I am Responsible for My Students' Education

Do you ever find yourself wondering how you can form a better connection with your students? You are not alone. In her book, Bad Guys Don’t Have Birthdays, Vivian Paley looks for ways to improve her teaching methods and connect with the children in her class. After coming in contact with a school director that was a fan of promoting abstract thinking, Paley noticed that she was neglecting to take her students’ ideas into consideration and in many instances, focusing more on what she knew to be the answer rather than how her class solved the problem. To change her teaching style, Paley thought it would be better to immerse herself in the many different perspectives of her preschool class rather than presuming that she understands

My first core conviction is that all students should be treated equally. Therefore, all my students should be given the same opportunities to succeed and learn. Origin, race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, language proficiency, social and economic status should not be taken into account to favor or disservice. For this reason, an imperative goal as a teacher is to provide quality instruction by giving all of my students the tools they need to learn successfully.

As an educator, it is my job to find new ways for my students to learn that coincides with their particular learning style and takes advantage of their strengths. In all practical terms, this will mean finding new ways for each of my students to learn in their own particular way. As a whole, my students will need more reason to learn with authentic experiences, hands-on

Students have their own best way in effectively learning the lesson. With the diversity of students, the problem is each student has a preferred learning style. It becomes undeniably one of the reasons that make it difficult to achieve the best expected outcome out of teachers’ effort. However, teachers try to incorporate various teaching techniques to make every learning opportunity become productive, meaningful, and relevant for the learners.

Teachers must hold high expectations for all of their students and recognize that all learners seek challenge, purpose, and affirmation. Students naturally want to learn and teachers must expect them to respond with investment, persistence, an opportunity to display their accomplishments and personal reflection. (Woolfolk, 2011). Teachers must connect new content with the knowledge scaffolding a student already possesses, in a way that encourages focused and engaged learning.

She was faced with the challenge of teaching a wide range of learner pathways while striving to maximize the learning for all her students grades first through eighth. While what my grandmother faced over eighty years ago is an obvious exaggeration in differentiation; the reality is that each class room in our schools is a microcosm of that environment. Each student learns through different pathways and it is the role of each teacher to maximize their learning potential by differentiating their instructional practices. Hence, the teachers of my school must strive to connect students and academic content through a responsive instructional practice that is reflective of the needs of their students (Tomlinson, C., Brimijoin, K., & Narvaez, L.,

I learned that some students learn better by being able to move around and some students like to sit quietly. I learned to present ideas through both auditory and visual means. Offering manipulatives or other hands-on support for students who need them. As a future educator, I thoroughly understand the differences of all learners. So now I can provide a better chance of meeting the diverse learning needs of all my future students.

As educators, we are responsible for enlightening, motivating, engaging and teaching our students. Indeed, this responsibility

The main goal of this project is to encourage students to break away from more traditional education. In these scenarios, the teacher is the center of the classroom and the students play a relatively small role in instruction. They simply sit, absorb information, and repeat it on summative assessments. Over the course of a school year, students end up going “a mile wide and an inch deep.” That is, they very rarely have the opportunity to dig deep into topics. Consequently, the information covered is often quickly forgotten. By putting students in charge of their education, I hope that students go “a mile deep and an inch wide.”

It is my desire as a role model and teacher to help students by meeting them where they are at and reach their fullest potential by providing an environment that is safe, supports risk-taking, and invites ideas to be shared openly. It is my goal to teach students effective tools to gain a voice and be able to identify and understand other voices in this world. I believe the ideal curriculum is one which provides students with extensive individual freedom and requires them to ask their own questions, conduct their own inquiries, and draw on their own conclusions. My lessons and instruction will only be powerful if I have spent time establishing relationships and an effective behavior management system with my students. Also, by providing students access to hands-on activities and allowing adequate time and space to use materials that reinforce the lesson being studied, creates an opportunity for individual discovery and construction of knowledge to

However, nothing frustrates me more than knowing that a student left my class completely empty. This makes me feel like I have wasted both my time and the student’s valuable time. For me, teaching does not only enrich my students; rather, it is a knowledge growth journey for everyone—the student, teacher, and

Everyday, teachers are faced with the challenge of teaching students new information that is valuable to their future. Teachers are responsible to determine what and how information is taught. How this information is taught to students is pertinent to their success; therefore, teachers must be able to use effective teaching methods in the classroom. Students have diverse learning styles; therefore, teachers need to determine how students learn best and pattern their teaching to accommodate these differences. During elementary school, children learn to read and write, acquire a basic understanding of content areas, and develop dispositions toward

As a teacher, one’s role and responsibility should be towards the learners’ ability to learn and for learning to be as tailored made for the individual learner.

Much like teaching styles’ adaptability, teachers must accommodate and adapt their teaching to ensure student understanding and creative thought. Through tactical teaching styles that adapted and fitted the students, students were able to understand and learn to the best of their abilities when taught by Mrs. Graham and her colleagues. Needing diverse styles to appeal to them, students need teachers to create creative and interactive ways to make the lessons seem interesting and relatable in their lives. Even at the early beginnings of the school day, the Mount Olive Middle School students seemed interested with majority of the students staying engaged for the entirety of the lesson. They showed their interest and comfortableness in the classroom by asking questions that related to the topic that interested them or in some cases, confused them. They were able to express their ideas, and Mrs. Graham would expand based on what the students answered to explain further the topics of discussion. Due to these previously established inviting environments, students felt secure and comfortable enough to share their thoughts inside the different classrooms. During the time in the classes where the students were able to unleash their creative sides and participate in the class, they really seemed excited to learn during my observations. Especially during their scary story narratives, the students really responded well to be able to come up with their own stories and discuss writing

Throughout the majority of my education, including college, I have felt like a passive member of the classroom. Teachers saw me as a clear slate that needed to be filled with information. I consumed countless facts, and memorized numerous processes, most of them not being my own. This approach to teaching has proven to be unsuccessful to the goals of education. Students are diverse, with their own learning styles and their own knowledge that they bring to the table, and these should be supported and expanded on in the classroom. The goal of education is to support learners and thinkers, and not to condition minds to all think the same ways.