I have found an awesome education website: Edutopia. It has articles by teachers covering a variety of topics and contents. I found an awesome article at the beginning of last school year titled "Empathy: The Most Important Back-to-School Supply." It focuses on empathy as a tool to help students learn better.
Teaching to me, as well as many others, means more than reading Shakespeare, learning mathematic formulas, or memorizing historical dates. I feel that this is especially the case in Middle and High School when students are going through so many changes and are trying to figure out who they are. I have seen so many teenagers who are stuck in their own heads worried about how they look, how they act, and what others think of them. Empathy is a skill that can help these kids bloom.
Teaching is about helping students to become the best people that they can be. This includes teaching important skills like empathy, or the ability to see the world through another person's eyes. The article relies heavily on the Start Empathy initiative which strives to develop schools where students learn to develop empathy. They have created a program which has three steps.
Step #1: Prepare-To begin create a foundation for students by creating a safe space in the classroom where students feel they can step outside their bubbles and think about new points of view. This includes modelling empathy in your actions and emotions.
Step #2: Engage-Next, help students to put themselves into someone else's shoes, challenge stereotypes, and to solve problems together.
Step #3: Reflect and Act-Now comes the part where students put what they have learned into action and come to find similarities and appreciate differences.
How do I apply this in my own classroom? I feel that I have many opportunities teaching English and History to teach empathy. I can use stories and historical events to provide a variety of perspectives to help students to make connections and find the beauty in difference. I can also use writing, an important skill in both contents, to allow students to communicate with their peers and others. Another awesome way to develop empathy is through service. I want to develop service learning projects to help students to place their focus on others rather than themselves.
What an amazing way to broaden the classroom and helps students to become caring and productive adults.
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
What Students Remember
The other day I was on facebook and came across an article that really opened my eyes. The article is called "What Students Remember Most About Teachers" and was written by Lori Gard.
This article is structured as a letter from a veteran teacher to a new teacher. The main message being to slow down and stress less. According to the author the most important part of teaching is not the curriculum or the tests but being there for your students. I agree with this statement 100%. During my pre-service training I remember having a discussion along these same lines the gist of which was that if a teacher is teaching for anything other than the students, they will hate it. I saw this during my student teaching. The times I hated teaching the most were either when I got caught up in the curriculum and forgot my students or when I started comparing myself to other teachers. I forgot who I was and why I got into teaching. I thought that to be the best teacher I needed to have the flashiest lesson plans or be the most entertaining.
This leads me to my favorite line in the article. "At the end of the day, most students won't remember what amazing lesson plans you've created. No, they'll not remember that amazing decor you've designed. But they will remember you." This struck me pretty hard. The teachers that I admired the most were the ones that took the time to get to know me and who listened to what I had to say. I hope that I can do the same for my students. The best way to do this, according to Gard, is by being. Being available, kind, compassionate, transparent, real, thought, and myself. I am going to use this philosophy to drive my teaching.
The other part of the article that struck me was the admonition to stop being so hard on yourself and to stop comparing yourself to others. This was something that I really struggled with all through my education. It seemed that all through my education classes I was bombarded with what a good teacher ought to be, and so many times I thought I was falling short of this ideal. I have come to learn that there is no one perfect version of a teacher but a million unique and individual ones. One of my teachers in high school summed it up perfectly. "I tried so hard to be like all the other teachers in my program, and I ended up hating it and thinking that I was never going to be any good . . . . It wasn’t until I found my own teacher voice that I started to enjoy it and find my place in a school. Now I can’t imagine doing anything else."
I am so glad I came across this article and was reminded of what truly lies at the heart of teaching and what makes it such a rewarding career.
This article is structured as a letter from a veteran teacher to a new teacher. The main message being to slow down and stress less. According to the author the most important part of teaching is not the curriculum or the tests but being there for your students. I agree with this statement 100%. During my pre-service training I remember having a discussion along these same lines the gist of which was that if a teacher is teaching for anything other than the students, they will hate it. I saw this during my student teaching. The times I hated teaching the most were either when I got caught up in the curriculum and forgot my students or when I started comparing myself to other teachers. I forgot who I was and why I got into teaching. I thought that to be the best teacher I needed to have the flashiest lesson plans or be the most entertaining.
This leads me to my favorite line in the article. "At the end of the day, most students won't remember what amazing lesson plans you've created. No, they'll not remember that amazing decor you've designed. But they will remember you." This struck me pretty hard. The teachers that I admired the most were the ones that took the time to get to know me and who listened to what I had to say. I hope that I can do the same for my students. The best way to do this, according to Gard, is by being. Being available, kind, compassionate, transparent, real, thought, and myself. I am going to use this philosophy to drive my teaching.
The other part of the article that struck me was the admonition to stop being so hard on yourself and to stop comparing yourself to others. This was something that I really struggled with all through my education. It seemed that all through my education classes I was bombarded with what a good teacher ought to be, and so many times I thought I was falling short of this ideal. I have come to learn that there is no one perfect version of a teacher but a million unique and individual ones. One of my teachers in high school summed it up perfectly. "I tried so hard to be like all the other teachers in my program, and I ended up hating it and thinking that I was never going to be any good . . . . It wasn’t until I found my own teacher voice that I started to enjoy it and find my place in a school. Now I can’t imagine doing anything else."
I am so glad I came across this article and was reminded of what truly lies at the heart of teaching and what makes it such a rewarding career.
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