Thursday, December 17, 2009
prompt 7
Now that I’m finally done tutoring, reflecting back on this experience should be very easy. I learned many things that should be helpful in my teaching career. Tutoring taught me many things, but one thing most importantly. Patients are the key to teaching at an early level. And I think this is true throughout the teaching system from k-12. I walked out with a headache almost every time because it was loud; I’m not going to lie. But also every time I left, I always left like I affected at least one child. Kahne and Westheimer says the they’re “in the service of what?” essay, “The service component may help us get the support needed for implementation,… promote powerful learning environments.” I found this completely true when I had gone and tutor. The teacher always appreciated me coming and always made me feel like I was a really big help to her. I also felt as if the students benefited me going as well. These students were in need of help however the teacher couldn’t really just sit down and cater to everyone’s needs separately. This is where I stepped in and really felt like I helped her. I think I can also relate this to Shor as well. Service learning is very proactive now because it has been used for a few years. This relates well to Shor’s idea of empowering education. It not only empowers the teacher to help a smaller group of kids, but also me because it gives me hands on experience in the classroom. It empowers me to strive to be the teacher at the front of the room. And I’m sure I’m a huge help to the teacher because she can narrow down her lesson to the students that she has as well. To empower two separate groups in the same classroom is fairly successful in my eyes. People don’t really know what teachers have to go though, even though we’ve all been though the education system. However, going back into a third grade room is very eye opening.
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Matt,
ReplyDeleteI also connected my last prompt to Kahne & Westheimer. I felt that during my tutoring experience, I helped each child in a different way, catering to each one's specific needs as you put it, which helped both the students and my teacher, a prime example of the "charity" model that they discuss in their article. I also felt it connected to Kahne & Westheimer because throughout my time in the classroom, I was learning about myself and how I want to be a teacher who doesn't just teach kids the facts, but I want them to change their way of thinking about the information presented to them so that they actually really do think about what they hear/read/see in the world, instead of taking things for face value. This also goes along with your connection to Ira Shor. He talks about how the "teacher is the person who mediates the relationship between outside authorities, formal knowledge, and individual students in the classroom" (13). If we take our jobs seriously in this regard, realizing that we spend as much time with these children each day as their parents might, we will be raising generations of students that will think critically about the world around them and everything in it, and they will be so much more able to function as citizens in today's society.