Final Blog!

Wow. Already at the end. I know it's kinda corny to say it, but this semester really did FLY by! Looking back, I definitely learned more in this course than I did in any of my other semi-pointless classes (history, english... the basics) Throughout this class I learned more about education than I ever thought I could learn in such a small amount of time. I learned most of the basics of what education is all about. I discovered my own thoughts and theories on education, along with a lot of other peoples. I feel that I got to interact with my classmates thoughts and opinions a lot more than in a regular classroom because here, we were all required to post all the time and read and respond to eachothers thoughts. I really liked this aspect because I feel like I actually had some educational conversations throughout this semester, while in most of my in-class classes, there's only a few students who voice their opinions, and I'm ususally not one of them. I had a hard time accepting 3 online courses. Looking at the work load for this course almost scared me away... yet after taking a week to realize how organized it was, it really wasn't bad at all! So enough about my enjoyment of the course, onto my thoughts on education now, four months later---

I have studied lots of different philosophies in education, and, as I'm guessing most of you now know, I am in love with Rudolph Steiners methods of education and his Waldorf education system. It is all about celebrating the developmental stages of a childs life, and freeing them from fear of adults. It pressures them less on academic achievment at such a young age, and focuses more on celebrating their creative minds. I think this is super important because I feel that kids are pressured at too young of an age to read and write and excel and progress. If they are given time to develop on their own, there will be less stress about "learning disabiliities" and low test scores. They will be able to develop creative minds which will make them unique and happy kids for the rest of their lives!

I feel like learning is like a tree, the roots are super important because they give the tree its strength and ability to grow nice and strong. If the roots of education, AKA the early years and beginnging in getting one interested in learning in general, if these roots are weak, the tree is bound to fail or achieve less than it's full potential. I also enjoyed the metaphors like building a bridge. The teacher is the support beams and helps the students to get over all sorts of obstacles throughout lessons and years in school.

Overall, this course has inspired me more and more to teach. As I said in the beginning, I have changed my career goals atleast a dozen times since my senior year of highschool. Even getting into this course I was really skeptical of teaching because of the economy and the low salary that teachers are said to make. I was so worried about a life ahead of me with financial struggles and perhaps not being happy. But after all of the things this course has taught me, I finally feel comfortable with where my life is going. I am so excited to teach, I think everyone close to me can feel it and are finally happy for me. It's good to know that I'll actually be happy doing what I'm doing. I learned a lot of this acceptance and happiness through getting to know the teachers that I observed for throughout the semester. She gave me a lot of insight into how comfortable her life is, how happy and stress free her job is, and the plus of an amazing schedule every year!


I've also been nannying throughout this semester. This experience has also taught me of how much I'd rather be a teacher than a babysitter. When your a teacher, your students know that you're the boss. They look up to you for guidance and directions and listen to you constatnly. You have the power to send them to the office if they're being bratty and out of control. I recently had to quit my nannying job because it was just too much to handle. The kids would not listen to me because "I'm not in their family" and the fact that they were spoiled rotten did not help the situation! Anyhow, everytime I was there I thought, "Wow, when I'm a teacher, I won't have to deal with this severity!" I mean, kids will be kids, and I love kids, just not having to act like a second mom to them!

The link I used was our classes WebCT. I couldn't really think of anything more logical than that. Within this link holds all of our discussions, all of our blogs, papers, topics, and ideas. It contains everything I've learned. I've enjoyed this semester thoroughly and I can't wait to make a difference in education when I graduate (and hopefully get a job) about a million years from now thanks to Salem State's endless required classes! :)

EDU 101 WebCT

Teaching Metaphor

When first asked about this assignment, I have to admit I was pretty confused! I had no idea what it meant to form a metaphor for teaching and learning. But after looking at a few of the examples, I got the idea. I hate to sound tacky, but I really didn't just choose a tree because it was the first example given! I looked at all of it and I thought about all of the things that grow. That is essential in learning; the process of growing. Children grow into adults, and they are learning throughout the entire metamorphosis from baby to grown up. 

I chose to look at teaching and education on the whole broad spectrum instead of only focusing on elementary years, even though that is what I want to concentrate one. When I think of a metaphor for education, I'd like to include myself into it because I am still learning at age 20. If we think about it, we spend a whole lot of our lives in school and learning so it is super important! We don't want our trees to simply halt in growth mid-height! We want to keep learning and being nourished and thriving and growing until we can reach our maximum potential of learning growth. 

The roots of our tree lie in our educational foundations, as the picture depicts. This is an extremely important part of our tree. It holds the whole thing together. This deciphers exactly how essential our first years of education are. In the first few years, I'd say, preschool or kindergarten to third or fourth grade, we learn so much more than solely academics. This is where we learn most of our social skills, which I feel are probably just as important as academics. The roots become strong with social skills, the first and most "fundational" skills such as reading and writing, along with the first lessons on thinking and analyzing and pondering questions. Having the children inquire into situations and questions is a great way to get them to open up their minds academically, socially, and logically.

 The child should be free to develop and explore and celebrate their creativity and potential freely; as the roots of a tree grow freely through the ground. They should not have to fear adult figures, or authority (AKA the teacher). Without this fear, there is nothing prohibiting them from growing strong roots in development and education. 

The stump of the tree which grows to the top and has lots of branches sprout out from it is the next most important part. This is the part on the tree that reads "students actively involved". This is the classroom. All of the hands on activities provided in elementary schools is the backbone to everything the child will learn. They need to be fully involved in school, interacting with other children along with the adult figures of the school. 

Off of this main branch or stump, four different mini branches are off shoots that are the other five fundamental concepts of education. Communication, Thinking, Opportunities, Community, and Motivation. If you think about it, these are some of the most important parts of life, not just education. Any part of education, whether it is the early elementary years, into high school, and further into college, require all of these components. We need to constantly communicate with others in order to get advice and opinions and feedback on our work. We need to think and analyze all kinds of situations and questions, both in life and at school. We need the opportunities to learn. This is where teachers come in with such an important role. We give children the opportunity to learn in a positive environment. The community plays a huge role in our education. Public schooling results in our classmates, and other parents involved in PTA meetings. The community helps to fund all of the things that schools are able to do. Without community, schools could not exist. Children would all have to go to private schools, and many families could not afford it, therefore resulting in children neglecting education. Finally, motivation is key. We need to be motivated in order to learn!!

Social Justice in Lower Class Education

Well, I have to admit, I felt like I already touched on this subject once this semester, but I liked it and decided it wasn't bad to have to blog about it again. I was going to take my first approach in which I discussed how the community can work together for social justice in their schools. But then, as I was researching, I found a girl student teachers' final paper for her education course. I found her story really inspiring.

Sara Falls was a student teacher in Detroit. Now, Detroit is probably not the most likely spot to find a young white middle class student teacher. The school that she taught in was 99% black, and for the most part, in poverty. Sara had been taught, like us, to stand up for social justice within the education system. Yet, the school that she was teaching in gave her the exact opposite feeling and emotion. Her master teacher would constantly shut down her high ambitions for the Detroit students. A common phrase she would use was "In five years you'll be voting Republican and checking the stock pages". I just think her whole situation was disgusting. The teacher not having any faith in both her students OR her student teacher. If I had a student teacher in my classroom, and they were trying to make a difference and make learning for my students better, then I would sure as hell let her do her thing. But poor Sara Hills had to realize, as the students told her "Ms. Falls, this is Detroit!"

It's really sad that lower class people most often usually get lower class everything: schools, housing, jobs, and even education! No one wants to put in any effort because they figure, eh, what's the use?! The teacher and student's attitude isn't even the worst part of Ms. Falls story. She was observing in an HONORS senior English classroom. The kids in the class never wrote anything. They didn't learn how to. They didn't write short answers, long essays, 5 paragraphs, heck they couldn't even write 1 paragraph responses. In my AP English class in highschool, we were expected to write 2-3 page papers every week, not to mention a 12 page research paper along with a 10-14 page memoir. But I went to school in a suburban predominantly white middle class area. It's crazy the differences there are. I never expected that just because another area of the country or city was less fortunate in funds, that they were not expected to learn as much or do as well in school. That Detroit high school in which Sara Falls student taught had a 25% graduation rate!

After her disappointing student teaching experience, Sara Falls is still dedicated to social justice in education. She now works at a wonderful school in San Fransisco high school with students who are gifted and eager to learn, even if they are not upper middle class. Sara Falls story was both inspiring and got me more excited to face issues as a teacher. Her paper also gave research questions, research, answers, and tools she used to incorporate social justice into her teaching methods. So I not only found an outstanding story to blog about, I also found a great source to use for my final papers in this class!


Sara Falls Final Paper

Vocational-Technical Schools

For this weeks blog, we had to pick a type of school that interested us. Well, I would have written about the Waldorf school system, but since I wrote about Rudolf Steiner and Waldorf schools last week, I decided to take a different approach and look into vocational and technical schools.

Vocational-technical schools are often known as alternative high schools, for those students who don't usually perform excellently in academics. But many vocational-technical schools are trying to alter that image of alternative high school. Many schools are trying to make admissions and course requirements more stringent. Some believe that making the admissions and classes a little bit harder will recruit more students, while others believe its important to keep the trade-oriented school identity in order to differentiate them from normal schools. The purpose of vocational-technical schools is to train and specialize students in particular fields of labor.

There is a technical school that was an option for us after middle school in my home town. We got to tour it and decide if it was the place for us. It had many different trades including carpentry, auto body work, cosmetics, hair dressing, computer design, graphic design, and I believe it even had some electrician and plumbing courses.

There are many children in the world who often feel that school is just "not for them". It's not that they are ignorant and unable to learn, some people are just more classroom oriented learners while others prefer to use their hands. These types of learners often do much better in vocational schools. After they graduate they can go straight into their field, instead of going onto college to obtain a college degree. Some people may argue that the best way to succeed in life is to go onto college and obtain a degree and move onto graduate school to get a master's degree.

But, if I've learned anything super important about teaching in this course, I'd have to say that is is the range of differences in all children learning abilities. Every child is different. Everyone learns differently, and feels differently about school. It is important to match every student with an appropriate learning environment.



If you're interested in vocational school... click here!

Waldorf Education

Waldorf education is a style of instructing, or pedagogy, created by a man named Rudolf Steiner. He created it in 1919 and since then there are thousands of schools world wide that operate under the Waldorf education methods. I found these methods to be quite different than all the other education methods. It seemed to best suit my personality. According to one of the websites I used, "Why Waldorf Works", Waldorf education can be defined as, "Waldorf Education is based on a profound understanding of human development that addresses the needs of the growing child. Waldorf teachers strive to transform education into an art that educates the whole child—the heart and the hands, as well as the head."

I related this education very closely to the Summerhill school in England which I was very interested in. Waldorf education focuses on freedom of the child to develop creatively without the fear of adults. The children expand and grow intellectually through art and drama and music and oral education. Unlike most mainstream public schools, Waldorf education does not introduce reading and writing into their systems until age 7.

I liked learning about Waldorf education so much because it kept touching upon the fact that something you notice about the teachers is how engaged they are in their students as people. They get to know each student personally. This is the kind of education that involves PLPs, like at the Met school.

Steiner believed that children develop in three stages- from birth to age 6 or 7, from age 7 to age 14 and from age 14 to 18. This is the same way that the Summerhill school was separated. Henry Barnes, a long time Waldorf teacher said that, "When children relate what they learn to their own experience, they are interested and alive, and what they learn becomes their own. Waldorf schools are designed to foster this kind of learning." I like this mentality. I hope to one day teach at a Waldorf school. The children express themselves through art and drama instead of constantly writing essays. I'm not going to lie, some aspects of this education seem a little to hippy-esque and free-spirited for me. I would need to experience the classroom hands on. I grew up in a public school environment and I also love aspects of the normal, popular, public school. But giving something else a shot sounds like a good chance to make a difference in a students life.


I just learned that there is a Waldorf school in Beverly Farms, so hopefully in my future education classes I will be able to spend some time their and see if it is really as appealing to me as it sounds!


Websites used:

Wikipedia Information
Why Waldorf Works Website