Blog Assignment #10

Do you teach or do you educate?         When I was in kindergarten, I had an educator named Ms. Neidrach. Ms. Neidrach was simply amazing and one of the key influences in my decision to become an educator. She was very supportive, patient, exciting, and everything I feel an elementary teacher should be. In my opinion, she is the ultimate teacher. An educator is someone how inspires and empowers, which is exactly what Ms. Neidrach does. She is the model I hope to emulate in my future classroom. An educator's influence affects people, many for a lifetime. Every educator is a piece of a child’s life puzzle.          My aspiration is to educate my students, instead of just teaching them. I hope to immediately instill insightful thinking and beliefs in every single one of them. For example, I wanted to be a singer one day. Yes, I said a singer. I can’t sing to save my life, but Ms. Neidrach allowed me and the other “aspiring singers” time to “perform” for the class. She always allowed us to be ourselves and think outside of the everyday norm. When we were learning the alphabet and to read, she devoted an entire week to each letter and provided many activities and "teachable moments" relating to the letter being studied. Although we didn't understand it at the time, we were learning cross-curricular concepts in a fun and exciting way. I hope to inspire my students to aspire. Since I want to teach Kindergarten, I would find out what my students aspire to become and possibly invite guest speakers to talk to them. I want to create interesting projects and use new/updated technology to catch the attention of my students. Being an educator is so much more than memorizing rote facts; it is inspiring them to learn and to teach others.

Adventures of Pencils

          Mr. Johnson is simply dazzling. Tom Johnson's Adventures in Pencil Integration is very clever in his use of technology as metaphors. For example, Gertrude, an academic specialist, explains to Mr. Johnson that pencils should not be taken home because students will use them for entertainment rather than for school work. By allowing students to take their pencils home, not only will they not be used in the desired way, but their tests scores will steadily lower. In my education classes (especially in EDM 310), technology plays an important role in becoming an effective educator for our future classrooms. Students are sneaky and smart, which can be a difficult predicament for teachers to handle. Students often misuse their technology resources for games and chatting with friends, rather than using it for school work. I can not lie; I have been one of those sneaky students. In my opinion, this is what Gertrude is referring to with the use of pencils. Even though students are playing games and chatting with friends using their pencils, they are unintentionally learning. They are playing games that are requiring a thought process, spelling, word association, and much more. I like how they contradict the statement above about test scores automatically lowering because students are learning with their computers, even if it is not used in the appropriate form. It is not an automatic response that students will necessarily do poorly on tests. Mr. Johnson does an excellent job when he does little to highlight this concern. He is continuously suggesting new solutions for students and their “pencils.” As I consider my own future classroom, I want my students to bring home their pencils/computers . Yes, classrooms are made for learning, but so is the world. Anyone, everything, and everyone can teach us something new. Why just allow students to learn at school? Shouldn’t students continue their learning above and outside the walls of the classroom?