Education & Learning is Like Planting a Seed

Education is like planting a seed. The seed is the wealth of information you'd like to plant in your students' minds. As a teacher, it is your job to work with the student to make that seed grow. With enough sun (encouragement) and a little faith, that little seed will sprout and grow into a wealth of knowledge and opportunity. Once that plant has fully grown, you can sit back and enjoy the wonderful thing you've created.

Perhaps one of the topics we've covered this semester that has stuck with me the most was the article we read, Discovering Columbus. It was a very interesting topic that gave me a lot to think about. The question of, do you teach a curriculum that is a lie, even if that's how you learned it, and is technically how you are supposed to teach it? That gave me a lot to think about in regards to how I would teach students, and how we can start to incorporate the truth into the current curriculum. Another part of this semester I enjoyed was the discussion about culture. I learned that immersing into different cultures, accepting each students culture, and making it a point to be positive is a huge part of education and being a teacher. All people are different, we all have our different backgrounds and stories, and in being a teacher, you need to know that you're going to come across a lot of different people, and learning to incorporate different cultures is a big piece of what is takes to be successful in the classroom. And lastly, I loved the different types of education & schools we learned about. From schools based on creativity, to outdoor, environmentally friendly schools, it really opened my eyes to see the variety of different types of education available out there.

The blogs were a great way to get our ideas out, and give us a chance to discuss different topics. I also loved being given the opportunity to read and comment on others blogs, as I was able to see differing opinions, and points I may not have thought of on my own. That gives each of us an opportunity to learn even more by listening to what others in our positions have to say about a variety of topics.

Social Justice: Multicultural, anti-racist, projustice.

For my blog this week, after reading through this article, I decided to focus on social justice in terms of culture and race. The article discusses the 'Rethinking Columbus', but I wanted to look into the social justice when it comes to students in the modern school world. My question is: why hasn't the racial issues from our past completely subsided in our society?

The city of Seattle has a page dedicated to the issue of race and social justice in education. http://www.seattle.gov/rsji begins the page saying "Imagine a city where...every schoolchild, regardless of language and cultural differences receives a quality education and feels safe and included...race does not predict how much you earn or your chance of being homeless or going to prison...African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans can expect to live as long as white people" And according to the site, "The Race and Social Justice Initiative (RSJI) is an effort of Seattle City government to realize the vision of racial equity."

There's also a site dedicated to this: https://www.raceforward.org/about. This organization is set up to "build awareness, solutions and leadership for racial justice by generating transformative ideas, information and experiences". And they define "racial justice" as "the systematic fair treatment of people of all races, resulting in equitable opportunities and outcomes for all". They also have a detailed description of what they do and how it's helping bring social justice in every area.


I think that this is extremely important. As said on the page, there's a still standing issue of children and students of a different race or culture feels unsafe and not included at school. Every child should feel safe at school, and every child should receive a quality education regardless of where they are from, how they look, or how they identify. It's good to know that many different organizations are looking to take a stand.

I also think that every city should have something similar in place to help with the social justice many people don't get.

Place Based Education/Environmental Education

This week we started talking about environmental education, which is a personal favorite of mine. I love the environment and helping keep it clean and well, and so I really love the idea behind incorporating that into education. I wanted to know just how much was out there that could help kids get involved.

The first thing I did was find a website about environmental education generally. This site is dedicated to this kind of education, and includes a lot of information. There are different programs, and conferences that are all surrounding this type of education. I thought it was a great resource.

I also looked at my own pin, as well as other students, and saw a lot of great ways to use the environment in the classroom. My own pin, which was a list of sites and books about it to help kids get into the idea, really included a lot of great stuff as well. It was This site that I used for my pin. And when you scroll down, the bottom has a variety of sites to use. My personal favorite was www.naturerocks.org, which has a bunch of fun outdoor activities for kids and families. I thought this was the best find about how kids can get involved, because it says that sometimes just simply connecting with nature is something that really gets your kids into knowing how important and wonderful the environment and nature is!

Waldorf Education

For my blog this week, I chose the theorist Rudolf Steiner (from which Waldorf education was based).

Steiner was an Austrian philosopher and teacher.  He was the thinker behind anthroposophy, which goes into the spiritual and intellectual world we live in.

"For the Waldorf student, music, dance, and theater, writing, literature, legends and myths are not simply subjects to be read about, ingested and tested. They are experienced. Through these experiences, Waldorf students cultivate a lifelong love of learning as well as the intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual capacities to be individuals certain of their paths and to be of service to the world."

I really like this perspective because it goes into a whole different "realm" of education. I like that more is put into making sure students find meaning in their lives instead of simply being bored in school. They dance and listen to music and focus on the arts. Education becomes something to be desired.

I do not think that Steiner would agree with the banking concept. The idea of the banking concept is quite simple. The students are the bank, and the teachers just put information (like money) into them. With beliefs such as " the teacher teaches and the students are taught" and "the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing" shows that it is very narrow minded. The Waldorf education system is more spiritual, with more about finding meaning in their lives. This approach is not just putting the students down as simple means to give information instead of a blossoming human being who needs to find their greatest ability in order to succeed. 

Sources: 

http://www.whywaldorfworks.org/02_w_education/

https://elearning.salemstate.edu/courses/935572/files/36551087/download?wrap=1 

Educational Philosophy

Educational philosophies are a major part of education and being able to see where you stand there is an important piece of being a teacher as well. I took this assessment and used this scoring sheet to assess myself in this area. I found, personally, that I scored the highest in Progressivism, reconstructionism and humanism. I think it's important for teachers to see where they stand on these different levels of philosophy and it says a lot about how they teach and what they believe. However, the accuracy of this kind of assessment may not be completely correct, but it's good for a ballpark estimate. I however did think mine fit somewhat.

When it comes to my specific teaching philosophies, I believe I would teach using a variety of different ones, as opposed to one single belief of education. I'd like to incorporate different ways of teaching and my expectations for students would be based on a variety of factors.

Spanish Immersion

With this topic, my main question was what are educators/schools/teachers doing to help immerse students in culture? As I'm not an EDU major, while I was doing my observation assignment I came across a great video called Amazing Classrooms: Spanish Immersion. (Watch here!) This was the perfect companion to both my question for this blog and also for my observation.

The Spanish Language Immersion School runs with the help of teachers, educators, and parents. It takes in students who use English as their dominant language, from pre-K to grade 5, and has them leave after 5th grade fluent in Spanish, and immersed in the Spanish culture.

Many different teaching methods are used here. Teachers focus on small groups of kids, and use worksheets and verbal answers and speaking to enhance their understanding and pronunciation of the Spanish language. On top of that, they include separate cultural activities like salsa dancing and other cool things.

I think that this kind of culture immersion is fantastic. There's an entire school focused on doing what we learned about this week: teaching kids cultures different than their own. And by doing this, kids leave multi-cultural and able to understand to a whole new level about how to appreciate everyone's different cultures. I think it's a great way to do what everyone should do at least a little bit in every classroom.

Do you teach a curriculum you know is a lie even though this is how you learned it?

The story and history of Christopher Columbus is a major debate that can be used to answer this question. As kids, we learned a lot about the supposed "man who discovered America". We learned that he was the first one on this land, that he was a friendly heroic man, and that he was SO great that we even had a day off from school to celebrate all he had done for our country. So, of course, as we got older and began learning more about Columbus's REAL history...it's not a shock that most of us began resenting him and what he'd really done. Stolen land already inhabited by the Natives? Killing them? This doesn't seem to friendly or heroic to me anymore.

In Discovering Columbus, a teacher goes into teaching his students about the truth behind Columbus, and uses a very hands-on approach to help them understand it. He goes and takes a student's purse, telling them that it's his because he's the one holding it. This gets the students up and talking about how it's not his, and that they clearly watched him take it from the student. And from here, he goes into the question of why exactly we say that Columbus discovered America. I really liked his approach on the true story. Showing the student's first hand the difference between actually discovering something and simply taking something and claiming it yours. This is a great way to show what really happened without completely getting gorey and depressing.

This definitely made me realize how you can go about telling the true story to students. If I were to teach, I would definitely use something like this to tell the story.

In No Reason to Celebrate Invasion, we get a first hand look at a Native American who feels we should not be celebrating something that ended up destroying the lives of her ancestors. She goes on to knock down the fact that maybe some of the things they got from Europe as a result of this invasion were helpful, but would be given up in a second to have prevented the massacre of her people. It's very interesting to get a first hand look into the mind of someone who may not have been alive at the time, but is still feeling the effects of it in her life today.

If I were to be an educator, this would definitely pose a dilemma. We learn about the discovery of America fairly young, and that could be a reason teachers generally don't divulge into genocide and theft of land. It seems like a better option to go with the sunshine & flowers route, therefore dodging the horrified looks on the faces of innocent children. But at the same time, do you lie to them? It's a tough situation. But I would definitely try and tell the truth while giving them a first hand look on how things really went.