Teacher Turn-Around

Well, today was my official first day of my first "real" job...if you can call being a teacher a real job...and if you can call a permanent sub position a "real" position...as if the title "teacher" should actually carry with it some sense of implied power...when actually I really should be more like a facilitator that enables learning, instead of creating drones to recite my knowledge back to me ver batim...aren't we supposed to be steering clear of plagiarism??? Isn't teaching about equipping our youth to locate information and make their own informed decisions? It's not about knowing the "right" information...it's about "finding" the "right" information and presenting it in a way that others just might be inclined to listen.

Many of my colleagues, from the old-school lectern, find the method of telling students what they should think and how they should believe most effective practice...and if you ever find yourself bold enough to challenge why what they say is fact, you have pushed them resort to the ambiguous end-all "Because I said so." There is nothing more annoying to me than a person who believes something, yet has never done the research on the subject. They've read one article, forgot to mention the fact that they read it in "People" magazine, and now are totally trying to convince you that you should never eat any food that is white, espically if you are within 50 miles of an ATM machine. That's almost as good as getting your information on the internet. No basis. No facts. No brains.

The teacher we are will determine the students we have in our classrooms. We don't create the students, we simply create the environment where sincere ideas can grow. We are to foster an environment that will draw out the student in each of our hearts--for the student, as well as, the teacher. We forget that we will have the kind of students we choose to be. I am saddened by what I have seen around me.

For the first in-service of the year my school flew in a consultant from Kentucky. She had a sweet southern drawl and a kind disposition. Several times while going through her powerpoint lecture, several teachers were actually talking out-loud to one another carrying on side conversations. And these very same teachers wonder why they cannot control the noise in their classrooms.

Shame on the educators of America. It's time they stop being the bad examples they blame on their students.