I Will Never Use It My Life Anyway

Mark Rose once said in the essay I Just Wanna Be Average, “Students will float to the mark you set.” This quotation means that in order for students to succeed in there academics they need a teacher who will demonstrate to the students that they believe and have faith they will succeed in there class. In order for many students to reach there potential the teacher needs to be supporting and willing to take the time to help there students and give the encouragement they need to succeed. Students are all at different levels so some will “float to the mark” at a faster pace than others, but some will be lazy, and others will drown. Throughout my life education has pushed me to succeed in my future, and has motivated me and many students through the education system.

In Rose’s “I Just Wanna Be Average”, readers can determine from what he says that teachers play an integral role in the educations of students. When others are teaching you what to do, it becomes easier to understand; when others are not teaching you, it becomes harder to understand. You can tell how essential a teacher is to a student if you were to read Rose’s narrative and see that: students float to expectations, if teachers don’t expect anything of you they won’t help you, and how beneficial it is to have a teacher who challenges you to be better.

In an interview with a local elementary school teacher Elizabeth Romero, when asked the question “Why teach at the elementary level versus teacher higher up such as high school or college?” , She responded with the answer “ I believe that in this time of the kids life is the most influential. If I as a teacher can teach these kids the rights things to do and prepare them for the future than I believe that they all can do great things with their lives.” Mrs. Romero began teaching at the age back in 2004 originally teaching high school. She realized that there was only a select few who chose to excel in their studies. In her words “…some were what some would call lost causes but there were only a select few who put real efforts into their studies.” It was at that moment that

How far a student can go in life is already pre-determined by the generation before him. Success is no longer made up of solely intellectual ability, but rather if the streets the student walks through is gang-ridden or not, if their parents are absentees, and other conditions in which the child grows up in. Valerie Strauss expresses these concerns in her article, “What the Numbers Really Tell Us About America’s Public Schools” in which she discusses how income levels correlate with students’ success rate which is further accentuated through Kamiak and Mariner High School’s Standardized Test Results. “Motivation, a Major Factor in U.S. Student Test Performance” by Dian Schaffhauser continues this idea of external problems affecting low scores

In a study conducted Rosenthal and Jacobson they examined the exceptions of teachers from their students and self-fulling prophecy. They believe the central problem of so many kids failing school is because of kids with disadvantages. They are lower class children who live in poverty and being taught by middle class teachers. They are the Mexican American, Puerto Ricans and African Americans. These teachers are white females who are middle class and teaching the “disadvantage” which leads to the teacher expectations for them to fail. (Apa)

Teachers need to get through students on order to teach a student. Some students might not show up or care about the class. Teachers of elementary schools have the hardest because the kids just want to play, goof around and don’t listen. Elementary teachers have hard time teaching young uneducated students just like Miss Moore with her uneducated children from the neighborhood, in the story “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara. Miss Moore teaches the students how to take the first step toward a better education just like elementary teachers, her teaching method were to show how the upper class lived in comparison to the children but she could have though them differently by giving rewards for something they did educationally.

I have had the pleasure of teaching Ally in class for three years; in Advanced Geometry as an 8th grader, Pre-Calculus as a sophomore, and currently as a junior in AP Calculus. In 8th grade, Ally chose to arrive at school an hour earlier in order to take Advanced Geometry at the high school. Even at that young age she knew she wanted to take advanced math classes and push herself academically. Ally's greatest strength in class is her inquiring attitude. She has an unique ability to analyze and reflect on the problem-solving process. While solving complex mathematics problems, she will refine and improve her problem-solving strategy to obtain the correct solution. When I give her exams back, Ally critically examines her mistakes to learn from them often sharing her findings with her peers.

A former teacher, Lacey Bishop, who taught at Hillcrest Elementary School was not awarded tenure even though she had received good evaluations from her principal for two consecutive years. In addition, Mrs. Bishop was showered with compliments about her performance by her former principal Katrina Overton (Carroll, 2010). When Mrs. Bishop made it to her third year which made her eligible for tenure, the principal’s views about her performance had changed. In February 2010, when the principal was deciding to grant tenure, the principal complained about Mrs. Bishop’s classroom management, her lack of being prepared, and as a result; she was rated “Proficient” in nine areas, “Developing” in three, and “Unsatisfactory” in one on her Comprehensive

103). My own educational experiences could attest to this fact, whether it was my outrageously sexist math teacher, my useless geography teacher, or my religious use of a scripted math program. The cycle would have continued until I consciously chose to stop it. Even if my students were to “resist, they often want, need, and expect the teacher to push them beyond their comfort zone, and the continue pushing despite their resistance” (Delpit, 2012, p.

Just like in any other profession or aspect of life, there are many myths that threaten education in public schools. Many people believe that teachers are the most important influence in a student’s academic achievement. In reality, educators have a very little influence in student achievement compared to other influences in the students’ lives that is out of the teachers control. It has been proposed that teachers don’t need to go to school to learn how to educate, they just need knowledge of the subject matter. This could be extremely destructive to student learning because they would not have the proper skills to instruct a classroom. Another common misconception is that instructors in

Though it can be fun sometimes, math is tiring. For example, the most dreadful assignment in math is tenmarks. All the students dreaded the time when tenmarks was assigned, especially Jake Mcquaig. He could care less about tenmarks, so he never did them. He hated it with a passion, and so did all the other students. Tenmarks needed to be done because it could improve your grade. Jake always failed all his attempts on tenmarks. Then for the last time, goddess Amaya came to give a last piece of advice. She said, “Jake, you need to do your tenmarks. If you don’t, you will fail math.” Jake did not listen, and he too failed seventh grade just like everyone else. As one can see, these students were not the happiest but they tried their best to make it work, yet maybe it wasn’t hard enough to pass seventh

Educational development is a very important step in life; it seems that people are judged everyday especially on their education. Parents seem to go through extensive procedures to get their children through the best education possible, just to help them succeed in life. “It’s no surprise that schools in wealthy

There are many subjects that students don’t understand math is one of those subjects. Teachers do their best to teach students, however students just don’t understand. Paul did not understand his math because he could not learn with the class. Paul asked his teacher to tutor him, he did better in Math because of the tutoring. There are certain projects that push students out their comfort zone ( Tenenbauma 9 ). Paul and his class were given the assignment to write a math essay. This assignment pushed paul out of his comfort zone and he failed, if this assignment did not push him he would have done better. Students also have difficulty completing a assignment with limited time, paul was asked by his teacher to complete ten difficult math problems in twenty mins for a grade as a result he was not able to finish and he got a bad grade. If he had more time to complete this assignment he would have done better, but being rushed like this made him fail the assignment ( Tenenbaum 9 ). If students has more time to understand and complete their assignments. They would do better and they would be less

An example of this educational gap was in the New York schooling system. Where blacks and Hispanics “make up about 71 percent of public and charter school students citywide, they received just 12 percent of specialized high school students in 2003 ( Leonie, Ravitch 2). One of the causes this of disparity is the difference in schools. According pew research there is a difference between schools in the suburban which are made up of mostly white children and inner city schools made up of mostly minorities like Hispanics and African Americans. The suburban schools which according to pew research center is mostly white and the inner city schools which are mostly made up of the other minorities (Citation 3). Staring with the quality of teachers, according to Pitre “unqualified teachers are disproportionately assigned to teach low-income ethnic minority children” (Pitre 5). An example of this difference is in the state of California where it was found that in the most segregated schools there “were more than five times as likely to have an uncertified teacher” (Pitre 5).The importance of teachers in the schools, especially teachers who teach young children is invaluable. According to Cowan Pitre “the issue of access to a high quality teacher is important because research has consistently identified teacher quality as the most important school-based factor in student achievement” ( 5). When low quality teachers are assigned to minorities how

In this case study, a third year first-grade teacher was faced with the dilemma of whether or not to talk to the principal about her concerns. One of her concerns was that two of the other first – grade teachers (who were very good friends with the principal) were always getting the high achieving students that came from wealthy backgrounds in their classroom. Her other concern was that these two teachers always had higher test scores because of the high achieving students that were placed in their classroom. This made her scores look bad because she always received the students that struggled to perform. The third year first- grade didn’t mind teaching the struggling learners but she did feel that ALL students would benefit from mixed classrooms. Therefore, she was faced with the following questions: Should I talk to the principal or not? Should I talk to the other first grade teachers? Should I talk to someone else? Or, should I just ignore the situation to keep things from getting worse?