“A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” Lao Tzu
This is such a simple and popular quote, but it is a perfect fit for my journey of becoming a teacher. It has also been a familiar theme with the students I have had the privilege of working with over the last several years. When you are facing a mountain that stands between you and your destination, there’s nothing you can do to make the mountain move or disappear. The only way you will arrive on the other side of the mountain is to take a step forward and then another step and another step. Nobody can take the journey for you, but it must be your own feet and your own mind that gets you to the other side. Of course, there is so much more to teaching and providing meaningful learning opportunities for students than this simple thought, but it sure helps when you find that the start button seems to be malfunctioning. I found myself in that position when I first considered pursuing my degree in education and teacher licensure six years ago. It is probably that very reason why I tend to gravitate toward the student that seems to be sitting at a desk with pencil in hand and a blank journal staring back at him or her.
When I first began to pursue my degree I envisioned going to classes, listening to a professor fill my mind with information, answering his or her questions, taking tests (and getting an A or at least a B+), and counting up the credits until I finally graduated. Instead what I encountered was an extremely foreign, frustrating, yet incredibly fulfilling educational experience that has made me the teacher that I am today. The difference between what I expected my education to be and what my education became was a student-centered philosophy that allowed me to become a deeper thinker rather than a student going through the motions, pleasing my teachers, and receiving a diploma that looks nice hanging on the wall. Today, when I look at that diploma, it moves my heart because I know that it was my own education, my own learning, my own mind and my own two feet that allowed me to succeed with meaning and fulfillment that matters to me and to those I may influence in my lifetime. I will never discount the influence of some wise mentors that helped me to turn away from the familiar idea of what I thought learning was and look at learning from a different perspective even though it was difficult and extremely uncomfortable to venture into the unknown. Instead of listening to professors spew out information, I searched for authors and discovered resources that allowed me to learn about what truly interested me. Instead of answering questions on a test, I had to delve into the unknown of my own mind and come up with my own questions to answer. It all seemed so backwards, but with a good amount of encouragement from other students and teachers, my learning experience proved to be meaningful and fruitful and has become my preferred style of teaching. Education that is focused on the students and how they learn rather than an education that is focused on the teacher and his or her ability to provide information will always provide a richer, deeper and more effective learning experience for our students.
One of the more profound results of this kind of learning leaves the student with more questions than answers! Once this is understood, learning becomes less frustrating and more user-friendly. As human beings, we are prone to focus on the destination or the end result rather than enjoying the process or the journey we are on. Remember, a journey of a thousand miles (why not a million miles?) begins with one step. I’ve noticed that most students are always in a hurry to get their work done without much thought about the content of their writing or how they found the answer to that math problem. The challenge for a teacher is to find a way for the student to think about what they are learning and truly engage with a writing assignment or a math problem or whatever the task may be so their learning is not only getting the job done, but it becomes an enriching experience that will have meaning for the next month, the next year and for a lifetime.
At School B, where I worked as a para-educator, every student and teacher was required to write in their writing journal for twenty minutes each day. This generally happened immediately following morning meeting in most classes. Of course, in the beginning of the year, the students’ writing was sparse and there was always a lot of staring into space during the twenty minutes. As the year progressed, students began writing more and most of them looked forward to sharing what they wrote with their class and other students. Some students, on the other hand, were stuck and struggled with filling up one page without writing in large letters and repeating words and phrases to make it look like they had succeeded. I’m not sure if anyone else noticed these students, but I did. I remembered the task from my student teaching experience of responding to eighteen students’ writing journals each day before lunch and quickly decided it might be a good idea to help motivate some of these sneaky students who thought they were getting away with mediocre to poor writing skills.
School B’s twenty minute write was not meant to be an opportunity for assessment, but it was mainly instituted to increase students’ endurance and experience of writing. With the teacher’s permission, I chose three students in my classroom and began responding daily to their twenty minute write. Busted! All of a sudden, these three students realized someone cared about what they were writing. It may have only taken five minutes each day to respond to these writers, but the difference it made in their writing abilities was substantial. They began to write about things they were interested in such as mud trucks, fairy princesses, and snakes and I continued to encourage them to write more even though I had no interest at all in any of those subjects, especially snakes! For these three students, it made a world of difference and it worked—that’s what matters. Did it mean that every student needed to have a teacher respond in their writing journal? Absolutely not, but every once in a while a few of the other students in the class would ask me to respond to their writing, too, which of course, I did.
I’ve had the opportunity to work with several struggling reading and math students. One student in particular, I’ll call Ben, had fallen behind in fourth grade math and did not have an IEP or ESP in place. When I noticed that he could not count by tens, fives or by twenty-fives, I found time in the morning when he arrived to work with him on this task. I brought in a real cash drawer full of coins and dollar bills because I often noticed that he played a game with several of his friends on the playground that revolved around a tire business. He, of course, was the boss and knew a great deal about tires! So we began our morning ritual of buying candy at the tire shop. He bought into the idea hook, line and sinker and eventually was counting back change from $5.00 to me. He still struggles in math, but has learned a great deal about place value and what coins are worth. He has put these strategies to use—counting by fives, tens, and twenty-fives—with other math problems. So often, teachers neglect to use manipulatives in the higher grades (4th to 6th) because most students have mastered these skills. I have found that a significant number of 3rd and 4th grade students are struggling without the benefit of hands-on math and will continue to fall behind or sadly give up on mastering math skills before they enter middle school. I’m realizing that one of my gifts in teaching is to see a lacking skill in a student’s work and then determine what remedial skills might help a student get back on track.
Now, if only I could feel as confident about my classroom management skills as I do about my teaching skills. I have had several opportunities to attend in-service math, literacy and writing workshops which has helped a great deal in my confidence with struggling readers, writers and mathematicians. I have also attended a few classroom management and behavioral workshops, but the head knowledge without the experience always leaves me a little apprehensive. The best experience I have had is being thrown to the wolves at recess duty and lunch duty for kindergarten through sixth grade ten times a week! What an incredible study on childhood development and behavioral issues. It was a sink or swim situation as I was not informed of the expectations nor the consequences of unacceptable behavior being hired after the beginning of the year and the idea of an orientation must have slipped by the administration. Using the resources available, a family and student handbook and my colleagues, I quickly turned around a stressful situation. The students are much more respectful and less prone to find themselves sitting at an individual dining table by themselves.
I truly love getting to know my students—what they like and dislike, what motivates them and what their strengths and weaknesses are. A student knows when someone is being genuine and when they are not and they will only trust a teacher who genuinely cares for him or her. There needs to be a kind firmness regarding expectations and consistent consequences to create an environment where students feel safe and respected. Too much freedom in a classroom setting can set students up for failure and on the other hand, ruling with the constant tone of a drill sergeant can stunt a child’s emotional growth. Finding the balance between these two places is what I will continue to strive for with my students.
Looking back on my two week solo as a student teacher, I saw ordered chaos as eighteen 3rd and 4th graders worked diligently on individual and group projects relating to the human body. They used life-size models and posters, Netbook computers and webquests, measured classroom desks and furniture with their own body parts, and monitored each other’s heart rates. I wondered if they were really learning the required standards set forth by the Department of Education. Then the day came when their projects were finally completed. Each student proudly stood at the front of the class and presented their Wonder Poster to their classmates while their peers quietly listened, made comments and asked questions. With my help, the class listed all that was learned to the K-W-L chart and that’s when I knew that we had accomplished our goals. Would I do things the same? Not exactly, but I know that my students learned a great deal and even better than that, I know that I learned so much more from this experience.
Learning is a constant process that can never be controlled unless you choose not to take the first step of the journey. I know that I will never arrive at the end of this journey because there will always be something more to learn. I hope to inspire my students to dream, to take chances and make mistakes, to celebrate what is working and to never give up when things get tough. As Henry Miller says, “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
No comments:
Post a Comment