I was five years old when I encountered a situation that would change my view of the teacher to student relationship. I can still see the scenario played out in my head. I was the Spanish-speaking student, quiet, middle child, and longing to be acknowledged for my strengths. In Kindergarten, the teacher was insensitive and verbally abusive. It was then that I felt insignificant and misunderstood. I allowed that experience to serve as my foundation for several years. To protect myself from being hurt, I turned inward and remained quiet. Being so young, I knew where my path would take me. Today I am thankful that my past occurred the way it did because it propelled me into becoming a better person and helped form my education philosophy.
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The teacher was mean and hurtful when she would say that I was too slow in reciting my alphabet in English and often pulled my hair if I was not fast enough. My hair length was at my ankles, so hair pulling was a frequent consequence. Looking back, I was slow but not because I did not know the order, it was that I was solid in my first language. From then on, I was labeled as shy and often excluded from the fun learning or hands-on projects. Several times throughout the years, my parents were called in for parent/teacher conferences to explain that I needed to be placed in small intervention groups. I often dreamed of shouting out that I knew things, but my voice had been extinguished by my damaged self-esteem declaring that I was who my teachers said I was, and so I remained quiet to everyone but myself. The turning point would be my sixth grade English teacher. She, Mrs. Garcia, saw something in me that I am sure others did too; moreover, she took the time to get to know who I am and how I learn best. Mrs. Garcia was my forever agent of change. She encouraged and pushed me like no other teacher. She taught me the value of hard work. From that point on, I worked diligently to prove to myself that I could be who I often visualized in my head. Within that year, I joined student clubs, spoke out for those who could not, volunteered, and enrolled in higher level courses. It was …show more content…
What I didn’t know is what kind of teacher. Most of us dream of becoming the world’s greatest teacher with the most well behaved and abled children, but the reality is that we will never have the ideal scenario. Children face physical and emotional obstacles just like adults. Like most adults, children also learn by doing. Hein (2012), explains Dewey’s emphasis on education as that as an “experience as the source of all thought and development; it requires education to start from experiences (“doing”) and to use these as basis for reflection and thinking (p. 37). From my experiences, like Dewey asserted, my learning and thinking began to form from that tender age. They have served as my platform to provide my students with rich learning experiences to grow and learn from to expand their horizons. Hein (2012) quotes Dewey by saying “…education must be active; it must give the learner something to think about, to interpret and to study; it should provide experiences …(38).” In the classroom, I have pushed for learning to occur in different areas. For example, for a history lesson, we took our children to a local museum to teach them the foundations of our city. I look at lessons as opportunities to provide students with everlasting experiences. I understand wholeheartedly that children need to be encouraged and motivated by their teachers as they are in their presence more than they are
The teacher was mean and hurtful when she would say that I was too slow in reciting my alphabet in English and often pulled my hair if I was not fast enough. My hair length was at my ankles, so hair pulling was a frequent consequence. Looking back, I was slow but not because I did not know the order, it was that I was solid in my first language. From then on, I was labeled as shy and often excluded from the fun learning or hands-on projects. Several times throughout the years, my parents were called in for parent/teacher conferences to explain that I needed to be placed in small intervention groups. I often dreamed of shouting out that I knew things, but my voice had been extinguished by my damaged self-esteem declaring that I was who my teachers said I was, and so I remained quiet to everyone but myself. The turning point would be my sixth grade English teacher. She, Mrs. Garcia, saw something in me that I am sure others did too; moreover, she took the time to get to know who I am and how I learn best. Mrs. Garcia was my forever agent of change. She encouraged and pushed me like no other teacher. She taught me the value of hard work. From that point on, I worked diligently to prove to myself that I could be who I often visualized in my head. Within that year, I joined student clubs, spoke out for those who could not, volunteered, and enrolled in higher level courses. It was …show more content…
What I didn’t know is what kind of teacher. Most of us dream of becoming the world’s greatest teacher with the most well behaved and abled children, but the reality is that we will never have the ideal scenario. Children face physical and emotional obstacles just like adults. Like most adults, children also learn by doing. Hein (2012), explains Dewey’s emphasis on education as that as an “experience as the source of all thought and development; it requires education to start from experiences (“doing”) and to use these as basis for reflection and thinking (p. 37). From my experiences, like Dewey asserted, my learning and thinking began to form from that tender age. They have served as my platform to provide my students with rich learning experiences to grow and learn from to expand their horizons. Hein (2012) quotes Dewey by saying “…education must be active; it must give the learner something to think about, to interpret and to study; it should provide experiences …(38).” In the classroom, I have pushed for learning to occur in different areas. For example, for a history lesson, we took our children to a local museum to teach them the foundations of our city. I look at lessons as opportunities to provide students with everlasting experiences. I understand wholeheartedly that children need to be encouraged and motivated by their teachers as they are in their presence more than they are