As teachers, we all have our moments-( when things haven't turned up the way we want them to be--whether it is when the students are naughty or when the team leaders are hassling you to complete your plans when you already have a hundred things to do ), that we might just let it be! Then we will look at those innocent faces that are staring at us and we will give it another chance! This is called " Never never give up! Got it ? ". I love my job as a teacher and the following video reenforces my beliefs that I can make a difference! Cheers, my courteous readers!
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ReplyDeleteHello Ms. Jenny She, my name is Krista Edwards, I am a student of Dr. John Strange EDM 310 class. The starfish presented in this video is a perfect example of how a child should get a second chance to succeed. No matter how naughty the child is, never giving up will make a big difference, even if those results are seen later in that child's life. My blog link is http://edwardskristaedm310.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteHello Ms She... My name is Percy LaDuna, i am also a student in Dr Strange's EDM310 class. The starfish video was very motivating. I can closely relate to second chances. Eventhough my aim as a future teacher is to help my students value first chances. I also want them to understand that second chances are wonderful especially if we use them to make a difference. http://ladunapercyedm310.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteMs She... I love the passion for teaching that i read in your post. I am not school teacher yet but I use the same type of passion for teaching while coaching little league sports. I let the players know that sometimes mistakes are good. I continously stress that past mistakes help mold a better future. Percy LaDuna http://ladunapercyedm310.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteHi Ms. She,
ReplyDeleteThank you for that video! I am going to show that to my mother, who is an educator. I have seen first hand how downtrodden teachers can get sometimes. It is easy to do when the to-do list has gotten out of hand and the class has been unruly and sometimes, teachers feel like what they do doesn't make a difference. This video is a perfect example of why teachers should never give up! If you reach only one, it all would have been worth it. To change even one life is a beautiful thing! Thank you for encouraging your fellow educators (and future educators); you have made a difference in us! I would love to have you visit my class blog at http://kelleyjenniferedm310.blogspot.com
Ms. She,
ReplyDeleteThis was such an inspirational blog! I love the thought of never giving up on a child. You never know what a difference you are making in the lives of others. I have heard the starfish story several times before, and it still gives me chills to read. As an educator, I know there will be many days when I will become flustered and want to give up, but the thought of making a difference in just one child's life is enough to keep me going. Thank you so much for this inspiration.
My class blog is http://davismandyedm310.blogspot.com
Ms. She,
ReplyDeleteI am a student at the University of South Alabama and I am currently taking EDM310. I am so pleased that I was assigned to your blog. That is a video that all teachers and future teachers I think should see. So inspirational! You are absolutely right about not giving up on our students. Sometimes we are all that they have. This really inspires me to make sure that I always remember that each student is like a starfish, and we can make a difference. If you would like to visit my blog, here it is: My Personal Blog
Ms. She,
ReplyDeleteThe video was very touching. I think every adult could learn something from watching the video that you posted. I think that too often people give up because helping just one isn't worth the trouble. However, I think even if you only help one person it makes a world of difference. I am a student in Dr. Strange's EDM310 class and I will be summarizing your posts. Thank you so much for sharing.
MyClass Blog<
I am commenting again from Dr. Strange's EDM 310 class. This video was so touching! I know I won't make a difference in every student I teach, but if I know there is just one student who I impacted that's enough for me. Like this video, kids have a lot to offer and teach, as well. Even if we don't change a student's life, they may have changed ours. Staying positive and having high expectations for each student is very important to me, along with encouraging my students everyday to do their best. Thank you for sharing this!
ReplyDeleteMary-Katelin McFerrin
Hey Mrs. She, I am a student in Dr. Strange's EDM 310 class. That is a great video and it is so true. I wish all teachers viewed teaching the way you do. If you can impact one child's life, it should all be worth it, no matter how many children don't want to listen or pay attention. I am definitely on board with you on this one. Never feel like things are too tough to make a difference because there may be one child who is depending on you to change their life for the better.
ReplyDeleteI liked the starfish story. As you said, it reinforces the idea that if we change one life, then maybe we've done our job. Maybe we can change the world one life at a time. Never give up. Thanks, Jeff
ReplyDeleteThere's a myth going around that schools are a place to get a great education.
ReplyDeleteYou say you're "not giving up" on any kid --- Why are they resisting and struggling? Because the system doesn't work for them. Because they know that what is being shoved down their throats isn't what they personally want to learn about. They are not interested. The child knows inside that this doesn't feel right. The child knows there is more to life than this narrow view and they do not want to become just another bar code, so they resist.... and you keep pushing because you think it's "in their best interest". You're never giving up on transforming them into a "well rounded citizen".
Schools are factories. They take in raw materials (children), apply a standard process (curriculum) and turn out a product (children prepared for college). And while many children do become grade A products (by school standards), there are grade B, grade C, grade D, grade F, kids sent to special education, kids sent to trade schools, and drop outs.
Are schools turning out great products?
For some reason schools are judged by the grade A products they turn out, not by all the products. For some reason when a product is grade A, schools get the credit. But when a product is of lower grade, the product is blamed. "Lazy." "Not applying yourself." "Learning disabled." "Stupid."
While it might make sense for a factory to toss aside unusable raw materials, is that what we want for our kids?
Do we want the "great education" process that's being applied?
How many people have done what they're supposed to and have what they're supposed to get ... and they aren't happy? How many people have done what they're supposed to who didn't get the great education or the great job or the nice house in the nice neighborhood?
*Supposedly* success will lead to happiness. But does it?
When schools were first designed the idea was to raise up the education level of the general masses. At the time, the "masses"—which included immigrants and children trapped in poverty because life was spent doing what was necessary to stay alive—had a pretty low level of education so the goal wasn't a lofty one. The goal wasn't to get kids into college. The goal was reading and arithmetic and basic knowledge. In the East the goal was better factory workers. In the West, where parents started schools, the goal was basic learning, but the goals were still not lofty.
It's no coincidence that public schools use the factory model since schools were begun at the time when factories were doing amazing things: turning out uniform products *cheaply.* And that seemed like a great idea: spend a little bit of money and move the level of the masses up from illiterate to literate.
Since schools are based on factories, scrap—products that aren't up to standards—is an acceptable part of the process.
Educators (at least the good ones who aren't jaded and burned out) don't want to treat kids like products. They don't want there to be kids who are considered scrap. But educators are trapped by the model they have to work with.
If kids are to be helped to be the best they can be, they need to be treated as individuals with unique needs. But no matter how great the desire a teacher may have to treat her students as individuals, schools are designed to treat them as products on an assembly line.
(The same applies to doing school at home with a curriculum. All that does is move the factory home.)
Those factors are: the kids themselves, access to knowledge and the time to explore it.
100 years ago schools were a handy free place for the general masses to get access to books and a learned person. 100 years ago we didn't have the internet, TV, libraries, cheap books and leisure time to use all those. Life has changed, but schools have not.
Look in to Unschooling and working as a mentor instead of a teacher.... a learning consultant that supports children individually, not on mass factory scale that makes it impossible to meet the needs of every child and not get totally burnt out.
ReplyDeleteThe basic idea of unschooling is that we learn what we need by using it. And that's exactly how kids learn to speak English. Toddlers aren't trying to learn English. They're using a tool (English) to get what they want: which might be juice or a hug or picked up to see better. The English tool is more efficient than other tools they've been using: pointing or crying or wishing. And because English is more efficient, they use it more. And because they use it more, the get better at it. Kids learn English (and everything else) as a *side effect* of living and pursuing what they enjoy.
The theory of school is that someone can't be an engineer until they know everything an engineer needs to know.
But that's not now people learn best. Someone who loves to build things learns how to build things by doing what they love: building things! And since they love to build, they'll be fascinated by things that connect to building. They may be fascinated by history of building or artistic design in building or how structures built with different materials behave or the physics of balance and load distribution and so on and so on.
If we want to build a birdhouse, we don't need to know everything there is to know about hammers beforehand. We just need to want to build and we'll learn what we need to know about hammers by asking and trying out and someone helping us pointing out things we don't know to try. (We can also read books and watch TV shows and watch other people and pound nails just for the fun of it.) That's unschooling.
The goal of unschooling is helping kids be who they are. They will explore the parts of life that fascinate them and, while they're exploring, they'll be learning what they need to in order to explore further.
It's how joyful people would live their lives if they could live them backwards: just doing the things that would lead them to where they ended up and skipping all the boring stuff that they never used and have forgotten.
The best thing you can do for a child is be fascinated by life :-) Get rid of that cloak of dullness that school draped over everything. Relearn how to explore just for the sake of exploring not because it's good for you or because it will be on the test or because it could be good for you one day. Do what's fascinating right now.
Hi Jenny, I am commenting again from EDM 310. I think it is very crucial that a teacher should never give up on a student. In some student's lives a teacher may be the only source of leadership that the student will ever follow. If teachers simply give up on these students then they will go through life without an example of how they should live. In some ways I think that this is the most important responsibility that teachers have.
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