Week 4 Reflection

Share 3 (three) exact quotes that are meaningful to you (from across these two chapters), and explain why they matter to you.

"Because you are a human being, endowed with the value and possibilities of humanity, I must treat you with dignity." p. 27
WOW, does this not empower my thinking! If this isn't a slap in the face to all of us future teachers I don't know what is. We are dealing with our students lives and are a huge role model to them. We can be an instrument of torture or a gateway to a love of learning. How can we expect our students to respect us if we don't give them respect. Teachers are not all mighty we need to learn to share the power and help our students see that they are an important part of our class. Each and every student that walks into our class comes with a story to share and they deserve every basic right no matter, their gender, socioeconomic status, race, or religion. Dignity is not something you earn it is an automatic right. If we ever belittle a student or don't look at them as a human we have turned our back on the education system and should be ashamed. To be a human is to love and to a teacher should be held to different standards when it comes to these issues. We have the ability to lift up a student or destroy them and if you are not ready for this responsibility then get out of this profession. The future of our nation rests in our hands and I take this challenge on with an open heart and can't wait to be changed by my future students.

"To provide opportunity is to help learners have a voice in what and how they learn and to find their own voice through what they study. It is to feed the learner's curiosity and challenge the learner's natural drive toward competence (Meier, 1995) p.30
To me this is a huge part of what differentiation is. Treating each student as an individual learner and knowing their strengths and weaknesses and helping them harness their love for learning. This quote really stuck out to me because I feel that so many time teachers feel like they need to have the voice in the classroom but if we are really helping our students grow and develop we need to help them find their voice. We, teachers already know who we are and it is our turn to help our curious students find their passions. We are the facilitators and role models, we have a huge job ahead of us. We are the fuel to our students growing minds, engaging them in challenging activities that help them develop different perspectives is success. Finding your voice may take years or you might have already been born with it. We as teachers need to know how to best help each student. We must take the time to really get to know them on a personal level to ensure that they will have optimal growth while in your classroom.

"Wise teachers expend their team in a variety of ways-forming partnerships with their students, establishing relationships with like-minded peers who serve as "critical friends" drawing on the expertise of specialists in the building, and actively pursing advanced professional knowledge through universities, books, and high quality staff development." p.33
Teachers are life long learners! The thirst for knowledge never ends. With our changing world we as teachers must be ready to change with it. Our students will change our neighborhoods will change and education policies will change. A solid teacher never just excepts a routine you continually are evaluating yourself and thinking what can I do better? We need to be constructive and challenge our thinking. So many teachers become robotic and go through the day to day motions of school life and eventually become burned out. I have seen many examples of this through my field experience and I know that I don't want to have this happen to me. You must create professional learning groups within your school faculty and district professionals. Put yourself in situations where you are challenged as a teacher, change grade levels, schools, or even states. Teaching is constantly evolving and there are better methods or approaches to go at sharing knowledge with your students. I don't want to stop learning my brain is a huge sponge with lots of room for bigger and better things.