After taking this course, I have realized that there are a lot of factors that determine the type of teacher you can be. The environment of your classroom, type of relationship with your students, and the politics of education all affect how great of a teacher we can be. Setting up your classroom in a specific manner can portray your teaching style. I’ve learned that the average desks in rows is not necessarily the best environment for a classroom. As teachers, we should have open space where the kids can all have a place to interact, move, and possibly perform experiments. In terms of relationships with students, I’ve learned that genuine relationships create more successes in the classroom. Teachers should be enthusiastic, caring, while still containing a certain boundary with the students. Teachers should have a certain level of comfortability with their students, but not too comfortable where it can become inappropriate. Politics also play a major role with how successful a teacher can be in the classroom. The banking concept causes teacher to just give information out, and the students must memorize them to pass the standardized tests. Educational standards set in politics force teachers to become dull with the material, and not have much room to make the curriculum interesting. Overall, this course has opened my eyes and made me realize that there is a lot that goes on in the world of being a teacher. It is not as simple as i originally imagined it would be, but everything I’ve learned has made being a teacher more of a meaningful and interesting experience.
When imagining myself as a teacher, I imagine teaching curriculum that is meaningful and useful to the students I will be teaching to. I want to be able to teach kids about politics, history, our planet. I also want to teach the kids important communication skills and other crucial life skills such budgeting money. In reality though, our core curriculum keeps teachers from being able to spend time on all these useful skills. I believe that our core curriculum is more focused on students memorizing content that they will rarely remember later on in their lives. Core curriculum keeps the teachers from adding in lessons that they believe should be taught, due to the restricted focus on the core curriculum. There is too much focus on each student passing the core classes, instead of focusing on how the students are learning and applying what they’ve learned to their lives. Core curriculum should be more easily adjustable so that teachers can add in lessons that they believe are meaningful and useful. Students should be more interactive with their work instead of the core curriculum which causes the students to complete worksheets, quizzes, and tests. Students should be enthusiastic in the curriculum they are learning, instead of sitting and memorizing all of the core content that is thrown at them. There needs to be a change in the core curriculum if we want kids to succeed later in life and remember important content and skill that they should be taught in school.
When trying to remember what I have learned in both elementary and middle school, I struggle to remember anything that has been useful to me. I find it sad that when my boss gives me a check, I do not know how to cash it in myself. I do not even know how to write check, or balance a checkbook. I feel as if there were so many life skills that I was never taught, and it is disappointing that I was taught numerous varieties of content to memorize and be tested on. This is the problem with our core curriculum, it leads to students retaining the information taught only until they take the test on the content. After the test the students usually forget what they learn and begin memorizing new content for the next test. I can specifically remember being a student and telling myself to remember all the information just for the test, and then forget about it after. Education is supposed to expand the minds of humans, and not just for a short period of time. We need to be teaching the children issues of our world that will affect them when they are grown up in the future. We need to be teaching them about social changes and skills that help them grow up and succeed later on when they are adults. The issue of core curriculum can be greatly connected with the banking concept we learned in class. The restrictions of the core cause teachers to begin habits of banking habit. The banking concept consists of teachers giving content for students to retain and memorize, without having much interaction and outside thoughts about the content. One big question I have in mind is: Does core curriculum detrimental to student’s learning? Another big question I have is: How do we change the core curriculum. I want to research who in our country deals with the issues of education and how many people need to join and agree on reform. I want to know the importance of politics and the role of politics that will influence and help change the core curriculum. I also want to research the finances and economics that play a role in changing/altering the core curriculum. I believe that the core includes a lot of important content, but not as much life skills as there should be. There should also be more room and time for teachers to discuss diverse topics. The core curriculum should be flexible and teachers should have more of a say for what they want to include in the curriculum. If teachers are being the ones teaching the content they should be allowed to include what they deem as useful to their students, especially since teachers are the ones who know their students the best. Teachers are with their students five days a week, several hours a day, so they know what will benefit their students best. The process teachers go through to become teachers should include courses where they can discuss the core curriculum and find ways to make it more meaningful and useful to the grade(s) they will be teaching. People need to understand that the core curriculum determines what we are teaching the children not only in the classroom, but also in life. There should be classes that teach the kids valuable life skills along with content that will be useful to their growing minds.
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