Sei's Reflection to Graves (Ch. 12-14)
Graves Ch. 12 Reflection
Let the Children Teach Us
In Chapter 12, Graves discusses the beauty of educators learning from their students. It shouldn’t be assumed that the sole role of teachers is just to educate. Yes, teachers are there to guide their students and stimulate their minds with a motivating, challenging, and knowledge-saturated curriculum; however, teachers must also learn because “when teachers learn, the children learn”. There are countless things that teachers can learn from their students. Not only can they learn about different teaching techniques and methods through their students, but also information about daily life.
Graves goes on to state that teachers must inhabit much discipline during conferences with their students-a skill that needs to be learned. Teachers must be disciplined enough to let the student lead the conference and “teach and to understand how to develop his own text”. It’s simple-sometimes we teach by learning and sometimes we learn from teaching. As educators, we tend to think that it’s our job to teach and the students’ job to learn, but we must keep in mind that it’s essential for us to learn through our students as well.
This chapter is very enlightening and eye-opening. It’s so ironic, yet beautiful, to think that we, as teachers, think that we’re doing the teaching, but in reality, we’re learning from our students. I’ve had firsthand experiences with learning through my students. I’ve been teaching the youth group at my church for a couple of years now and there are an endless number of things that I’ve learned from my high school students. One child is just a whiz that is so much more knowledgeable about politics than I am. He started asking me all these questions once and I was a little taken back because I didn’t have a clue on how to respond to him. After being stumped by my own student, I took more interest in politics and it’s motivated me to learn more in order to teach more. In the following years, I’m sure that there will be several questions that I may not hold the answers to, but that’s okay. It’s okay to not know everything as long as I make the effort to be knowledgeable of the facts that are important to my students.
Let the Children Teach Us
In Chapter 12, Graves discusses the beauty of educators learning from their students. It shouldn’t be assumed that the sole role of teachers is just to educate. Yes, teachers are there to guide their students and stimulate their minds with a motivating, challenging, and knowledge-saturated curriculum; however, teachers must also learn because “when teachers learn, the children learn”. There are countless things that teachers can learn from their students. Not only can they learn about different teaching techniques and methods through their students, but also information about daily life.
Graves goes on to state that teachers must inhabit much discipline during conferences with their students-a skill that needs to be learned. Teachers must be disciplined enough to let the student lead the conference and “teach and to understand how to develop his own text”. It’s simple-sometimes we teach by learning and sometimes we learn from teaching. As educators, we tend to think that it’s our job to teach and the students’ job to learn, but we must keep in mind that it’s essential for us to learn through our students as well.
This chapter is very enlightening and eye-opening. It’s so ironic, yet beautiful, to think that we, as teachers, think that we’re doing the teaching, but in reality, we’re learning from our students. I’ve had firsthand experiences with learning through my students. I’ve been teaching the youth group at my church for a couple of years now and there are an endless number of things that I’ve learned from my high school students. One child is just a whiz that is so much more knowledgeable about politics than I am. He started asking me all these questions once and I was a little taken back because I didn’t have a clue on how to respond to him. After being stumped by my own student, I took more interest in politics and it’s motivated me to learn more in order to teach more. In the following years, I’m sure that there will be several questions that I may not hold the answers to, but that’s okay. It’s okay to not know everything as long as I make the effort to be knowledgeable of the facts that are important to my students.
posted by Sei | 12:13 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home