He would tell me that education and school was like building a pyramid, and the only way for me to be successful was to start from the bottom, and work as hard as I could. I needed to strive for above what I could actually achieve. He'd say "If you strive for a B, you can end up with a C." He'd tell me that to reach my goal I needed to lay down the building blocks first. This now relates to what I believe about education. The first thing I learned from this course is that it's important to have beliefs and and an education philosophy. So in this final post, I am writing an educational metaphor.
Whether you're a student, teacher, or anyone else, nothing is going to come easy the first time around. Practice always makes perfect, even if you're incredibly gifted and the activity comes easier for you. Before you can learn the things college students learn, you must first learn the basic skills for them in elementary school. Before you can become a talented martial artist, you must first learn all the basic moves, and the way to position your feet and hands. Without the bottom of the pyramid, the rest cannot be built.
In education you need to move up, brick by brick. There is no skipping over a brick. If you do skip over a brick you set yourself up to fail later on because you are missing that important step that you need to have for helping you learn future things.
Too often I do not give everything my all. I don't try my best, but I know that the only way to achieve something grand is to work hard at it. I graduated from high school after years of learning and struggling. If I had given up early I wouldn't have achieved my goal. In this course I have learned that you cannot expect to be the perfect teacher on your first try. Even though we will have training in college and student teaching, we will not yet understand it all. We will have to work hard. There will be slip ups but as long as we keep trying we will get there. Sometimes we will be so frustrated that we may want to give up. But giving up your students, your job, etc does not get you anywhere, it just halts the process. As long as you try something, you'll get somewhere. Which is why I've always liked the quote "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." If you do not try to do something, work more with someone, make the situation work, then you go nowhere.
As a future educator, I know I will have to strive to make sure all my students understand what I'm trying to teach. I have also learned I am going to have to work harder with those who are having trouble, but at the same time I need to push everyone to do their best. Those students who understand the topic, still have room for improvement. Life involves all different kinds of learning every day. There is no end to what you can learn.
No comments:
Post a Comment