Blog Post 10

Do You Teach or Do You Educate

When becoming an education major it was a combination of a couple of factors that convinced me this is what I needed to pursue. My first factor was family influence. I am honest when I tell people that my family is not highly educated. Only a handful of the women in my family graduated from high school and I am only the second male in my family to graduate from high school. I was lucky to have a mom who graduated from high school and has her Associates Degree as a Registered Nurse. As I graduated high school and started college I thought about how different my family structure would be if they had a high school diploma and college degree. Most of my relative would not have to struggle for a stable job or go from house to house basically living as nomads in a modern society. They have to constantly depend on others because they do not have the proper education to depend on themselves. The second factor was the thought of so many other kids who is not lucky to have an educated parent. Like I said before I am lucky to have an educated mother but so many children do not have the opportunity to experience this. It is a duty of mines to be more than just a teacher in the classroom and that is where being an educator is the next step in my career. I want to change the world through education and expand my talents outside the classroom. Many students do not get to see a Black professional in the classroom or outside the classroom; I only had three black teachers and they were my best teachers. I want to be an administrator and change the educational gap because if we want to advance as a nation we need all students to be given the opportunity to receive a quality education. One of my ultimate goals is to open a school for lower-income students to receive that quality education.
There is a thin line between teaching and educating in my view. I believe teaching is giving the person the answers and they have no say in if they feel it is right or wrong. There is nothing wrong with that but there is no development in the process, well there is no process because there is one simple solution. As an educator you present multiple ways or directions to an answer. A couple of words I saw in the video above are guide and mentor. As a guide you give them the direction but it is still the students choice to explore and find their way. As a mentor you have the trust of your students. Gaining the trust of your students should be a main priority of an educator. Also in the video it showed the word empower. I will empower my students to hold themselves at a high standard at whatever they do in life. As soon as a student feels empowered they will exceed your expectations and as an educator you will know you did an honest days of work.

Tom Johnson's Don't Let Them Take the Pencils Home

Tom Johnson uses a story to convey his message in this blog. Gertrude goes in Mr. Johnson's office, telling him she should stop letting his students take home pencils and paper. She said she saw a study that shows students who use pencils at home have lower standardized test scores. Tom was troubled by this and says standardized test does not measure authentic learning. He does realize students in lower income schools do see pencils as entertainment. He notices the problem but he wants a solution. So he talks to parents and students on the ways pencils can be used for learning. Gertrude wondered how does he know if they are using those skills at home and Tom says he does not hold them accountable. He tries to keep them interested in hoping they will continue the learning outside the classroom. He feels the child is learning no matter what they choose to do with the pencils.
I feel Mr. Johnson is letting the students be creative with pencils. He wants to embrace that creativity a student can have with pencils. He also takes it a step further by incorporating the parents in the learning process because he recognizes in many lower-income households the parents job does not require them to use a pencil. He wants the student and parents to learn together and have that autonomy to be creative together. Creativity is a measure of learning that needs to be embraced and not steered away from.