Something I had never seen before and was incredibly moved by was the YouTube video
Changing the World, One Word at a Time. Those three girls spoke some powerful and moving words. To answer the question what is worth learning? I would say everything. Everything is worth learning and teaching our students. One of our jobs as being a teacher is to make all students feel included, safe, comfortable, and represented in our classrooms. Although teachers have lesson plans, TEKs, curriculums, etc., that they're told to follow, I think it's important to take some time and really consider what you may be teaching your kids. Are you leaving out important information about this or that? Are all sides being considered/heard? Thinking back on some classes, there have been times where I was taught and not all the information was told to us. We would spend a lot of time on one certain thing about a topic, especially in history, it was biased teaching. In order to teach our students, we have to teach ourselves and learn first. As we are becoming future teachers, I don't think we should keep information from our students, in any subject. Purposefully withholding information harms the students and will negatively impact them. This course has taught me so much. I plan on saving and using the things I've have leaned throughout these modules. I'm glad we have the option to look back on the blogs in the future and see how much we've grown.
I feel you nailed it with taking time to consider what we are teaching our students. I feel it will be a challenge to teach beyond the textbook and will require more work on our part to teach both sides of the story. I am also fairly certain that there will be backlash about it because not everyone wants to hear the truth of the history that has been left out. We need to find a way to work around the TEKS and curriculums that opens up the world for our students to really express themselves safely and openly without feeling like they will be persecuted for being themselves.
ReplyDeleteHi Chavon! Thanks for your comment! I agree, it will be a challenge. It's important to make sure our students will feel represented and feel comfortable sitting in our classrooms. Yes, it may take extra work but if that's something we truly believe we want for our students, I think it would be worth it!
DeleteHi Kirsten, your blog answered our question for the week really well! I loved how you talked about your past experiences in school and how you mentioned that you did not get a fair education when talking about certain topics. Whenever I think about teaching my kids especially history, I think about the ways I can teach them the whole stories. One of my favorite things to teach when I was interning in a classroom was about different types of religions and their holidays. While we cannot fully go into detail about this I still tried to find ways to address them as fully as I could. My question would be what would you do to become fully informed about the topics you are teaching? How would you design a lesson for something controversial like religious holidays?
ReplyDeleteHi Rylee! Thank you for your comment and sharing your experience about interning! I think something that I would like to do to start a lesson is give students the opportunity to share their holidays they celebrate and tell us about them. That way it gives other students information about unique holidays celebrated in different cultures. I would invest in the time to look at exactly what I will be teaching my students and all the other viewpoints there may be surrounding that topic.
DeleteHey Kirsten!! You had such a wonderful blog this week!! I really loved the way that you focused your black out poem, it really makes the words standout!! You have such a great point in saying that our job as a teacher is to educate our students equally, and I would even go a step further like you did and say that our job is also to find ways to support them emotionally, and really see them for who they are and what they are capable not things they have no control over. The video of the three girls really brought up an interesting point in saying that they handout awards for perfect attendance and not for keeping their families off the streets.
ReplyDeleteHi Chloe! I completely agree with you, we have to find ways to support students emotionally. It's not our job to judge them over things they can't control. The video of the three girls brought up many good points that everyone should take to the time to really listen and think about. Thanks so much for your comment!
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