Blog Two

My philosophy of teaching has not changed very much. I still believe that students should be able to analyze, synthesize, justify, and criticize the opinions of others and their own. However, I would add the fact that opinions and their ability to perform these tasks. I still believe that social studies education should provide students with the ability to become good citizens; however, I would add the fact that as life long learners, the definition of a good citizen might change as a student educates themselves and their ability to analyze, synthesize, criticize and justify opinions develops.

I have a class that really reminds me of the class portrayed in the movie Summer School. It seems to be nothing but the trouble students, and "rejects," of the school. I've often wondered how I am going to teach these students, because they legitimately do not care about learning this information. I have had no clue what to do, negative reinforcement has not worked and they do not respond to the teachers criticism. I have came up some ideas how to succeed in seeing success in these students in the classroom.

First of all, like the movie summer school, I have to find a way to make the material covered relevant to these students lives. This may or may not be easy; however, it has to be relevant to these students lives, otherwise it will not be successful. Secondly, it may be a good idea to try to find a way to positively reinforce these students. This will aid in the students learning. Thirdly, I am going to try to implement cooperative learning, and aid the bad students with a both a more capable peer and let them lead their groups. This will aid in classroom management and achieve my goals of educating my students. All of these ideas will hopefully aid in achieving my overall goals for the class.

This I Believe

I believe that education is a life long learning process. The more a person learns and educates him or her self, their awareness of the world around them increases. I recall being a young man, and hating learning things. I would be frustrated with the process, hating trying to master or recall some fact that I deemed to be completely random. In addition, school was very easy and I never felt challenged. Because of these reason, I did not like school and was very bored for many years. The older I became the more I began to enjoy my formal education; however, when I was in High School I did not enjoy it because I enjoyed learning—I enjoyed the social environment of High School. It wasn’t until my college career that I began to realize the importance of education. There is a simple truth in the old adage of “knowledge equals power,” because it does. Since I entered into college, I began to realize the importance of education, or simply put learning. Therefore, I try to learn something new every day. I’ve realized the importance of learning something new in my every day conversations. The more knowledgeable a person becomes, the more a person is admired in society. But more importantly, I found myself having intellectual conversations based on random facts I began to accumulate and formed my own opinions on. As society develops into a more diverse society, especially intellectually diverse, it has become more of a necessity for people to transform into becoming life long learners. When learning is a process that begins as a child and ends at death, it becomes a lifelong journey that is an exciting adventure. In conclusion, with the availability of technology there is no excuse for people to stop learning. If I can learn at least one new fact, idea, or thing for the rest of my life, I would accumulate a vast amount of knowledge and live each day with excitement in anticipation of what I would learn each day, each fact building upon previous knowledge shaping my opinions and beliefs about life, politics, history, and everything in between. Furthermore, learning is shaped by the various situations that people encounter every day—both good and bad alike. It is this informal education that shapes the beliefs and attitudes of people, and direct society to alleviating injustices and beginning to form an individual’s individual tranquility. Therefore, education is a life long learning process that is shaped by formal and informal education. This is what I believe.