October 25, 2012

Blog Entry #5

What do I Think the Most Important Role a Teacher Plays is?

I think the most important role of a teacher is to be someone who inspires the love of learning in children. When I was in elementary school, it was thoroughly uncool to be smart and to like school. That's very wrong. I think that being able to learn and also be able to enjoy it at the same time is the most important life skill, but a child will never love learning if all he knows learning to be is reading dull textbooks and memorizing seemingly meaningless facts. It's crucially important for the teacher to make the material relevant and engaging.

I guess you could say that I think the most important role of a teacher is to simply be a good teacher. That's how you inspire kids to love learning. Lessons should be interesting and the teacher should be approachable and compassionate to the students. Teachers should always be able to answer when a student asks "Why?" If the child doesn't know why she's learning something, she has no motivation to learn it. This is especially important in crucial subjects like math that are generally the most boring and disliked by the students when it really shouldn't be. Being someone who gets the students to love learning all subjects is the most important role of a teacher.

October 18, 2012

What clerical and preparation responsibilities have you participated in?

Almost every time I go into the classroom, the teacher teaches math. I always grade the students' math work during recess. Most of the students do really really well. There are about two students who really don't get it. The teacher always gives the students who struggle extra attention at the end of the school day (maybe in flex time?). Several of the students get the problems right, but are never able to complete the whole assignment in the time they have. I let the teacher grade them how she thinks is appropriate. I don't think the teacher docks them points for being slower at doing math problems than the rest of the class. They obviously understand the material.

Once I had to cut out leaves for the students to use as stencils for an art project. That was time consuming, but I was still able to listen to the class while I was doing it.