The Importance Of Education In Education

The wise man once stated, “Teaching for nearly 40 years has allowed me to see how much our world has changed.” I had no idea how how far our world has come in just 40 years, until I asked my teacher, Mr. Gibson. Since 1978, Mr. Gibson has taught high school math. He attended college at Bemidji State University, receiving his four-year degree and eventually earned his masters. He is a very intelligent man, to say the least. Mr. Gibson explained how change has occurred in the school, how academics have been reshaped by technology, and how life in general has been revamped.

“ Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid” ( Einstein). Grading students based on subjects that they struggle in is like judging a fish based on its ability to climb a tree: completely unfair. The American school system has turned a blind eye to the millions of different personalities and talents that a student body has to offer. Since the establishment of the American high school, students have been forced to be scheduled in courses that they are not only struggling in, but are also forced to take classes that they find entirely uninteresting. The American high school has failed many students who are not academically inclined, and in order to establish success for everyone, the education system must be reconstructed to include hands on experiences and functional skill instruction.

The education system has been established in order for all members of the communities to receive a fair and equal education opportunity. However, there are many variables that take place and all students receive the same opportunities. The students who live in poor areas tend to struggle more in school because it carries on to the school grounds. Those schools seem to have more difficulty keeping students engaged and on track. For some reason, the students at a low performing school are usually minorities and the school environment is not considered a place for them to thrive. Many teachers may find it difficult to teach in those schools because there is a lot of chaos at times. Therefore, keeping competent teachers is not always possible and that negatively affects the students education as well. Trying to close the gap between low performing schools and those that do well is not an easy task. The effort of school administrators to bring programs to help low performing schools and educating those families who’s children are affected is important because it can help enhance their opportunity to succeed educationally.

Throughout my educational years, I have always had a competitive mindset due to soccer which I believe has played a role in my struggles with literacy. I always had to be the first person in my class to finish my assignments. Whether it was a test, a quiz, or just a daily assignment, I was always the first to finish. By doing this, it caused me to rush through my assignments and not give the time and effort needed to do it right or even figure out if I really liked a book or story. This was most prevalent in my english classes. English was never my strongest subject. I found that I had not been particularly passionate about reading or writing, so the papers I produced were never at their full potential. I would rush through those assignments even faster, making sure I would not have to endure the pain of reading and writing for any longer time than I had to. I would much rather have been outside playing soccer with my teammates.

Throughout my school experience, I had a problem called IEP. It is a program that will help me succeed in school, which shows that I have a learning disability that I think is not entirely true. I think the word IEP has a different meaning. In reality, I never really wanted to be an IEP student. Because I knew there was a different meaning to what they always told me. The way I realize this is the way I have been treated in the type of accommodation I receive and they are all great and all but they make me feel less of a student more like a student in need and I really do not want to feel that way.

According to the Census Bureau, PreK-12 teachers represent the largest occupational group in the nation, and the profession is becoming even larger. In recent years, the hiring of teachers has far outpaced student enrollment; from 1987-2008, total K-12 student enrollment in U.S. schools including public, private and charter schools combined — increased 19 percent. By comparison, the teaching force rose by 48 percent over that same period. Since 1950, America’s public schools in particular have seen a 96-percent increase in students that has been accompanied by a 252-percent rise in teaching staff.

An educator's preparation and schooling are vital factors in establishing the way they teach, their habits, and approaches regarding education. In a sense, “teaching is an intentional and moral activity: it is undertaken for a purpose and is validated by reference to educational goals and social principles as well as to operational efficacy (Alexander 517).” In order for educators to positive resources for students in a varied specialized system, they must be properly trained in those systems which they are to repurpose. Learning just one method would leave gaps in the educator’s knowledge, negatively affecting their pupils. For educators to properly navigate the system of multiple educational perspectives they must be exposed to plethora of different approaches to education. One such exposure can be accomplished through the use of Student-Teaching abroad programs that are offered by different universities worldwide. Overwhelmingly, in the past, those who participate in these programs do not go on to pursue a career in education. This translates as a waste of the resource that can drive education in a positive direction. In effort to salvage a seemingly failing initiative, high level universities engaged in developing international student teacher training programs (Quezada 458).

George Washington stated, “The best means of forming a manly, virtuous, and happy people will be found in the right education of youth. Without this foundation, every other means, in my opinion, must fail” (Educational Quotes from our Founding Fathers, Tilus). Most schools have an education mission statement that usually talk about a goal of preparing students for a mix of lifeline success, citizenship, college, and careers. Although many schools have great education, as a whole, schools are failing to teach kids character by failing to teach morality. Instead, the American education system bases the education off standardized testing. There must be a revolution in education from moral relativism to Judeo-Christian values in order for the next generation to receive the full benefit of education.

How can we make education better for kids that are struggling in school? This is a question that plagues teachers every year as they see a continuous intake of students that are unable to meet the educational standards set by the state. Students that fail to meet these requirements end up falling behind their peers. This creates a negative effect on the students’ self-esteem and ultimately influences their entire academic career. School administrations have acknowledged this problem and have implemented a system to identify these students, called Response to Interventions (RTI). This is a three tier system that breaks down the students results of test scores from core subjects. It then categorizes students by identifying learning and behavioral needs. Students are then placed into one of the following three tiers:

Experience and Education Empowering To be empowered is to be more confident in, and more aware of oneself. To be empowered is to have a more complete understanding of what one must accomplish in order to live more fully. It is to grow in self-knowledge. It is to grow in self-awareness.

Teachers analogous to every other human desire for integration, collaboration and kinship, yet, encounter confinement and segregation. Ingersoll stated in 2012, “although elementary and secondary teaching involves intensive interaction with youngsters, the work of teachers is done largely in isolation from colleagues. This isolation can be especially difficult for newcomers, who, upon accepting a position in a school, are frequently left to succeed or fail on their own within the confines of their classrooms—often likened to a “lost at sea” or “sink or swim” experience”.(http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/05/16/kappan_ingersoll.h31.html). Veteran teachers consistently promulgated to me early in my career that I needed to earn my stripes to acquire credibility in the education profession. Morosely, those words pushed me towards isolation rather than collaboration. Wong states, “ New teachers want more than a job. They want to experience success. They want to contribute to a group. They want to make a difference. The best induction programs provide connection because they are structured within learning communities where new and veteran teachers interact and treat each other with respect and are valued for their respective contributions”. (p. 47) Similar to students, teachers need their administration to provide a working environment that includes structure, safety, compassion and trust from the onset.

Ever since I can remember I’ve never been the best test taker. The subject I’ve struggled the most in for all of my life has been math. In junior high, especially seventh grade I didn’t have the greatest teacher in the world. That was definitely the year I had the most trouble, so when high school came around and our test scores were the deciding factor on whether we graduate or not I knew I had a lot of work to do.

Classrooms today are diverse and multicultural, and children bring different forms of Englishes into the classroom, such as Spanglish, Chinglish, or Singlish (Crystal, 2013). Therefore, many students are bilingual, whereby they speak their birth language at home and Standard English at school (Ewing, Callow & Rushton, 2016). Most often, aboriginal children from remote communities learn Aboriginal English at home and have a range of experiences based on cultural and family believes (Loanne & Muir, 2017). Furthermore, bi-directional relationships and past experiences such as culture, family, geographic or socio-economic status (SES) all influence students' learning and development (Ewing, 2013; Gardner, 2017d; O'Donnell et al., 2016). Therefore, teachers need to use a two-way learning approach in the classroom to link all students' cultural heritage and home language to literacy. Equally, curriculum needs to be culturally cohesive to help bridge the learning gap amongst the students (Ewing, 2013; Thomson, 2002). Furthermore, the classroom Discourse needs to make students feel they belong, which helps build students' self-confidence, self-efficiency, and self-identity (Green, 2006; Malaguzzi, 1993). Teachers must ensure language used, class tasks and textual resources are relevant and diverse to meet the diverse range of learners in the class. For example, teachers introducing a wide variety of texts, magazines, images with a variety of dialects and sociolects help make

In the classroom, teachers lack the training to effectively teach a foster child. To be able to promote educational stability for the child, it is paramount that the teacher is in communication with the foster parents. In an article by National Center Brief, the authors list the appropriate responsibilities of a teacher when caring for a foster child (7,8). The list includes having monthly meetings with the child’s foster parents, caseworkers, and principal to catch each other up on how the child is doing and how they can better plan the child’s educational future. One of the ways teachers can better aid children in the foster care system is by looking at their educational assessment prior to being in foster care.

As educators, how we teach is equally as important as what we teach. The validity of this understanding has been represented over the past three weeks of the course through the progression of the text and the corresponding presentations, discussions and tasks. Ainsworth explains that using the priority standards helps us to “identify the teachable concepts (what students need to know) and the assessible skills (what students need to be able to do)” (Ainsworth, 2015, p. 102) so the content of a unit is rigorous and scaffolds learning to foster skill development. Through education students don’t just develop skills, or just the ability to learn, but the confidence that allows them to apply skills for mastery and comprehension.