A re-cap on the semester, my favorite one so far
The semester is wrapping up, just one more exam to take and I can call it done. I've been going to school since Spring of 2010. I started at Ohio Dominican University in Columbus and then transferred to the University of Akron for two reasons. One, ODU was too expensive, and two, they didn't offer many night classes and my employer would not work around an altered schedule so I could take morning classes. In fact, they told me "maybe you should transfer to a different school." So I did. And I moved. And got a new job.
But I digress. I'm just going to say this: until this semester, I have always found most traditional students really annoying. First and foremost, they are very laissez faire about their schoolwork, which annoys me. They have this attitude that it's not cool to care about their classes. Fall of 2013, I listened to a male student brag about how little he did for the class we were in together, and others participating in the conversation like it was the coolest way to be. I know they're at different phases in their lives than I am, I get it, but I mean, most students at UA are paying for their own education, so you would think it would be more important to them than it is. I don't participate in these conversations, because I try to stay in the background as much as I can.
This semester, I finally started my core curriculum for my major. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I went to Education Technology. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I started my day in Intro to Education, went to Child Development and then went to Education Psychology. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, seven people from Intro to Ed were also in my Ed psych class, and one girl from Ed tech was also in Ed psych. In Child development, I met a friend that walked with me to my ed psych class, though she wasn't in it. So I finally made some real connections with people because I actually spent time with these people.
In Intro to ed one Tuseday, the professor showed a clip from 20/20 about racial diversity where black students who don't speak Ebonics are told by other black students that they are "Acting white." Fast forward to Ed psych, where we happened to be doing the mid term review, and I had already done my study guide for the exam, so I was answering more questions than usual in class. And under his breath, one of the traditional students said "Carrie, quit acting white". And it stuck. Anytime something would come up where I was clearly caring about my school stuff, or he caught wind of me getting an A on the exam for the online course I also took this semester, he said "Carrie's acting white again." Haha. It continued for the rest of the semester. Please understand, it was all in good fun and I laughed every time. He even wrote on something for me "You're my favorite white person." PS: he's white too.
I had a conversation with my friend who I got to know walking from Child Development to Ed Psych and it occurred to me that, "I care about my education in a different way than you do." They are all just starting out. They can change their course of action at any point. They may teach for five years, burn out and leave to do something else, go back to school for something else. But this is it for me. This is my third career switch. So it matters so much to me. I have to do well because I can't do something else later. I'll be so far in debt because I went back to school so late.
And let me tell you, people who want to be teachers are pretty darn cool. Some of them have wanted to be teachers since they were super little, played "teacher" with their dolls at home. Some of them want to be teachers because they had such great teachers that they want to emulate that. Some want to be teachers because they want to be a rock for students to rely upon. Personally, I want to be a teacher to set right things that were done during my own educational experience. My intro to education class really bonded as a class and with the professor. We just clicked in such a positive way, and learned such great things about each other. The professor for that class was the most helpful teacher I have ever had, and my desire to be a teacher like her grew over the semester. I have never seen student centered teaching, well, ever, until I came to her class, and it was amazingly done. No death by power point from this professor.
She incorporated art into our course as well, and it was such an effective way to illuminate things about our teaching styles, and our personalities. We had to do three different art projects. The first was a collage box where the outside reflected things about ourselves, the inside had quotations about teaching on it, and the lid had a visual representation of our teaching philosophy. The second was a sculpture of something that represented our teaching philosophies. So mine was a little house with a teacher handing a student a hammer. The bricks of the house had words like "creativity" and "problem solving", "heart", "confidence," etc. I was telling a friend about how this really revealed to me my philosophy, which is essentially that I want to give my students the tools they need to build the life that they want. And the friend said, "Isn't that what all teachers want to do?" Well, in a way, yes, but it's not like every student that made a sculpture had a building metaphor. A few had a match or candle that was lit, one was a hot air balloon, one did angel wings, one did an apple. There were so many metaphors drawn for this project and no two were the same.
The third art project was done as our final exam, and it was to create an art installation piece that expressed how we feel about teaching after our first education class. I had already thought of something which was that teaching is a matter of juggling. You have to juggle the different learning styles, the diversities of culture, the curriculum changes and standardizations, health problems students may have, a personal life, etc. But I can't juggle. So then I thought of it as "balls in the air" which translated to balloons, and I thought I could just get some balloons and write a bunch of those words on them. We were able to collaborate with other students, and I hooked up with another non-trad and she made my idea even better by suggesting we tie the balloons to a brick that says "Standardization" and "Common Core" and all the names of the tests that are out there right now. And we said that coming out of the brick are things like "anxiety" and "lack of sleep" etc, and it was such a great metaphor. So things like "joy of learning" and "creativity" and even "Student success" are held back by this brick of standardization. It was the awesome. Plus, it gave me an excuse to buy a bunch of balloons, and I love a bunch of balloons together. Note to friends: if I meet a guy, tell him I LOVE lots of balloons in a bouquet. They're so cheerful!
Anyway, it was a great semester. I also healed from some things that I went through when I was little, which was like a huge weight lifting. I am a different person than I was four months ago, and I am ready for everything.
But I digress. I'm just going to say this: until this semester, I have always found most traditional students really annoying. First and foremost, they are very laissez faire about their schoolwork, which annoys me. They have this attitude that it's not cool to care about their classes. Fall of 2013, I listened to a male student brag about how little he did for the class we were in together, and others participating in the conversation like it was the coolest way to be. I know they're at different phases in their lives than I am, I get it, but I mean, most students at UA are paying for their own education, so you would think it would be more important to them than it is. I don't participate in these conversations, because I try to stay in the background as much as I can.
This semester, I finally started my core curriculum for my major. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I went to Education Technology. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I started my day in Intro to Education, went to Child Development and then went to Education Psychology. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, seven people from Intro to Ed were also in my Ed psych class, and one girl from Ed tech was also in Ed psych. In Child development, I met a friend that walked with me to my ed psych class, though she wasn't in it. So I finally made some real connections with people because I actually spent time with these people.
In Intro to ed one Tuseday, the professor showed a clip from 20/20 about racial diversity where black students who don't speak Ebonics are told by other black students that they are "Acting white." Fast forward to Ed psych, where we happened to be doing the mid term review, and I had already done my study guide for the exam, so I was answering more questions than usual in class. And under his breath, one of the traditional students said "Carrie, quit acting white". And it stuck. Anytime something would come up where I was clearly caring about my school stuff, or he caught wind of me getting an A on the exam for the online course I also took this semester, he said "Carrie's acting white again." Haha. It continued for the rest of the semester. Please understand, it was all in good fun and I laughed every time. He even wrote on something for me "You're my favorite white person." PS: he's white too.
I had a conversation with my friend who I got to know walking from Child Development to Ed Psych and it occurred to me that, "I care about my education in a different way than you do." They are all just starting out. They can change their course of action at any point. They may teach for five years, burn out and leave to do something else, go back to school for something else. But this is it for me. This is my third career switch. So it matters so much to me. I have to do well because I can't do something else later. I'll be so far in debt because I went back to school so late.
And let me tell you, people who want to be teachers are pretty darn cool. Some of them have wanted to be teachers since they were super little, played "teacher" with their dolls at home. Some of them want to be teachers because they had such great teachers that they want to emulate that. Some want to be teachers because they want to be a rock for students to rely upon. Personally, I want to be a teacher to set right things that were done during my own educational experience. My intro to education class really bonded as a class and with the professor. We just clicked in such a positive way, and learned such great things about each other. The professor for that class was the most helpful teacher I have ever had, and my desire to be a teacher like her grew over the semester. I have never seen student centered teaching, well, ever, until I came to her class, and it was amazingly done. No death by power point from this professor.
She incorporated art into our course as well, and it was such an effective way to illuminate things about our teaching styles, and our personalities. We had to do three different art projects. The first was a collage box where the outside reflected things about ourselves, the inside had quotations about teaching on it, and the lid had a visual representation of our teaching philosophy. The second was a sculpture of something that represented our teaching philosophies. So mine was a little house with a teacher handing a student a hammer. The bricks of the house had words like "creativity" and "problem solving", "heart", "confidence," etc. I was telling a friend about how this really revealed to me my philosophy, which is essentially that I want to give my students the tools they need to build the life that they want. And the friend said, "Isn't that what all teachers want to do?" Well, in a way, yes, but it's not like every student that made a sculpture had a building metaphor. A few had a match or candle that was lit, one was a hot air balloon, one did angel wings, one did an apple. There were so many metaphors drawn for this project and no two were the same.
The third art project was done as our final exam, and it was to create an art installation piece that expressed how we feel about teaching after our first education class. I had already thought of something which was that teaching is a matter of juggling. You have to juggle the different learning styles, the diversities of culture, the curriculum changes and standardizations, health problems students may have, a personal life, etc. But I can't juggle. So then I thought of it as "balls in the air" which translated to balloons, and I thought I could just get some balloons and write a bunch of those words on them. We were able to collaborate with other students, and I hooked up with another non-trad and she made my idea even better by suggesting we tie the balloons to a brick that says "Standardization" and "Common Core" and all the names of the tests that are out there right now. And we said that coming out of the brick are things like "anxiety" and "lack of sleep" etc, and it was such a great metaphor. So things like "joy of learning" and "creativity" and even "Student success" are held back by this brick of standardization. It was the awesome. Plus, it gave me an excuse to buy a bunch of balloons, and I love a bunch of balloons together. Note to friends: if I meet a guy, tell him I LOVE lots of balloons in a bouquet. They're so cheerful!
Anyway, it was a great semester. I also healed from some things that I went through when I was little, which was like a huge weight lifting. I am a different person than I was four months ago, and I am ready for everything.
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