As an educator I am one of the most influential people in the lives of kids as they grow up. Kids spend more amount at school than anything during the year which means that they are around educators more than anybody besides maybe their parents. That means that as educators we have a huge impact on what these kids are exposed to and model how they are supposed to act. I think that the largest thing educators can do for the common good is model what it is like to be a good person. I know that as I grew up I looked up to the teachers I had as role models for how to act. Thankfully I had some fantastic teachers who were able to instill good characteristics into me. As educators if we can model how to be a good role model we can help the common good. We can help kids who may not have good role models at home or who are not exposed to a lot of positive reinforcement get that. If we are able to do that it will change the lives of these students and allow them to become better people. That is how an educator can help the common good, change the lives of the students that walk through the door for the better.
When thinking about teaching there are many things that I am looking forward to. One of the biggest things I am excited about is being able to create relationships with the students. I enjoy working with people and creating meaningful relationships with people I see on a day to day basis. I always thought that there was something special about the impact a teacher relationship can have in a students life. I know I have had many teachers throughout my lifetime that have made huge impacts on me and change not only the way I think, but the way that I act. I want to be the teacher who makes the impact on students and change their lives for the better.
One thing I am concerned about with teaching is being patient enough with certain things. I know that I can be an impatient person at times and I understand that can sometimes not translate well to a classroom environment. It will be a challenge and something that I am sure sometimes I will find myself losing. However, I think that it will be something that I will be able to overcome as I have had years of practice already having to deal with my impatience. While it is a concern I have I think it is something that over time I will learn to deal with and get it under control as I will value the learning of my students over everything.
The Wisconsin school project was a very interesting project to do. There was a lot of information that we collected about the schools that we researched. We were able to get a small snapshot of what that school was like based on a few different things. These were school size/per pupil spending, attendance rates, graduation rates, average teacher wages/benefits, standardized test scores, diversity of students, percentage of special needs students, special ed program provided, free/reduced lunch percentage, extra/co-curricular opportunities. All of this information was collected for every single school in Marinette and Oconto county.
However, this project was not all about just gathering information and putting it into a spreadsheet. One thing I learned from this project is that there are a lot of different aspects that go into characterizing a school. When I thought about schools before this project I was not thinking about all of these different aspects. There was so much more information around the research that we were doing as well that we never touched. It makes it hard for me to characterize schools into a certain category because they all have something different about them. Whether it be the diversity of students, proficiency in core curriculum, free lunch late etc. Not a single school that we looked at was the same. I also was able to gauge what the demographic of the counties were. I think that this was good information to know since it is a place that I could go and work at in the future. I think that is very valuable since knowing more about a potential gives me a good idea whether it would be the right place for me or not.
One thing this project also taught me was how to find research about schools and school districts. It is a certain type of research because there is not one exact place to find everything you need. I had to visit many different places to find the information that I was looking for. From school report cards to going onto school websites to find the sports and extracurricular activities offered. We also got taught how to use new resources to find widespread information on a map. It allows us to use certain filters to search what we are looking for throughout the entire state of Wisconsin.
Overall, the Wisconsin school project was a valuable project to do. It not only made me aware of information about schools that I could potentially work at. It also gave me new skills when it comes to finding information. It was tough to find information sometimes, however it payed off in the end when all of the information was found.
The Edtalk project was an interesting experience for me. From doing my own Edtalk video to watching other peoples and learning about their books, there was a lot of information that I took in during the activity. From learning about different types of students in many different stories to how other people interacted to them there was a lot to learn and take away from this exercise.
When making my video I got to learn about things that I struggle with when it comes to presenting information to people. One thing I learned was that I can sometimes struggle to find what information is actually important to present to people. Especially when there was the entire book of information to choose from. It was very helpful to have someone else with me who gave ideas about what was important and not. I also found that I can be wordy with my explanations of things. I tend to overword things sometimes and have to re read what I already wrote down and refine it after. If I don’t do this my explanations tend to get longwinded and the point that I am trying to get across never actually gets there. I did also find that I am good at a few things, I am able to come up with explanations for things quickly and after a quick re read I am able to have a good idea of what I want to say. I also found that I am quite comfortable in front of a camera and in front of people in general. I found all of these things important to know because these things could affect my teaching strategies in the future.
When listening to other peoples videos I was able to learn about what a potential student would be like in a classroom. Every book had a student from a different background whether that was race, economic, ethnic, or just grew up with different experiences in their lives. Each of these kids were vastly different and all had some sort of struggle or challenge when it came to the classroom. In our class discussions we were able to come up with different ideas as to how we could help these students if they were in our classroom. From actual actions like what to do if a student had a breakdown, to just basic ideas of how to have an open and welcoming classroom. These ideas can all be transferred into a real classroom, things like being open to talk to students or tailoring lessons to help a student who may have had a recent traumatic event. I was able to pick up a lot of ideas on ways that I could improve my future classroom.
Looking at a timeline of the American Education System there were a lot of different topics that caught my attention. One event that really stood out to me was the opening of one of the first public high schools in America the Boston English High School. There are many reasons I find this interesting first of all that this event happened in the year 1821. This is over one hundred years after schooling systems were introduced into America. That means that for many many years the only people who were going to school were ones that were going to private schools. I personally went to a public school, if I lived before this time then the school I went to would not have even been an idea and I would have ended up at a private school.
I think this is one of the most important events in the education systems history. It created an entirely new idea of what schooling could be making it public to people who wanted to watch. Now they would not be fully public for quite some time, but this was a huge step in the right direction during that time. Public schools are now what a lot of kids go to for high school and this was one of the first ones to open. It showed progress being made in including everyone in making America what it is today. Without public schools the system and the country that we live in would not be what it is right now.
