Author: Alethea Oquendo

 

               I sort of feel like the teacher’s goal isn’t to help or teach the students anything, they just want them to memorize things and know how to do it but not know why they are doing it. There are many teachers who just want themselves to look better, showing their superiors how good of a teacher they are. Taking an education job because it’s a job not because they are helping kids grow and learn. I remember doing the problems but not knowing how to explain it back to the teacher or other students who needed help and the teacher would say that it was okay as long as I had the right answer. I remember whenever the principal and superintendent would go to the classrooms, teachers would tell the students to behave because their bosses were coming to observe the classroom. The teachers would completely change how they would speak or react to the students, but once they’re bosses are gone they go back to how they usually act.  

           The education system fails to realize that not every kid is at the same pace or learns the same way and if they don’t understand, they’re left behind in the classrooms, left behind a grade, or put into special education and the attention is taken off the students who really need the extra attention. There are some children that need to be taught a different way and some ways are as simple as rewording what the teacher says but instead of doing that the teacher thinks that the kid isn’t trying hard enough and that their teaching is perfect because other students understand it.   

 

 

 

Education has always shown this hierarchy of power, where if you weren’t good or smart enough you didn’t have a certain level of intelligence. It depends on how many degrees and what those degrees are, for you to have any sort of respect and education in the world or life in general. When somebody is in an intellectual sort of debate they list the amount of degrees they have and what schools they’ve attended to classify their intelligence. I’m a very shy person, if I were to have many degrees I wouldn’t be the type to show them off because I don’t believe that throwing my degrees in somebody’s face is a sign of intelligence. When people in middle school or high school would brag about the grades they get on tests I would never join into those conversations because my grades were always either below or average and if you didn’t have a certain grade on your test you weren’t considered smart in any way. There are different ways someone could be smart, it’s not only book smart to show intelligence. I learned English from my family. We speak in the same way in terms of accent but not in terms of how we use the language. Growing up the people around you influence the way you talk or act. but as I was growing up I didn’t say what they said or how they would say them. Although English is my first and only language, I’m really bad at forming sentences in essays or just in regular conversation. I’ve always been shy so that really affects the way I speak to people and the amount of words I use in conversation, so instead of saying a full sentence I give half sentences or small phrases. In doing those things and not having the strongest writing skills I don’t believe that shows how intelligent I am or could be.