Believe in Education!

I just watched an extremely inspirational and powerful speech that Professor Langholz emailed us.  It was given by an extremely articulate young boy to a stadium full of people at a Dallas Independent School District conference.  Click on the following link to watch it http://www.dallasisd.org/keynote.htm .  This boy delivers a tremendously optimistic and moving speech about education.  Regardless of whether or not this student actually wrote this speech or just delivered it, the message is the same.  Teachers need to believe in their students.  Teachers need to believe in their fellow teachers and other school staff, faculty, and administration.  Students need to believe in their teachers.  All of these go hand in hand and I agree with this boy that every child is worth believing in and trying to help.  For many children, their only source of guidance and compassion is their teachers.  This is very sad and makes our job as teachers that much more powerful, important, and meaningful.

The Last Lecture by Dr. Randy Pausch

One guideline for this blog assignment was to attend 2 lectures and blog about them.  I may be slightly bending this rule by simply watching a lecture by Dr. Randy Pausch who a professor of computer science and known for his book  "The Last Lecture" on youtube.  This lecture and his book were written when he was diagnosed with cancer and was asked to give one last lecture to the students and faculty at Carnegie Melon.  Pausch is very optimistic and delivers quite the inspirational and uplifting lecture for someone who is going to die in not too long.  He discusses the importance of pursuing childhood dreams, having fun, and working hard.  One of the most ideas that he discusses is the idea that just because someone is tough on you or criticizes your shortcomings, this does not mean that they do not care about you.  In fact, it probably implies the opposite; that is, they do care about you and want you to improve and know that you are capable of more.  It is more problematic when someone gives up on you and does not get on your case to perform at your highest.  This idea is extremely pertinent to a career as a teacher.  I want to relay this message to my students so that they realize that my critiques and those of others, of their behavior, school work, and progress are a result of us caring rather than us getting mad or not liking our students.  This is an important distinction for people to understand.  You can see the lecture on youtube by searching "last lecture" or by clicking on the link here The Last Lecture.

Mission trips and Service Learning

Some of my best experiences in life have been the mission trips I have gone on with my church.  I have to been to inner city Philadelphia, rural Arkansas, and Indian reservations in Montana, Arizona, and North Dakota.  I have had so much fun and been so moved by the relationships I built and strengthened on these trips and the work we did to help others.  I am going on another mission trip this spring break to Mississippi and Louisiana through Luther and Habitat for Humanity.  I am quite excited for this trip.  In class on Friday, when Professor Langholz was eloquently delivering his "Dews and Doughnuts of Teaching" (his version of Do's and Don'ts that came with Mt Dew and doughnuts), I began to think about how I could implement these experiences into my work as a teacher.  He said that as teachers, we should be eager to pick up new hobbies, travel,  go on adventures, and take risks because teachers need to be interesting people.  My experiences on these mission trips give me a different insight into the way the world works and make me unique.  As a teacher, I would love to be able to use these experiences as a source of learning or inspiration for my students and encourage my students to also become involved in some sort of service.  I believe that this may be just as beneficial for those helping as for those who are being helped.  As a science teacher we could even do class activities that would include service type projects like cleaning up parks or picking up garbage around a lake or in a forest.  The students would be participating in stewardship, getting exercise, working as a group, and learning about the negative impact that humans can have on the environment.  All of these are beneficial consequences of this type of service learning. 

Snow Days

Many school children in the Upper Midwest had their days made today due to school closings and the resulting snow days.  As a child, like many other kids, I lived for snow days and I still would be more than happy to have classes cancelled due to a heavy snow storm.  Some kids may be more excited just to simply miss school and may not even be happy for all the wondrous activities that the snow provides.  For me, missing school was never really a negative, but I think the best part about snow days was the fact that there was a large amount of fresh snow and this meant that skiing, sledding, snowball fighting, and snow fort building was sure to occur.  The recent snow days got me thinking about snow days and how they can relate to education.  For one, snow days present some logistical problems for teachers and schools. Perhaps more important and more interesting to think about as a future teacher is the fact that more students are excited about snow days (or missing school in general) than school itself.  Is this is a problem of current schools or is it just a natural thing that kids would rather not have to go to school and just play all day.  The latter is probably the more agreed upon explanation.  I would say it is not necessarily a problem of the schools but the better schools or schools that have more enthusiastic teachers and stimulating curriculums will have more engaged students that may be more likely to enjoy school.  Thus, the students at these schools may not be as excited to miss school for a snow day as students in other schools. As a teacher, a cool goal to have, may be to have your students more excited to go to school than to miss school on a school day.  I would love it if my students were more excited to come to school and learn than to have a day off to lounge around.  This is probably an unrealistic goal but it would be awesome and I am sure it would make teaching quite fun and less frustrating than it could be under other circumstances.  On the other hand, these snow days may be a good way to allow for kids to relax, get some exercise, and just be kids.  There are many positive things that could result from this extra time off.  As a science teacher, it would be fun to have the kids come into school and do a snow or winter related science experiment or just take a hike in a nearby nature park or woods.