Dear
Students,
Since I will be your teacher, the
adult that you spend the majority of your waking hours with for the next few months,
I feel that it is only fair you enter this journey knowing a bit more about
your traveling companion. You see my past, the present, and my future thoughts
drive me in shaping the curriculum that you will encounter this school year.
Just as I hope to have a deeper understanding of what makes you tick, I want
you to understand my own Curriculum that we will soon share together.
Growing up, I did not have one
teacher a year. I easily had thirty. My brother was the teacher of playing
fairly without cheating, even when I wanted to. My mom taught me fractions with
cooking and how to treat people with respect. My dad taught me how to create
things with tools and how to begin and finish projects. My grandmother taught
me the names of different flowers. My teachers taught me what the state deemed academically
appropriate. My dance teacher taught me to create and listen to music. My books
taught me to imagine and crave knowledge. My puzzles taught me the states and
capitals of the United States. Greenfield Village taught me the ways people
lived long ago. The movies taught me new vocabulary. My church taught me
morals. My family taught me to love and except others. My friends taught me to
share. Baseball taught me discipline and to think on my feet. Without these
teachers, I would not be the person I am today. I know that I was lucky when I
was younger to be educated outside of school, not everyone has this chance.
Now,
as a teacher, I think about the wonderful curriculum that surrounded and shaped
me. This is the curriculum that I now teach. I am a behaviorist in my beliefs
that you need to be given multiple experiences in order to grow. I do not just
teach the National Curriculum that a council of officials deemed worthy for all
students to know. I teach students how to think, how to grow, how to survive,
how to love, how to except, and how to dream. Without thought, you will not
have the critical thinking skills needed to survive this ever changing
environment. How can I prepare you for the world of tomorrow when I don’t even
know what it will look like? That is easy, by helping you master your skills to
be thoughtful problem solves. Without the knowledge that you can grow as
individuals, you may never feel the self worth to try new things. Take it from me;
you have the power and ability to be great. I will always provide you with the
right amount of scaffolding to reach my high expectations. By giving you survival
skills I know that you will make it in the world. Teaching students to love and
except others is something I believe is an educator’s most important task. If
students cannot love themselves or others, they will never be truly alive. This
love for themselves will turn into an acceptance of others. I think it is very
important that we know how to get along with other people in society. You might
be very smart and good at a job when you get older. However, if you cannot get
along with your coworkers, there is little hope for you.
I dream about the future of education
and am hopeful. I am excited that students around the nation will have to be
taught the same academic curriculum in each grade. This will make it a lot
easier of you have to transfer school. I want you to be as successful as
possible, if transitioning to a new school means never learning a valuable
piece of information, it could cause a domino effect on other skills you will
learn. Now, there should be more consistent around the nation. This in turn
should make the content tested in standardized tests more easily compared. I do
have a really big dream in terms of formative assessment that you may see in
your life time. I am a firm believer in the multiple intelligences. That each
student has a certain way that they learn best. With this being said, I believe
that each student has a certain way that they are best assessed to. In the
future, I hope that standardized tests can be standardized differentiated tests.
Meaning that, depending what multiple intelligence you excel at the most, will
depend on what type of assessment you are given to demonstrate your knowledge.
Wouldn’t that be interesting to take the SAT but to be separated into different
rooms based on your greatest learning strengths? These rooms would than give
you assessments that were equal in rigor based on your own strength? I think
years from now, statisticians will pair up with educational thinkers and
develop these multiple intelligence assessments that are comparable.
I can best compare my idea of
education to a dance. In a dance, there are many factors that create the bigger
picture. The dancer is like the student. The dancer is living proof if the
music, choreography, costuming, and technique training has paid off. Much as
the student’s progress is what deems a school or teacher proficient thanks to
NCLB. Now the choreographer is the visionary of the dance. The choreographer is
the one that knows the dancer’s strength and weaknesses just as a school
teacher knows their pupil’s. The choreographer’s job is to know their dancer
inside and out. The choreographer must be able to push and challenge their dancer
without pushing them to hard to cause injury. This mirrors a teacher’s
challenge to push a student to reach their full potential without them reaching
their frustration level and becoming overwhelmed.
Now, I think about the other factors that influence
a dance; music, costuming, lighting, props. Like the choreographer, these are all the
additional variables that a teacher has to work with. In education terms, this may
include parent input, classroom resources, school board expectations, or
national standards. The biggest issue occurs when the choreographer does not
see eye to eye with the costume designer, lighting designer, or Conductor. When
these artists’ visions diverge, arguing and chaos can ensue, usually at the dancer’s
expense. Now, when you think about it, shouldn’t the choreographer have the
greatest say? I mean, the choreographer is the one that works with the dancer
and is the one whose name is on the outcome of the final product. The
choreographer is the one that has the vision; the other artists should be
assisting the choreographer, shouldn’t they? Just like in the educational
field, this is rarely the case. The choreographer has to take what he can get
and try to homogenously meld everyone’s input together to make the dancer look
good. When you think about it, if the dancer looks good, the dance has been
created successfully.
In time, I think the nation will realize just how
much teachers know about what is best for their students. Teachers will be
asked to share “best practices” and develop curriculum to meet the children
they see, not the children that government officials imagine.
Well, I hope this letter helped you understand a bit
more about me and gave you hints about what we will be learning this year. Yes,
you can expect to cover everything that will be covered in this grade at a
school on the other side of the state. However, you will be learning so much
more! Be prepared to be exhausted from learning, excited to come to school, and
unable to hold in questions that strengthen your understanding each day!
Mrs. Johnson
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