The readings this week really resonated with me as a mother and as a future teacher. This week in particular has been a difficult one for me as a mother because of the stresses of life that many of us face. Such as dealing with my homework, my children's homework, making sure my children get their responsibilities at home done, getting my children to their church activities, athletic activities, and so forth. These stresses have made me question if I am up to the task of being a teacher. Can I handle everything that I will be faced with? I was begining to wonder if I am doing the right thing. But then I read page 22 from Fulfulling the Promise of the Differentiated Classroom. In the section "Looking Back...and Ahead" gave me hope. The quote by Esme' made me realize that I just need to keep trying.
As I have learned from being a mother, each child is different. My children have different personalities, different likes & dislikes, different physical needs & emotional needs, different learning styles, different social connections, etc. You would think that because they live with me that I would know them inside and out. But no, that is not true. It takes work to connect with each child and understand what their needs are and where they are coming from. Thankfully, I have always been the type of mother to analyze what I could do better in order to connect with my children and really get to know them. The readings have made me realize that a good teacher does the same thing, she connects with each of her students. It may be naive and zealous as Esme puts it, but as the readings suggest, I have to try. I don't want to be some drone in the classroom trying to "input knowledge" into the student's heads and not understand their background knowledge and their interests. It's important to know what they already know and what they are interested in so that I can strive to make their learning meaningful. I want to connect and know where my students come from, what they like or dislike, who their friends are, what student needs emotional support, what student is lacking the basic needs of life, and so on, so that I may be able to better scaffold their learning.
Sometimes I am not the best mother and I know there will be times when I may not always be the best teacher. But I just have to keep trying. I have the desire and the motivation to be the best teacher for my students that I can be, I just have to remember that during the struggling and muddled times that my students may not be getting along or understanding what I am trying to teach them, or struggling with family issues, friend issues, etc. that they need me. They need me to be connected with them as an individual and as a classroom family. They need me to be their advocate and cheerleader. They need me to push them and challenge them. They need me to discipline and guide them. But most of all, they need me to love them.
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2 comments:
You are SO getting this that I'm not sure I can adequately comment on your depth of understanding. Let me just say that I continue to struggle with the very same issues that caused YOU to internalize so much of this reading (my very first posting on my blog dealt with the phenomenon of "having it all" or "doing it all"... I doubt myself as a mother constantly, and it affects how hard I work as a teacher. Unfortunately, the reverse is seldom true... my experiences as a teacher (both my successes and my failures) should help my mothering, it seems to me. But I don't think it does. This probably isn't very encouraging, is it? But what I mean to say is that, I think you are already SOLIDLY on the right track of being able to balance the best of both... being a responsive mother AND a differentiating teacher. You're pretty amazing.
I just re-read my comment, and noticed that I left out parentheses closures, and made other various mistakes. I hope you got my "drift" anyway!
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