through our heads as much as it really does, such as walking home alone at night. Each family is different and is going to bring different situations to the table, which is your classroom. The students I will have in my classroom and their individual family dynamics, culture, and gender will make my classroom different from any other classroom. The differences my students bring will make us a special class as a whole. Teachers show us that we all come from different cultures and backgrounds and we would learn about those cultures and backgrounds. Landsman (2009) Says “I must be vigilant with myself. I watch for an unmediated reaction, my tendency to assume a young person of color is “typical” of his or her cultural group” (p. 90). She is saying she tries to never assume a certain behavior from any culture. Stereotypes of cultures, races, and genders make this difficult but it is possible to break the stereotypes and that is what all teachers must do to be successful as a teacher. The teachers wanted the students to try to adopt other traditions and behaviors or ways of life from other cultures into our own in a melting pot sort of way, but in a good way. The melting pot ideas can be taken in two different ways. One being that the cultures of everyone is mixed to create one better culture or way of life, and the other being that all cultures are brought together and integrated in a way that the different cultures are acknowledged and celebrated throughout many different cultures not only their own. For example, in my classroom we celebrated Catholic, Jewish and other holidays because not all students have the same beliefs and traditions so we would embrace all differences between the students. The students knew that they were not all the same, they knew they had differences and they embraced them instead of made fun of each other, or used stereotypes against them. Hershey Montessori School was a great school. I am glad I attended there when I was young. Although I did not continue the Montessori education as long as I could I still feel it was beneficial for me. The real life learning was the most successful for me, but at Montessori schools the child is motivated by themselves. The teacher does not tell the students what to do, or when to do it. I personally did not succeed in that process of learning. I would get into my mom’s car every day after school and she would ask me what I learned today or what I did today, most of the time I would say the exact same thing as the day before, either nothing or it was the same activity over and over again because I knew it was easy. I never challenged myself at the Montessori school like other students did. My brother did wonderful at the school because he challenged himself each and every day. The Montessori program is not for everyone. It depends on the student’s learning style. Attending a Montessori school was a good experience for me, it was a lot different than public school, but different in a good way, sometimes. Culture is not always taught in schools, it is usually overlooked and pushed to the side. The reason young children do not know about other cultures other than their own is due to the fact that other cultures other than the normal or their own is not taught to them. This is a problem. Culture is too important to not be taught to the younger generations. How do we expect the world to become a better place if the rest of the world is not taught to us? By wanting to become a better place that should motivate people to learn more about other cultures, but that does not happen. People decide not to care or they create stereotypes about the other cultures because of the misinformation they have received and judge upon people. The only way to inform people about other cultures is to educate. Through education in the school systems to students about the different cultures around the world we can help eliminate stereotypes and misinformation as well as educate the people one step at a time, then those people can educate who they know. Educating people about cultures should become a domino effect and the world would be a more positive place to be. When I become a teacher I plan to educate my students about culture. I not only plan on educating my students, but as well as the parents. I do not want the student to learn about a culture and talk about it at home then have the parents tell them they are wrong or tell them stereotypes of that culture. I want the students and the parents to learn together to create a bigger impact on their lives. Stereotypes are learned labels, these learned labels usually originate from what the parents of the child believe and think. I plan to break down these stereotypes to help both parents and children grow as culturally aware educated people of the world. My plan to educate the students on cultures is to dedicate each week of the school year to a different culture. During that week we will focus on books and authors from that culture, pictures, how they dress, what they eat, how they speak, where in the world they are, and where it can be found near us. Also during the week I will have projects and activities such as a dress up day or bring in a food from that culture to share with the class. Other activities I plan to incorporate into my classroom to educate cultures is to talk about my students different cultures. I do not know where I will end up teaching later on in life, hopefully it will be a culturally spread out classroom. Either way, this activity will work well to talk about the different cultures in the classroom. Each student will make a poster of their family including their culture, where their ancestors came from, what their traditions are and what food their family cooks for traditions and celebrations. The students will teach me about them, it will help me get to know them as people. Along with that, it will help the other students in the classroom get to know each other. It will help our classroom grow as a whole to become closer. I feel this activity will work best at the beginning of the school year, at about the first week of school. Getting to know the students right away will make for a successful school year. The students will enjoy this activity because they will be teaching me. They will be teaching me about themselves, about their home life, their family, and their culture, and where they came from. Young children love talking about themselves and the activities they like to do. This activity will not even seem like a learning experience to them because they will enjoy it so much and think it is fun, which is always the goal for a teacher and their lessons. At least for me that will be a goal. I want the students to want to learn. If they do not care about what they are learning about they will not chose to remember it and actually learn it. Culture is too important of a topic to be forgotten.I plan to incorporate the parents in the educating of the students. My plan is to send home weekly during each different week of cultures an information sheet about what their child learned this week. The first page of the flier will be what I actually taught them. The second half of the flier will be written by their own student telling their parents what they individually learned also what they liked and disliked about that specific culture we focused on for that week. Keeping the parents involved in the learning process of the student helps them learn together. The parent and student learning together also helps break down stereotypes about cultures. Most adults do not know about other cultures and they pass on misinformation about them, teaching their child the wrong information. The children do not know any better so they believe what their parents tell them, even if it is wrong information. The parents need to be taught too to avoid these situations in the home. If the home life and the school life are receiving the same information, it will be easier to teach to the students. Along with that, it will help the students remember the information because they are using the information at home and at school. Educating people about other cultures is important. Knowing about other cultures helps make a person well rounded. Cultural knowledge will make for a positive community. From reading the book, I Will Not Learn From You by Herbert Kohl, my eyes have been opened to thinking about the teaching philosophy I will have when I become a teacher. Kohl (1994) explains, “If you look for strengths and filter the world through the prism of hope, you will see and encourage the unexpected flowering of child life in the most unlikely places” (p. 44). I will look for hope in all of my students. They all have hope in their hearts, they hope to learn, and my job will be to teach them and help them learn to grow up to ultimately be the best person they can possibly be. Kohl explains in his book that if one looks at a child through the filter of their home-life or their economic situation and base it upon ones own social structure and culture, one will create judgments and characteristics that one would expect and will find yourself on the path to failure in the education field. Kohl suggests teachers to look through the filter of hope. Kohl (1994) states, “Hope makes it possible for children to become active creators of their own values” (p. 44). Hope is what gets most kids through the day. Hope is such an important part of life that some teachers overlook. My philosophy as a teacher will be to hope for the success of all of my students, hope they will overcome all challenges and learn from them, to hope for the best. I will be an active teacher. Actively paying attention to the students at all times, during group work I will walk around the room and focus in on conversations to see what my students are thinking, how they are coming to their conclusions, and answer any questions. Teachers who sit at their desks all day long seem like they do not care about what is going on in the classroom or about their students. I would never want to give off that vibe to my students. I want to show my students I care all day, every day. Lori, my teacher in the combination classroom, did not pay attention to the students who were not working with her in a group. I felt left out working by myself for 75% of the school day. I wanted more attention from my teacher, but that is not the way my school was. It was mostly individual work and learning their own. I do not want to be that kind of teacher. I want to teach at the front of the room sometimes, but I also want to sit back and let the students show me what they know and what they have learned from me. That is when I will sit in my desk, when the students are presenting to me and teaching me what they know. In the book, Teaching with Vision: Culturally Responsive Teaching in Standards-Based Classrooms, by Christine E. Sleeter, she states “Communication is a two-way street-you must have the ability to listen in addition to speaking”. When you are hearing someone talk you are not comprehending the information being spoken, but when you listen to someone you are truly comprehending and understanding what is going on. As a teacher, I must make sure I am not speaking to the students and having them only hear me, I want them to listen to me and understand the information being passed onto them. Sleeter also states, “If we cannot communicate effectively, effective teaching is impossible”. Effective teaching is necessary in order for the students to succeed in the classroom. If the teaching is not effective, going to school is basically a waste of the children’s time. As a teacher I will make it a priority that students are paying attention and are actually comprehending and learning what I am teaching to the students. My language should be understood by not some, but most, but all. My language should be understood by all of my students to make sure they fully understand what is being taught. When a teacher uses language not known by a student, that puts them at an unfair disadvantage. While I am a teacher I could have students who do not speak the same language as me, or not understand the slang I am using in the classroom. More than likely this situation will occur at least once in my teaching career. How I will solve this problem is to find someone who does speak the language of my student and can translate to them what I am teaching. If a student does not understand a slang term I am using I will teach them what it means so they can fully understand what I am teaching them. The students need to be open and honest with me, they need to feel comfortable enough with me as well as the class to ask me questions. If a student does not understand something I am teaching to them, I want them to ask me. I cannot help them excel if I do not know they are struggling with a topic. If I know they are struggling I will do anything I can to help them, such as tutoring during recess, tutoring after school, extra worksheets, and so on. Taking a back seat sometimes in the classroom is a good idea, teachers need to listen to their students from time to time to make sure they truly understand what is going on. Learn from your students and they will learn from you. Education is an important field to go into and I believe I can make a difference in teaching world. Opening the classroom up to different cultures will help make a classroom closer, not farther apart and some educators do not understand that because they think that stereotypes will be formed from culture, gender or upbringing, but learning about other cultures and how other genders feel and think makes it easier for students to open up because they feel comfortable in their classroom environment. I can bring out the hope in my students because I want the best for them even when some people are trying to bring them down, people such as their families or other genders. I will always be their rock, my classroom will be a stable environment for all students. Students deserve to be happy at school, cared about, safe, have fun, and most importantly, learn. If a teacher does not care about his or her students those teachers should get out of the education field. If I ever stop loving teaching, that is the day I will resign. The students deserve the best and nothing less. ReferencesGladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success. New York, NY: Little Brown and Company of the Hachette Book Group.Hershey Montessori School. (2013). About Montessori: Key concepts. Retrieved on September 4th, 2013 from Kohl, H. (1994). I will not learn from you. New York, NY: The New Press.Landsman, J. (2009). A white teacher talks about race. New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield Education. Sleeter, C. (2011) Teaching with Vision: Culturally Responsive Teaching in Standards-Based Classroom. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. ................
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