Category: Education

1. The most important takeaway way I will yield from the Village Project is the overall impact I gained. Those children made me saw how much one thing can impact you forever. I impacted their lives. They were excited to see me every Tuesday and Thursday. That impacted me to start loving myself more.
2. The reality of being a teacher. The Village Project gave me the main objective of what is means to be a teacher. With younger students is all about disciplinary work.
3. Mental health. Stated before, the Village Project allowed me to see how crucial your mental has to be when working with children. Children from low-economic backgrounds are already dealing with a lot and sometimes don’t have a way at home to express their feelings. You as a teacher need to be there for them and help guide them through life and their education. You will be unable to do that if you are not there for yourself.
4. A smile is universal. If you are smiling up a storm with the children at a table, the other around will bound to join in.
5. There are other ways to benefit your community. The Village Project motivated me to continue to help my community. Let that be going to local schools’ lemonade stands or donating school supplies to low-income schools around my area.
6. Valuable skills gain like negotiating and public speaking.
7. Getting out of my comfort zone.
8. Providing a sense of purpose.
9. Becoming adapable.
10. The Village Projects main takeway to me was you will become a better person for your communtiy when you have willingness to start change.

To help the common people, my people, I will strive to help them as an educator. My plan of action, to surround my lesson plans with my student’s interest. Now obviously there is a curriculum I have to teach to them, but I will plan my required lessons also around what my students are majorly interested in.

I decided to go with this approach because it will hopefully keep students motivated with their education and their own personal goals. To get philosophical, but I want for the common people is to have meaning in their lives. Whatever makes a life meaningful is up to the individual, but with teaching with other interest in mind, I hope to keep them motivated in them soon to be meaningful lives.

Thus, as a future educator, I plan to help my common people, my community, my students by always having their learning be surrounded by what interests them at the core of their being. I want to do this because to me it is important future generations are happy and see education as a way to help them achieve their goals.

I decided to become a teacher after a meltdown in my high school chemistry class. I love school and I’m great with kids, so I thought I could totally become a teacher. I did volunteer at my old elementary school summer program just to see if I truly like working with kids. There I helped kids build science projects and art crafts. I loved all the kids I’d work with. But I really wasn’t teaching them, just aiding them.

Start of freshmen year of college, I was really excited for my education class. Learning the basic of teaching. A lot to what my professor said about this job being a service to one’s community inspired me. I wanted to help kids in my community and provide myself as a support system to the future kids I were to teach.

However, my professor bought in guest speakers, people who have or haved taught. One of the guest speakers had a really motivational journey as a teacher, but said you have to ask yourself if you truly love teaching. I am aware I have yet to be a in classroom and teach, but when she said that I realized I love learning and can’t picture myself teaching.

So, as of right now, I don’t plan to become a teacher. I want to know what it is I love that I can make a career and a difference. But I was still planning to become a teacher, I would be excited about meeting all the kids, and look forward to seeing them grow in my classroom. And the thing I would fear would be failing. I was unable to help a student because I didn’t try my best to know what teaching method works best for them.

All in all, I still might become a teacher and face my fears and excitement. Or I might become something else that helps my community and still be excited or fearful about that. After, it is only the first year of my college experience.

This past week, I interviewed on of my former educators. I chose them because the way they taught their class made me look forward to going to school. I believe that an educator becomes impactful to a child is when they support them. That can be in a form of many ways, but in the moment the student feels supported. I felt seen and heard in my past teacher’s classroom.

It gave me useful insight on what it means to become a teacher. They have a lot of passion in themselves and their job. They want to be there and have a good time and make sure their students feel the same way. They really never stop learning and are able to grow and adapt. My former teacher told me that being a teacher is a high service job and not for everyone. Already off the bat, a teacher chooses to be there.

However, not every teacher is the same. Otherwise, I would have interviewed all my past educators. But I choose the ones that made core memoires for me in their classroom. Every child craves attention, and an impactful teacher finds a way to have every student be in the spotlights.

Researching for the project provided me with a lot of new information I would have never sought out to know. I got to dive deep into the ins and out of the Milwaukee Public School system. To me, it was interesting to see how many schools in the district have huge contrast of quality level.

For example, one of the schools I was finding data on had a average of paying their teachers $37,000 a year, and still in the same district, another school pays their teachers $70,000 a year. Thus, due to finding all this data, I got to understand how important property tax plays as a major role to everything about a school.

Hence, as a preservice teacher, I hope to carry this knowledge to help me become a better educator. Data has ties to other factors. Like a school district major demographics being African American, and all the property taxes being low as well. I want to work at low-income school despite all the setbacks a school district may face. Number do not proved me with how students learn. Every child should be a given any right to a good education and I want to help as much as possible.

The most insightful information I took away from the EdTalks was to never assume anything. I will not be able to understand where the kids in my classroom are coming from. What they are dealing with inside and outside of school. Though, with that in mind, I must do my best to support the kids in my class. I will not push them or butt in where I am not needed, but simply create a welcoming environment, so they never feel lost.

Also, I gathered from the EdTalks that my current classmates also feel the same way about doing their best to provide for their students. It is relieving to know that I can have future allies to help me if I ever feel stuck in a situation with my students.

I think with all the books talked about and presented; I was able to see how the stories were not surrounded by school alone. The main characters in these stories saw school as a place where they could be seen. Therefore, I think it is important for myself as a future educator to do my best to never have my classroom feel so suffocating. I am not my student’s parent, but rather one building block in their support system.

One thing about the history of the US Education system that caught my eye from 1565 to 1900 was the founding of the African Institute.

It become the first institue to offer higher education for African Americans. Established by a Quaker philanthropist, Richard Humprey, to prepare African Americans to become teachers.

The Institue was later relocated to George Cheyney’s farm and continued to teacher people of color on how to become teacher for many years.

To me, that is really fascinating that the first college for African Americans was solly started so they could become teachers. It intrigues me becuase I remeber during my 8th grade trip to Washington DC, we pasted the first public highschool for African Americans. The Dunbar High School is still operating to this day, same as the Cheyney University.

Despiste all of the early colleges and public schools in American during the early years, I love that people saw the need that people of color deserve an education way before slavery was abolished. Education for slaves was highly discoruage and sometimes banned in Southern States. In addition, as the south went through reconstruction after the Civil War, the south education system was put on the back burner for many years, yet these institues remained open.

Moreover, I find the history of many “first” institues to be noteable because many where open despite the large viewpoints of the place where women and people of color belonged in society. The US Education system may not be perfect throughout this time period, but it seems to always want people of any status to have the chance to expand their knowledge.