Module 2

I feel that schooling can help or interfere with children's personal growth, depending on how schooling is presented. I do not think that a sit down and copy this method of preschool is helping personal growth, but not going to preschool at all can interfere with personal growth. I believe that schooling helps personal growth by providing an environment where children can interact with peers and age appropriate materials and activities. I also believe that if children are not given the opportunity to interact, it can interfere with the development of social skills, leading to problems later.

Like adults, children learn in many ways. There are visual learners, auditory learners, and kinesthetic learners, in children as well as adults. I believe that young children learn a lot from hands on activities, whether they grow up to be kinesthetic learners or not. I think they learn by doing, whether it works or not the first time. The more opportunities a child is presented with, in my opinion, the more he/she will learn. Children, being quite literal beings, do not have the same experiences and vocabulary that we as adults have and I think this makes auditory learning difficult at a young age. Last week I did a listening experiment with my class of 5 year olds. I asked them to tell me how to make a sandwich. I told them I was going to following their directions exactly and I could not think of anything on my own. By the time I had spread peanut butter on a closed package of bread I think the point was made. Giving oral instruction assumes that the person listening knows what it is that you’re talking about and has some general knowledge of the topic. To explain reading to a child who doesn’t know that letters make sounds is very difficult, no matter how many times you sound out ten, they won’t really get it.

I am a visual learner and once I’ve written something down, I won’t forget it. Thankfully, I can write a grocery list and remember what’s on it even if I forget to take it to the store. I’m sad to say that happens often! If I don’t write it down it’s much more likely that I will forget.

I hope that in nine years of teaching someone has learned something! Professional teaching aside, I recently taught a 13 month old to sign “thank you.” I started by using the sign for thank you whenever I said thank you or wanted him to say thank you. Next, I moved his hand to his mouth and then down, saying thank you out loud while making his hands sign it. As this progressed, I would wait a second after saying thank you, before I signed it, giving him a chance to do it. In a matter of days he was signing thank you every time the word was used in his presence. At 13 months I don’t know if he knows what thank you means, but he does seem to understand that it should come after mommy gives you food!

Module 1

Why do I want to be a teacher? Sometimes I wonder! I want to be a teacher because I want to provide children with opportunities to explore and develop a passion for learning that they will carry with them their entire lives. When children's early education experiences are positive ones I believe that they will want to go to school, they will want to learn more, and they will seek opportunities to learn new things. I like school, I like learning new things, and I attribute this to experiences I had early in my education.

I remember the names and faces of all my teachers, from Montessori preschool all the way through to Bible College and my graduate classes. I don't have any traumatic memories caused by my teachers and I don't think that I could say that I had a "worst" teacher. The worst teacher I can imagine would be one who not only did not encourage learning and creativity, but crushed it. A teacher who controlled his/her classroom by instilling fear in the students. A teacher who believed that is was his/her job to stand up and talk and my job as a student to sit down and shut up. A teacher who hated his/her job and made it known to the students that they were there because they had to be and not because they cared about the students.

Equally difficult is deciding which of my teachers was "the best." There are specific things that I remember about each of my teachers and classes and why each one was the best I could have had that year. I remember always liking my teachers and always thinking that my teacher was "the best" of all the teachers for that grade. My preschool teacher was very encouraging and always seemed convinced that I could do anything. I don't remember her ever telling me that I couldn't do something, rather I was told that if I tried, she was sure I would succeed. My ninth grade social studies teacher managed to turn American History into the most fascinating subject ever. I don't remember the tests, the homework, or the reading associated with the class; but I do remember the projects. I remember setting up an entire Lego train set in his classroom to go with my project on the Transcontinental Railroad and bringing in a huge "field of cotton" to go with my project on the cotton gin. I think that I remember these teachers because they came to class with an attitude of wanting to be there and wanting the students to get the most they could out of the class, without ever realizing what was happening! There is a place, of course, for textbook learning, tests, and homework, but I think that there is much more than that to teaching and "the best" teachers will figure out how to balance those things.