Watson To The Wise

 Teaching in the public's perspective looks much different than what teachers are actually facing in todays world. Many occupations can be blasted on the news and shown to the whole world in little snippets of biased information, but who really knows what its like to teach in a real classroom? that would be real teachers. I recently watched the movie "Freedom Writers" where first year teacher Mrs. Gruwell came into a school system that had been broken, a place where students had little room to succeed. Many teachers had given up on trying to provide these kids the proper education because they felt as though they would never reach to their fullest potential. These kids were living in areas that weren't the best, living in fear that they would get beat up on every corner and getting shot at. Mrs. Gruwell decided to take her teaching to the next level at vast lengths and really get into what she saw her students were interested in and in turn, they finally started to le...

Schools have not achieved the title of"integrated" to its fullest potential quite yet, but we are learning more and more as the years go on, and I hope that our generation of teachers will be able to help this movement flourish. The civil rights act of 1964 might have legally "prohibited" the discrimination of racial types of orientation, but in the classroom and in the world around us, we are far from being united. In the 1960s  maps of areas were being color coated green and red. The green areas were to signify white neighborhoods, and the red areas highlighted where minorities resided. They used these colors to further segregate the groups because the green had an underlying meaning of good, and the red represents bad. This map was used for realtors and business owners when it came to picking the perfect home for a client or finding out where to establish a new location for business. Had either of them been too close to a "red zone" the value would depr...

 I believe that the way education philosophies affect schooling depends on the teachers themselves. I am sure when reading all of these theories, we all were fond with the idea of one or two of them and decided that teaching in those certain styles may be best. Although restricted by a school board or certain curriculum, teachers are given some freedom in approach on teaching different subjects. This is what will provide different experiences as students progress to new grade levels and different teachers. Some teachers will be drawn to teaching inspiration from one theorist, while the other one might be intrigued by the theory completely opposite to that one. This is the beauty of personal preference, but at the end of the day, we must look at what works best for the child.  We already know what traditional education looks like in the classroom, the typical desks and chairs, textbooks and standardized tests unit after unit, the whole ordeal. We know the outcome of what this s...

 Every child deserves equal opportunity to get a quality education. We go to college to learn how to be good educators and learn the content of what we should be teaching these kids, but what I've gathered from most classes I've taken here is that you learn more from the students themselves than anything that a  textbook could teach you. Every school year, every class, every student will be completely different and as a teacher, you will absolutely have to adapt to this, and figure out a way to accommodate everyone. It is possible to include everyone into a curriculum and get through to all of your students, It may not be the easiest to come by, but it is do-able, and it is worth the kids getting the education that they deserve.  The things that I am willing to do in order to see all students succeed is to make the classroom a safe space that makes them feel like they want to learn, and  a place they are okay with growing and succeeding in. Listening to what the kids...

 Gender Affects the teaching profession in more ways than one. Based off of our textbook alone, women were struggling majorly in the late 1800s over inequality in male and female teachers. Male teachers were given the advantage of being able to attend whatever colleges they pleased with freedom of study choice (As long as they were wealthy white males), while women had to settle for "normal teachers colleges" where they were given no freedom to study anything else alongside it. Male educators were paid substantially more than female educators, and women were constantly seeing these hundreds of dollars that they were losing out on, purely because they are female. Women also saw inequalities with promotions in the workplace, whereas they were given no opportunity to level up, men were getting handed those higher paying jobs in schools without question. To them, a woman should never have a higher status than a man, and there is no possible way she could have the authority to bos...

 I am inspired to teach because I was always the kid who was behind and not grasping the content. I always had trouble with school, and I envied those who didn't have to work hard to be a good student, or those who didn't have to try to be a quick adapting learner. I want to be the kind of teacher that is able to get through to any student on any subject, and allow them to have those wonderful light bulb moments when I teach. I especially want to help kids like me who struggled to the point of tears over schoolwork, I want to show kids like me that there is so much more to education than what is at face value. Being able to attend Texas State as a first generation college student, studying to educate the next generation is the first step to me following my dreams, and to making that little girl who felt like school wasn't meant for her a proud teacher of everything she didn't understand.  If given the choice, I would like to teach second or third grade because I feel li...