Every since I was a little girl I’ve wanted to be in charge. I remember when I was 12 I would play school with my 2 cousins Saria and Courtney. They were both younger than me so I was able to be in charge and be their teacher. I had two student desk and a dry erase board in my room that went with my teacher theme that my parents had created for my room. I also had a 3rd grade teacher’s math book that I had got from my aunt who is a teacher. With these 3 things I felt I had all I needed to play school with Saria and Courtney. I would make math worksheet for them and lay them on the desk and once they were finished, I would even grade their papers. This was one of my most favorite & memorable past times as a child. With that said I guess I have always wanted to do something where I was teaching something that I was knowledgeable of. My cousins were very different, one would catch on very quickly and she always did great on the worksheets and the other wouldn’t do so well. The challenge for me was to get the one who didn’t do so well to do just as good if not better than the other. I wanted to show her that she could understand and do just as good as anyone. I explained the problems over and over again and she started to understand. I was so happy and excited for her at that moment I wanted to continue to teach things rather it was vacation bible school or just the 2 of them in my room. Now that I am older I have learned that all students are different but regardless of their differences they all deserve a secure, caring, and stimulating environment that allows growth and maturity: emotionally and socially. It’s my responsibility to ensure that each student that I encounter will reach his or her full potential in the stated areas.
If he or she does not reach their full potential I want to make sure that they go past their breaking point. When I use the term “go past his/her breaking point”, I am talking about that little voice in your head that tells you, “Ok “self” you have reached a point physically, mentally or emotionally that you cannot surpass!” Everyone has heard this voice in their head at some point or another. I take it as my personal responsibility to make sure you have the will power in your mind to say, “Yes I Can” and then you will gain the ability to tell your body to “shut up” and persevere through whatever you thought was not attainable. Once we get here the student will see that as long as he/she puts their mind to it, they will be able to accomplish anything. If we can get our students to that point we have won!
People do not realize that a lot of things can be taken from you in this lifetime; however, education, knowledge and understanding are not one of them. I want to instill this in my students, which in return I can help them to develop the drive and hunger for knowledge and understanding. Education is more than a piece of paper you receive for graduating high school or college. A lot of people don’t seem to understand that. There are people who have graduated college and can’t tell you one thing they learned their sophomore and junior year. Simply because they crammed for their test came out with an A, and forgot all of the information the second they wrote the last answer. This is because they did not learn the material; they memorized it for the test. Some people would say that they are educated, looking from an educators point of view, are they?
My goal for my students is to have them prepared in my content area as well as for life. As an educator we have to get people ready for the real world. When I say the real world, what do I mean? When we say that word, “the real world” many people immediately think a career or a 9-5 Last time I checked their was 24hours in a day. So how is just obtaining a career having students prepared for the real world? Being smart is the ability to adapt. Someone who is smart can be thrown into an unfamiliar environment and adapt to it accordingly and come out successful. As an example, if I am teaching a student addition facts and they know 2 + 2 = 4. Then on a test I should be able to write a word problem and make to where they must use an application of what we have learned in class to figure out the answer. If one can do that without a review letting them know it will be all word problems on the test, even though we only practiced with numerals. That is what you would call being smart. Therefore, if one can acquire those traits and apply them to their everyday life as well as their educational content area, we as educators I believe have done our job successfully.
Another goal as an educator is to encourage students to think for themselves and not always depend on a help aid or guide to direct their train of thought. We have to get students back relying on their internal instinct and going off of their gut feeling. It is kind of like trial and error, except this will allow the student to learn from their mistakes and help them to trust their selves even more when they get things right. For example, some students cannot study for a test without a study guide; this is not good, last time I checked there was no study guide to life. There are some who are so dependent on technology that it has almost crippled students from thinking for their selves. I believe that it is my job as an educator to let the students know that technology is not the most powerful thing, but your mind is the most powerful thing. We have people salivating over what we can do with technology these days, and forgetting that people’s minds are what has created technology and are constantly researching and discovering new things which keep our technology so advanced. With me being a Instructional training & design major, I want to show my students that if you apply the knowledge you already have and technology that you can take things to a new level.
