Karen
Reeves
Paper 3, “In My Classroom.”
It
feels very strange to think that I have found myself in this position… Me, out
of all people was not born to be a teacher. Yet here I am, a high school AP
anatomy and physiology teacher fully certified, licensed and ready to go. There
is nothing to me more terrifying than high school students, dealing with
cliques, crying girls in the bathroom, football jocks, dating, emotions, etc.
But on the other hand there is also nothing more awkward; so this could be fun.
Fast-forward to three hours later. That was a classroom full of monsters, I was
totally unprepared, and I’m not really sure what I just got myself into. Maybe
this is not the place for me, I think I’ll go write my letter of resignation
and get out of town as quickly as possible. Okay, so I must confess that none
of the above actually happened, I’ve never been an anatomy teacher and I’ve
never had a classroom full of horrible kids. What makes someone a good teacher?
How do you wrangle in a bunch of obnoxious kids? There’s got to be a way to do
it, I’ve known lots of successful teachers. In a class of rowdy students I
would bring in real life experiences to help them connect to the material,
allow students to express their thoughts while still being the moderator, and
treat my students in a respectful, yet disciplinary manner.
The first day of school is always
an interesting one; it’s typically students against teacher. What I mean by
that is laughing; uninterested students who like to pass notes against the teacher
who is reading the syllabus who looks slightly overwhelmed. The way that I’ve
seen it done best in the past is to let the students get to know you, and
maybe, just maybe you can get them to let you know them just a little bit
better. To avoid boredom on the first day seems to be almost impossible, what
with the passing of the syllabus, and the incessant need to learn everyone’s
name and face. “Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers,” says John
Gatto (3). As a teacher I would try my best to not be bored on the first day,
or any day, because if I’m bored and I’m the teacher I couldn’t even begin to
imagine what the poor students are experiencing.
What kinds of
materials would I use in my classroom? Things to get the students really
excited about anatomy. I had a teacher in high school that let us look through
microscopes at different cells; skin cells, red blood cells, white blood cells
from humans and all sorts of different body tissues. We were able to touch and
look at lungs, hearts, brains, and the esophagus, (wearing gloves of course)
that came from a deceased fetal pig. The first day of school would be a great
opportunity to get the students excited about the material they’re going to be
learning about for the semester. Those same materials would then continue to
make appearances throughout the year to keep the excitement and interest the
students felt on the first day.
What
would be some successful teaching strategies? Let the students help out in
class, let them have (some) input, and I definitely wouldn’t knock any ideas
that they have to help me make the learning environment more successful. What I
want to avoid is something that Freire delicately names, “The Banking Concept
of Education.” Where the students memorize information without really knowing
what it means, why it’s important and what it means to them for the future as
well as how it can apply to their past. “Education thus becomes an act of
depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the
depositor,” says Freire. Continuing on he says, “Instead of communicating, the
teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits where the students patiently
receive, memorize, and repeat”(2).
In my classroom I
would try to give students an opportunity every chapter we discuss to come up
and try teaching the class something new. Give them a mini research project so
they get the chance to learn, the rest of the class would learn, and I would
maybe learn something new as the teacher as well. They wouldn’t be huge, time
consuming projects like a research paper, it could be just a poster board
talking about cell types, maybe the spleen, or something else anatomy related
that the individual student wanted to learn about and research. An important
part of teaching is to help the student learn how to research and learn for
themselves. Adults, children, student, and people in general shouldn’t walk
around like a bunch of trash compactors with all of this information piled up
in our heads and never use it.
To
get respect you need to give respect, this definitely applies in a classroom
setting. In an anatomy class there are more than likely going to be quite a few
awkward moments when talking about body parts and their functions. In my high
school AP anatomy class there was giggling that happened everyday. My role as
an educator is to make the students feel comfortable, to maybe laugh with them,
and involve them in my past by telling them stories about my anatomy days.
While also still sticking with the curriculum, and making sure that we stay on
track as a class. I would never intentionally try to make a child fail my
class, I would however push them to study, learn things on their own, I
wouldn’t spoon feed them their education.
I believe that you
can do all of these things while still offering the students every opportunity
to learn from you as the instructor. As Jerry Large says, “A big part of
building character is overcoming failure. Too much adversity is bad, but so is
too little, which doesn’t allow a child to build grit”(4). As a teacher I would
behave in such a manner that I would treat the students as my equals, as
adults, because as high school students they should be starting to think of themselves
that way. I would want my students to see me as someone they can trust, someone
they can relate to, and every child needs to be able to believe that their
teacher wants them to succeed. Dan Brown agrees saying, “Great teachers have
strong relationships with their students families and engage in meaningful ways
with the larger community. Going to a volleyball game and cheering your face
off can sometimes make a world of difference”(1).
As
a student I was never a fan of standardized testing, it’s not fun, and the only
purpose of it to me at the time was to check and make sure you weren’t stupid,
and that your teachers were doing their job. I didn’t pass the math portion of
the WASL therefore I didn’t get a t-shirt on assembly day, (talk about making
someone feel bad about themselves for absolutely no reason). As an adult, while
I understand the reasons why, I still don’t enjoy the thought of it. I agree
with Mike Rose when he says, “… stop making standardized test score the
gold-standard of student achievement and teacher effectiveness. In what other
profession do we use a single metric to judge goodness? Imagine judging
competence of a cardiologist by the average of her patients cardiograms”(5). As
an educator I would do the standardized testing as mandated by the state, but I
would educate every student about the testing just to ensure that they know the
results of these exams will not make them pass or fail my class exclusively. As
far as my own exams? They would happen once a week to ensure that the students
are learning the material at a pace that’s comfortable to them.
Would
any of these things fly in a real classroom? Absolutely. It’s imperative to
make learning enjoyable and to connect with your students while still making
sure they’re learning something. Would I try to implement them into mine if
given the opportunity? Most definitely. As an educator I would bring in real
life experiences to help students connect with me and with each other, allow
students to express their thoughts while still playing moderator, and treat my
students in a respectful, yet disciplinary manner.
Work Cited
1. Brown, Dan. "What Makes a
Great Teacher?" WJLA. ABC7, 31 Aug. 2012. Web. 04 Dec. 2012.
2. Freire, Paulo, and Myra Bergman.
Ramos. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Seabury, 1970. Print.
3. Gatto, John Taylor.
"Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids, and Why." Harper's
Magazine 1 Sept. 2003: n. pag. Print.
4. Large, Jerry. "Gift of Grit,
Curiosity Help Kids Succeed." Seattle Times 23 Sept. 2012: n. pag.
Print.
5. Rose, Mike. "Resolutions Someone
Should Make for 2011." The Washington Post. The Washington Post, 05
Jan. 2011. Web. 04 Dec. 2012.
