Philosophy and Purpose

I told my students this week that I am excited to teach this year because of the philosophy and purpose that I am bringing to the classroom. This philosophy and purpose is the result of new learning and reflecting that I did this summer and my years of experience as a teacher. I shared this philosophy and purpose with my students and collected their responses. I took a sentence from each student's response and rewrote them in one paragraph in no particular order. Underneath each paragraph are six word stories that groups wrote in response to an image of freedom. Students also created a group tableau to complement their story. I'll be sharing these responses with students this week. I hope we can live up to these expectations!

Student Responses to English Class Philosophy and Purpose

To educate and be educated by and with one another to liberate minds, find peace, and participate in the validation, humanization, and freedom of each other and all people.

EAST

This motivated me to take partners and sources I have to work with into my hands as a gift and not to waste it. Everybody will get a chance to use their mind and share their opinion. You didn’t answer simple questions that you stated in the paper, which makes me curious. I think it might take some getting used to, but it will work most likely. Give another person a new way to think, and give them another path to open and explore. I like listening to other people’s answers or questions. When I do, I get a better answer or deeper understanding. This philosophy basically mean to respect, support, and think about yourself and others. This shows that all people can have freedom for each other and can fight for it. As a teacher, do you assume that we’re not at peace? Because as a student, I can tell you, I am not at peace. Be FREE. LOVE YOURSELF. Why are we here? No matter who you are or how you look, you should still be treated respectfully and get the same amount of education. I’m not sure how finding peace fits in with everything else. Approved and Disapproved by society. To liberate minds inspired me along with finding peace. To work together and help each other. The philosophy is similar to the one I use when I want to learn. Finding peace can be difficult for people. I think it gives us the right to use our voice, share our opinions, and share who we are to others. PEACE.

These chains won’t hold me back.

Freedom, let us have a voice.

Faith’s attempting to leap to freedom.

We are all in invisible cages.

Freedom can give you many different emotions.

Be free and don’t be stopped.

WEST

FREE. The cup of freedom, love, and peace is English class. Teach me too. The philosophy motivates me to speak my mind and respect other opinions. How could this course free or liberate us when our opinions vary? What motivates me is the freedom of all people and each other. I love peace and being nice to people. I’m curious because I never had a teacher that can learn something from the students. I’m curious about how to want to learn from us. “The Passing of Knowledge.” One thing that motivates me is that we aren’t just learning reading concepts; we are reading to serve a higher purpose in the world. FIND PEACE. I’m curious about what may be going on. I wish to change the paradigms that society has on me. The liberation of my mind motivates me to be more socially and academically involved in everything around me. I connect to teaching the teacher and liberating minds. At SLA, the students get a lot more freedom. Everyone is still learning, and as a society we should teach one another and set an example. I feel that everyone should be free.This philosophy is something that motivates me because it motivates me to do more. I believe everyone has the right to be treated equally and fairly. Some people have freedom, but in some ways they do not. You can feel free to speak your mind without anyone judging you. You have the right to speak your mind. Everybody needs FREEDOM.

Freedom is the right to soar.

He will never truly be free.

He escaped to the promised land.

Finally free, but something’s left behind.

You sovereign yourself, others will not.

The fish is jumping for independence.

FALL

Sand pit of misrepresentation, inaccuracy, misinformation. Learning from other people is learning a new way of thinking, and is something that really captivates my attention. To me, it means that we will be doing a lot of critical thinking and not just on a specific topic but multiple. I think muslims and people of color, black people especially, need to be humanized and freed. I connect with the idea of learning from others about their view of race and the whole thing going on with the police. If everyone was to follow this philosophy, I think everyone would do great in English. We, as human beings, have to learn from each other, in order to evolve into a better people as a whole. I would like to create freedom within my own mind so I can be proud of my education and everything possible with it. I am not motivated and excited to do more work like this. I think it will be a great learning experience for the entire classroom. This motivated me to stop being so judgemental and see people for who they truly are. It gives me a vision of human society working together in order to have a life full of education and freedom. No one is perfect or knows everything, so when I hear what they have to say, I se back and reflect. I connect to the deep thought and questioning part of this philosophy. It’s important to be open to learning new ideas and being open minded in general. It can be related to a range of topics: racism, sexism, feminism, immigration, stereotypes, and many more. We also need more peace and less fights because it’s just making the earth worse. Finding peace inspires and motivates me because I feel as though that is something everyone needs to work on. To me that quote was very powerful and it really makes you think. This brings me to the idea that this course is the course that would effectively turn us into real life people. The ones who are responsible for their actions. I think finding peace has a lot of meanings, which helps me get excited about that. That even motivates me to keep thinking, to not give up on me thoughts until I get a good idea of what the picture really means. You’re human. I have noticed the intellect and chemistry we have as a class. This could help people understand that life itself has a purpose to who we choose to be.

Man feels overjoyed when finally liberated.

To be free you must fly.

Everyone should have the same rights.

Freedom is a way of life.

I escaped one problem to another.

It’s the time to break free.

There’s nothing better than having wings.

Images we responded to:

Picture of one of the group tableaus complementing their six word story, which was inspired by one of the images:

Participants in the Classroom and Learning to be a Mentor

Today was the first day I handed over the reigns of my classroom to a student teacher. I was excited and anxious, but also very confident in her ability in the classroom. This is my sixth year of teaching, and while I am still learning and growing, it was the first time I felt confident enough to help develop and train another teacher. Fortunately for both of us, I have been receiving some mentorship of my own this year from a retired school district teacher, whom I had met during my master's program. We maintained the mentoring relationship because every time he visits, I take away new insights and become more intellectually engaged in my work. He is also just a great guy.

This mentorship has been fortunate for my student teacher and I because he modeled for me how I could mentor and work with my student teacher. My student teacher was even present last week when he visited two of my lessons and reflected with me over lunch.

What stands out about the insights that he shares about my teaching is the deep recognition of just how complex a classroom and a lesson is. He takes the ideas that I had for assignments or project steps two or three steps further than I initially imagine. He is able to see through what I now recognize as "classroom tasks and busywork" to identify the essence of my lesson and what should be focused on and addressed with class time. Initially, I thought this was some kind of magic power he possessed, but he assured me that it would get easier.

I have come to realize that he is able to see these things because his mind is completely present during the lesson and his attention is focused on the meaning that is being constructed between myself and the students in that room at that time. In every classroom, everyday, meaning is inevitably being constructed. However, the meaning that the students are constructing and the goals or objectives of the lesson are often at odds with each other because the students are not robots, and we cannot just insert the curriculum into their brains. Learning is a social process and the meaning and knowledge that exists in every classroom is dynamic. It takes a lot of patience and presence of mind to truly be with your students during each lesson and to be a participant in constructing meaning with them. We are guiding them through a process of inquiring, inferring, and reflecting, and we play an important role as these guides, but we cannot predetermine what is going to happen. While there is a lot we can anticipate and plan for, we still have to be patient participants in the construction of knowledge during each lesson.

I am so glad to have been engaged with this classroom perspective because I feel much more confident with how to mentor my student teacher. As I watched her teach, I took notes and observations about what was happening. Much of this was objective. I took note of student behaviors, comments made in class, the teacher's directions, even her tone of voice. I was able to "see through" the lesson to take note of what was really happening with the concepts that she had presented.

These notes led to a wonderful reflection after the lesson. We spent time discussing what happened and sought to understand what was happening during the different moments of the lesson, especially during the more challenging and confusing ones. We thought about what could be changed or done differently. Why did certain things happen? What meaning was actually being constructed? It was a refreshing and uplifting reflection for both of us. What was refreshing about it was that at no time were we discussing how to control, manage, or discipline students. It was completely around how to engage them in a process of inquiry with us.

This is the type of professional development that is uplifting as a teacher. It makes my classroom a more interesting space to be in each day, and I see my students as brilliant kids who want to learn if I can provide the space and the modeling for them to do so.

I hope to continue down this path with my student teacher. I feel as if I'll be learning as much as she is.

Reflection on the First Day of Teaching of 2015: Learning is Fun :)

This is my sixth year teaching. Each year, one of the most difficult days to wake up has been the day we return from winter break.

This year was no different.

After a week of sleeping in, indulging during the holidays on fun with friends and family and delicious cookies, it is difficult to rouse from bed to meet the cold, dark January morning.

While it was hard for me to get up and back into my morning routine, I was able to have a really positive first day back to start 2015. In the past, the journey from January to March has occasionally felt like drudgery, and if that is how I was feeling, I can only imagine what my students were experiencing. Therefore, I made a conscious effort to return to the classroom today with a positive attitude with what  made me passionate about teaching from the outset of my career: that learning is fun.

During the course of the school year, especially with all of the various pressures we experience as teachers in the current education climate, it can be difficult to maintain the idealism that I believe brought most teachers to the profession: their passion for learning and the opportunity to share that learning with others. We all find when we enter our careers and begin teaching several classes a day for 180 days is that it is difficult to "hit it out of the park" on a daily basis. The world is bigger than our classrooms, and we, along with our students, lead complex lives. Nevertheless, I made a conscious effort to be excited about my lesson today. I called upon the passion I have for discussing literature and the essential connections it makes to our lives and the joy of sharing that those connections with my students. Because of this attitude, I had fun today, and I think my students did too.

As a new teacher, I had access to this plenty of this idealistic energy. Unfortunately, we all face the reality of a system of education that rarely supports or develops idealistic learning efforts, which is one of the reasons why we have such a high burn out rate among teachers.

Therefore, as I continue to refine and develop my skills as an educator, I plan on continuing to tap into the intellectual curiosity that brought me to teaching. I can't ever lose sight of this. Whenever I plan a unit and a lesson, am I excited to teach it and learn with the students? If not, I need to go back to the drawing board.