Reich College of Education

New Beginnings

 Adventure, why is this word so pleasing to say or to think about? When a person thinks of adventure they think of a journey, a journey that somehow changes their every sense of being, changes their views, and eventually changes their life. Most importantly, an adventure educates; this year I have been given the opportunity to go on many adventures where culture has been the focus. These adventures lead to thought provoking questions on how I will approach diversity and different cultures in my classroom. This is a crucial thought, many believe that educators are only best suited to teach those who are of their same race, religion, and/or gender. What a blessing it has been to see those statements proved wrong.

Life is the most overlooked adventure. Everyone gets the opportunity to go on this journey and what we do during the journey is what defines the person. Education is a bridge to success and the teachers are the engineers. This could quite possibly be the biggest engineering feat. As teachers, we take the students who do not know the potential they have, do not know they do not have to be victims of their past, and do not know they can succeed whatever their economic status; we then allow theses students to see a small glimpse of what we see in them. We see a bright individual who, when applied can conquer any obstacles or climb any mountains placed before them.

 I was given the opportunity to travel to NYC with my Issues of Language and Culture in Public Schools Class. While we were in NYC we were doing research and observations of other cultures. We visited the MET museum and spoke to people from various ethnicities and asked them questions about how they felt about education. Most of the people we spoke to valued teachers a lot. This is a huge juxtaposition to how the majority feel about educators here in America. We then asked people how they felt about education and each of the responses revolved around their love of a teacher they had. This really instilled in me the importance of making personal relationships with my students. If I am able to make these relationships with my students then they will be more likely to want to reach the high-expectations that I set for them. I have learned that whatever I set my expectations for the students as they will rise to that occasion. I have also learned the importance of culture. Culture is an ever changing aspect of a person or group of people. It is essentially who they are. Setting up a classroom where all differences are important and praised is important to me. I want my students to love who they are and what made them the beautiful people they are. I want to have a global classroom where no culture or religion is forgotten or discriminated against. In late March of my senior year at Appalachian I will be continuing my student teaching experience at Greystones Educate Together School in Greystones, Ireland. This opportunity will allow me to challenge myself and in return, allow me to ask my students to challenge themselves.

In a learning conducive classroom, differentiating my classroom instruction is crucial. In my foundations of teaching class sophomore year, social justice issues were touched on and how knowing the social norms of each race/religion/gender will help the teacher better decide how to deliver and teach the topic. For my first field experience, I was placed into a very rural school district. This school district had a large number of migrant workers who moved in and moved out whenever they were done planting their crop. It was interesting to see the teachers approach to these children not knowing English very well. Since the school already had a large Hispanic population, the teacher I was paired with would always have the new student pair with one of our bilingual students. I was able to see how using partners as a teaching source sometimes worked even better than the teaching coming from the teacher.

I am in my main major class now which is also paired with an internship. My classes are more based on how to teach to a specific student a content area. It is interesting to see the more foundational concepts I get to build upon each year. My reading class blew my mind this year. I realized that I honestly did not know a lot about teaching a child to read and it shocked me. I had a huge learning curve in this class. I started out not knowing what phonemes, morphemes, or graphemes were to having methods to teach children how to read like DTR, text-talks, and word studies. Through relearning the foundations of reading I was able to appreciate the importance of literacy. It is tough to learn to read and I aspire to make this process as fun and frustration free as I possibly can. I am an avid reader and will just about read anything, but I did not always love reading. In middle school, I actually told my grandmother that I hate reading, which was true. My teachers forced me to read and more horrifically, they forced me to read things that I did not want to and found excruciatingly boring. I have learned and will 100% instill in my classroom child selected reading. Allowing the child to select what they want to read not only has them reading, it has them loving to read. This leads to a heightened vocabulary and to reading not being a forced chore.

My senior year in college has provided outlook on what it will be like to have my own classroom. Teaching is difficult. I do not believe I realized the truth in that statement before I had to start acting as “head” teacher in a classroom. As a lead a classroom full of 6^th graders, I begin to see why exactly literacy matters so much. I now know that literacy isn’t just the act of reading. It is also the act of comprehension and understanding key vocabulary in a variety of disciplines. For example, my struggling readers are struggling in content other than reading. However, with the right supports and attention to literacy these gaps can be bridged. To be successful in science you have to be able to observe, question, compare and contrast, and synthesize. To master the ability to do these things would be to gain literacy in science. Accommodations which would allow low achieving students to reach this mastery would be: to provide visual supports, to teach from graphic organizers that connect concepts, and to allow repetition. Just like with reading and writing associated literacy, repetition is necessary. The average person needs to hear something two times before they understand something. The low achieving students in my class need to hear something at least six times before they understand something.  New doors are opening and gaps are being bridged, with more focus on literacy in the classroom we can make learning accessible to all students and not just the high achieving ones.

College has been an amazing experience for me to learn more about myself and about education.  I have been able to actually take what I have learned in the classroom, on my research trip to New York, and working with ELL students and apply it directly to my internship and my future role as a teacher in the public school system. I know what it feels like to be the child that has no view of the future and cannot see the potential they have, but I also know what it feels like to be the student that realizes that life is a beautiful adventure that is lengthened and made enjoyable through education. Education is a lifelong gift that I am more than excited to give my students. Education can take someone from the darkest of situations and help them see the light. Education is the way out and the way for change. I feel so blessed that I have been able to receive the wonderful gift of education and have realized its importance in my life. This would not have been the case if it wasn’t for the teachers who saw my potential and set high expectations for me. Without education and passionate teachers, children will never see their potential. Without a fun, comfortable, and learning conducive environment children will never be aware of the importance of education and the necessary tools it gives them to succeed.