Blog Post #10

Do You Teach or Do You Educate

This video may only be few minutes in length, but it is still powerful. It sends out a good message. It defines what it means to teach and what it means to educate. To teach, you are explaining, or showing how to do something. To educate, you are inspiring, mentoring, advising. I want to be an educaator. I want to be a mentor. I want to be an inspiration.

I want to be able to guide and help my students figure things out. I never learned well by being fed a bunch of facts throughout a lecture, and I don't expect my students to either. To help a student figure something out independently is awesome. Not only are you proud of them, but they are proud of themselves. Right now I am a substitute teacher at a montessori school. The students there do work on their own. You walk around and guide them, and they ask you for help. I intend on using these practices in my own classroom.

Don't Let Them Take the Pencils Home! -Tom Johnson

John T. Spencer's blog post discusses the argument of pencils being sent home with the students. The academic specialist involved argues that pencils should not be sent home with students because a research study showed that students who did take their pencils home had lower standardized test scores. "Tom" however brings forth solutions such as giving students lists of projects they are interested to do. This post really more important than focusing on and arguing about the problem. Plus, like he mentioned in the blog post, even hang-man can bring forth some learning. I think that is better than no pencil at all. Also, with that being said, maybe another form of testing other than standardized should be looked into as well. I know plenty of people (including myself and my younger brother) that do not do well under that type of pressure, but excel otherwise and the blame can't be put on the pencil.