Teaching the whole student moral objective?

Sue Simpson states in the chapter 6 titled “Interdisciplinary and Interthematic Curriculum Designs” states that “If teaching is a dynamic and moral profession, we must strive to change in response to the evolving nature of our students and the demands of our society.” (p.90)

 Do we as teachers have a moral agenda, an obligation to uphold the morals and ethics of our society when teaching our students?

 Yes and the moral that sticks out to me the most and must be supported in school is freedom of speech. As a teacher though we can help make sure that speech is informed to the best of the students’ ability without being preached to. Also as a teacher we can help our students gain perspective and insights of those perspectives with respect.  

 If a student says during a unit on the holocaust from European history that the holocaust didn’t happen how should I respond? If a student says anyone who has an abortion is committing a sin how do I respond?

 If this is the student’s belief than fine; we as people are entitled to our own beliefs and vocalizing them.  I may say something like “you make an interesting statement that some disagree with and might even find offensive.  What research do you have for or even against your statement?”  The point we as teachers must make is that though we each have different beliefs and values as this is the enrichment of culture, we as a society still must be respectful of others. When our beliefs endanger or hurt others then something must be done to convey our beliefs differently or possibly open up our own perspective. This endangerment and harm is morally wrong as well and as teacher we are responsible for helping and informing our students to know the difference.  I am unsure and nervous about how to open up a child’s perspective as a teacher in a positive healthy way. This development is the tricky part in my mind, especially if I as the teacher do not agree with their views. I still need to model respect and an openness of ideas so that the student may grow in their critical thinking and decision making.

 The statement made at the end of the chapter by Simpson sums up part of what it means to be a moral teacher in my mind. As I need to support an openness as well as informative environment for ideas my responsibility as the teacher is to make sure that my teaching and the content makes sense with what is currently thought and discussed in society. For example it may not be relevant to have my students know when each president was president instead due to technology it may be more effective for students to have an idea of how the role of president has changed over time so they too can get an idea for what kind of president they want.

How do we ensure that “Disciplines do not lose their integrity” and that “each discipline’s unique contribution to problem solving is demonstrated”? (Wiles & Bondi, The New American Middle School Education Preadolescents in an Era of Change, Chapter 3. p. 64)

Wiles and Bondi make an interesting statement in that each discipline has useful tools in problem solving. Sir Robinson at a conference in Monterey California in 2005 stated that creativity is not taught in education any longer. It seems that instead “we get educated out of creativity.” Sir Robinson also makes a statement that without creativity being a process of having original ideas that have value we will not grow. He specifically says that when we teach our students to be unprepared to make mistakes or be wrong we are possibly taking away the creativity in the classroom. I think Wiles and Bondi are saying the same thing in a different way. There are many different perspectives to take when solving problems. What matters in my mind is that we give are student an array of perspectives and not limit them to just one such as math or art, but science and music as well. We must not only educate from the waist to the head then to specific side of the brain of the student but the whole body; kinesthetically, visually, abstractly, sound, critically… 

How does this idea of teaching the whole student then influence the moral and ethical aspects in teaching? Is it morally right that we teach the whole child literally? Is it morally wrong not to? I don’t know the answer… yet!

How do we care?

“Teachers who care were described as demonstrating democratic interaction styles, developing expectations for student behavior in light of individual differences, modeling a ‘caring’ attitude toward their own work, and providing constructive feedback.” (Wentzel, 1997, pg 411)

 

Democratic interaction styles; this to me means children want to make their own choices especially at the middle school level. To care I also need to have expectations for each student as individuals not just as a whole. This to me means as a teacher to show that I care I need to have lesson plans that let students make choices and experiment with different ideas with support.

 

“Although it has been show that community climate and support alone are insufficient to promote achievement gains in middle grades, a balance between perceived support and academic demands seems to promote achievement and social-emotional well being…” (Juvonen et al., 2004, p. 50)

 

Caring is good, letting students make choices is good and be part of a community is good but if I do not have high expectations academically as a teacher for my students that caring and support in my mind is wasted. I can pat my students on the head all day long and say good job but without challenge in my mind the student would grow bored and other problems could arise.

 

“…education must focus on teaching all people how to live in an inclusive community where each person is treated with respect and dignity and enlisted to participate fully in the life of the community.” (Beck & Malley, 1998, p. 137)

 

In my mind this excerpt is telling me that each child needs to feel as they belong and have a role in the community that is the classroom. In doing this as a teacher I would then hope that they could learn to treat each person with respect and later on do the same thing in a larger community for example the community they live or the place they work.

 

“…there is much more to interpersonal caring than teachers merely exhibiting feelings of kindness, gentleness, and benevolence toward students, or expressing some generalized sense of concern. In fact, these attitudes without concomitant competence producing actions constitute a form of academic neglect.” (Gay, 2000, p. 48)

 

Telling a student that it is ok if they don’t get it that they can just do their best to me is not enough. I was not always of this mind set as growing up I was told just do you best. There were times when my best wasn’t good enough. What if though as a teacher I said, “I know this is hard, but you can do this and I am here to help you learn this.” I never once in all my years as a student heard that from my teachers; from my father yes and my mother but never my teachers. In an AP civics class in high school which challenged me greatly but at the end of the semester I felt like a failure. Looking back I realize I still learned a great deal but never improved in the class. How I as a teacher show my students that I care matters in my mind a great deal.

 

At the middle school level I would have 50 minutes with possibly 180 students. All of the above mentioned ideas on caring are important to me but with so many students and so little time will each student know I care? Bill Ayers talks about not only realizing a student’s weaknesses but also utilizing their strengths and letting students show them and utilize them with their peers. If I as a teacher can figure a way for every student in my classroom to utilize their strengths as well as know and improve their weaknesses in my mind I’ve accomplish the first goal in my mind to teaching; growth.

 

Challenging lesson plans in my mind is not enough. I need to let each student know that I am there when the challenging lesson plan is too much. In my last class it was brought up that just remembering to care and have time for self reflection as a teacher helps. The issue of teachers saying they do not have enough time was brought up and I immediately grew angry. Yes, I realize to balance lesson plans, district expectations, social issues (bullying, fights, absences) and still get to know your students is not easy. Just thinking about it I myself get overwhelmed; at the end of the day though it is about the students and nothing else. I am hoping that if I couple challenging lesson plans with a supportive foundation of yes you can and I am here to help you with little things like greeting students at the door each class, having not just name cards but on the cards they can ask questions make comments privately just between me and them, that each student will feel that I care not only about them as a student but as a person.

 

One thing I noticed about the quotes above is that it only mentions caring as a teacher student relationship. What about teachers caring about other teachers? If we model caring towards each other with things just as simple as how is your day going, do you need help with anything, how did that last lesson go, I think our students would see this and learn from it. On multiple occasions when I have gone to classrooms to observe teachers they have said things like oh I wish I could go see her classroom, I’ve heard she does great things. Or comments of I’ve never seen him teach but hear he knows his stuff. Just because we are teachers does not mean we cannot still learn and learn from each other. I don’t remember who said this to me but I was told that lesson plans can always be improved. How can we as teachers expect great things from our students if we ourselves do not have those expectations for ourselves?

 

As I think and reflect on what it means to be a caring teacher I become very overwhelmed and emotional. What if I’m not good enough? I’ve already had the dreams where I start my class but no one is there, or even worse they are all present but I can’t get their attention. AH! Will I care enough about my students to help them learn and grow not just as a student but as a person? 

Why do we learn?

Why do we have education? How should we educate our children? It seems that over the years though all intentions have been good ones we still do not know the answer to the later question and at times it seems the reason for education does not reflect how we educate our children. It also seems that sometimes testing and assessment are more important or at the very least hinder learning.

There is a pendulum that swings back and forth when it comes to societies reasoning to education. At different times it meant job training, Americanization, assimilation, family/household skills which are gender specific, a focus on the three R’s (reading arithmetic, and writing), focus on math and science or a focus on the development of the child. It seemed that during each time some children might have fallen through the cracks. So how do we as a society teach to all? It seems though that when we educate one way does not work with all students. I always thought through the adults around me that education was to get us ready to be adults. Later on I realized that education is more than that. Education is and should be to better ourselves as individuals and the community we live in.

With this idea of education I would think than that education would continue throughout our lives. But when our government tried to educate a mass amount it ended up educating different groups in different ways. How now do I as a teacher move back to the idea that everyone can and should learn as a way to better themselves and the community we live in? How should I teach in the classroom to start supporting this idea of education? Especially when there are some things in place that I will have to do to keep my job that may not support this ideology. If children are the future of our society and we as a society do not support each and every one of them in their education and bettering themselves is that a moral issue or something else?

Tracking seemed to have started way back in the 1920s when it was for career tracking. Students were given an IQ test which would then help administrators and teachers know what classes they should take and what to teach them. But the test was in English possibly given to students who barely understood the questions. And the questions were at times very culturally bias as well as being just darn ridiculous. Today is tracking any better? By labeling our students correctly or incorrectly, does it help in their education or not? To put students with other students at the same developmental level does that hinder their growth or expand it? I am not sure. I can see where if you have a group of very advanced students they could do more than another class at a lower level, and stay challenged. But I also know from coaching that if I put a new player with a veteran player both will improve greatly but in different ways. The new player will gain confidence and better their skills to play the sport quicker than if they were to stay only with another new player. And the veteran player not only has to learn to communicate better with a team mate but builds self-confidence in that they have to share and partly teach what they know to the new player. Does the amount of growth, the level of thinking increase or decrease in either scenario or are they the same in a classroom of students with the same level of cognitive thinking to that of a classroom with different levels?

Do we educate to be greater, to get to the next benchmark or beat the other country in math scores? Or do we educate to personally grow and better ourselves? I finished reading a book last week that made me grow a great deal in terms of how I thought of policy making in government to reflect my own moral values but others haven’t necessarily read it or thought of this same thing. Are they less developed cognitively than I? Did I really learn something or do I need to pass a test on the book first?

I thought I had a good idea of why we educate ourselves and I thought that how we educate reflected that. Now I am not too sure. If I want my students to develop emotionally, physically and mentally when I am teaching is the education system in place the best that it can be to do that? I don’t think so. How then can I help to change the educational system that we now have to benefit our children more? I have an idea of how I want to teach but will the educational system in place help me do that? What will I have to be able to give up so to speak and still be able to teach? Is why we educate a moral issue or something else? So many questions and so few answers; must keep learning.

Hard Work!

This just in… Teaching is hard work!

When I first thought it would be fun to be a teacher I was in 3rd grade and had Mrs. Vance. She, I thought, was the most awesome adult besides maybe my parents. She knew all about nature and we did awesome art projects in her class, which was crowded with all the work we did. I thought it would be great to be able to write on the overhead projector day after day and correct papers. Little did I know then that there is a lot more to teaching. This is just one myth that I discovered from my own experiences about teaching to be false. Oh how relativity can change your perspective. I am now the teacher and know how much work teaching actually is!

William Ayers in his book “To Teach…” in the first chapter goes over some myths about teaching and states if they are true or not. Some I agree with his perspective and wish others would see the point Ayers is trying to make and others I am not sure he gives enough of an explanation or even explains his reasoning enough. Reading these myths has also made me realize some of the reason for why I teach.

The first myth is that classroom management is the first step to becoming a good teacher. When I read this I think yes it’s true a teacher much have control of her classroom so learning can take place. I do not see how Ayers thinks that it’s a myth because of its “linearity” or as he states it the assumption that classroom management takes over teaching in time. I would say if your classroom management is affective and doing its job it is not the back drop to learning but is only one 2x4 that helps hold up the foundations needed to learn. Perhaps he is saying that the focus of teaching should not be behavior. If so then I readily agree with him. I have recently attended the Future’s Teachers Conference in Auburn at Green River Community College. Each year I go, I learn something new about what I want my classroom to be like with a new sense of inspiration. The management piece I’ve learned from this conference is not that you are managing the class but they manage themselves by knowing how things get done in the classroom. For example students know what to do if they need to use the restroom, have a broken pencil, finish early on work or are doing group work. And this does not happen from a teacher telling them what to do only. It happens from the teacher not only going over the procedure but then practicing with them over and over again until they get it. Then if a class doesn’t understand what it means when the teacher needs their attention it is not because they are being “bad” but because as a class there has not been enough practice. Again notice the word procedure. These are not rules to go to the bathroom or sharpen your pencil but procedures; how we get things done. You do procedures all day, how to start the car, get up in the morning, cook dinner. The rules would be short but not simple, things such as respect yourself and others… I see though that Ayers has the idea that if a teacher gets too focus on classroom management teaching/learning can be lost. I am of the mind set though that if your classroom is managed together and not as individuals it will only become one tool of many that is used so learning can happen in a safe environment.

I teach so children can have a sense of safety in order to take chances in doing new things.

In truth my brain could probably not hold all the information I find interesting and find fun to think about. So this myth that teachers always know the material seems to be a big one. I agree with Ayers completely that teachers need to know a lot in the sense that they are always “reading, wondering, exploring—always expanding their interests and their knowledge.” I would think that as a person, teacher or not, not expanding my interests or knowledge might get boring. So to only teach what I know would be boring; fun at times and good for the students as I would get very excited to have an art lesson about color tie into a social studies or math lesson. But discovering something new about the world around me with the students like why does water boil? Why does it rain? Why do we have fingernails? Why does the weather vary so much in Australia compared to here? If the teacher is as engaged as the student wouldn’t that make a much more interesting learning experience for the students? Adults learn too. Oh my goodness.

I teach to learn more about the community I live in.

Good teaching can be measured by how well students do on tests. This is myth number 9. And talk about a loaded myth. Just reading it brings up questions that I don’t really know the answers to. Are all tests unnecessary or necessary? What about assessment of students to see what they know or have learned? As a teacher if I am teaching and my students are getting that it rains from condensation building up I would think I should be able to “test” them and if they understand this concept they would pass the test. This myth may be slightly more than a myth and more of a controversy. Do we as teachers, educators, and a community know the best way to measure the knowledge our students learn in a given amount of time? What about those students who learn faster or slower? Do they fail, skip a grade? Oh so many questions my head is bursting! I agree with Ayers when he states that learning is not linear; there is not a steady incline or incremental progress to learning. I realize this just from going to college when I would have a professor tell me something that at the time I had no idea what it meant or what they were trying to convey until maybe eight days later I am walking to the gym and have an “ah ha” moment. How do you grade, keep track, test “ah ha” moments? I hoping later on Ayers will tell me his ideas on testing and offer some insight until then…

I teach to see myself and those in my community grow and progress.

Myth number 11 which I think puts the most pressure on any student is all children are above average. I think to change this myth to a truth the more appropriate thing is to say all children can be above average. This still raises questions though. If learning is not linear than can you have an average? Bill Ayers makes a great point in that the teacher’s job is to teach to that variety and diversity in the classroom as the students skills vary. I like to think that as a teacher I am not teaching a select grade or group but I am teaching that child or this child or that one to reach their own potential.

I teach to show each child in my class their own unique potential and skills.

There a many other myths and truths out there about teaching that I could probably go into or do not realize they even exist. Either way teaching is hard work! Teaching is to value education and the growth of the community and me. Teaching though challenging has great rewards when the challenge is met. Teaching reminds us to be young and have fun. This is part of why I teach.

To see a visual explanation of why I teach click on the link below!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/37014109@N02/show/