Category: Unit 1

 

               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.   

 

 

An experience that changed my views on education was in highschool. It was when I looked at other people’s grades in school and the effect it had on their classes they took and it compared to mine. I was always a decent student throughout highschool I was like a B average student but I had friends who had honors classes. When I saw the work they were doing versus mine. I realized that they were doing the same work as everyone else just a little faster pace and it made no sense to be in an honors class if I’m just doing the same work. I had a few of these classes in highschool but I stopped doing the work so I can be put in regular classes because the only thing different was the Time they had to do the work and what they had to do. If it was ela instead of 11 grade English they would go to 12 grade English which when I got there realized is not very different to what we were doing before it was how we were applying the skills that changed.

The part about how grades changed my views on education was how easy it was to get B average. At school. It changed the work I did and how I did it. The main way it changed my mind was my process on how to get good grades. I originally got good grades by doing a lot of work and always finishing it fast. But in 11 grade I realized the stress I was putting on myself completing all the assignments made no sense. I changed my mind and started to think as long as I get work done and time and I did it right I would get better grades and I did. I also started to learn faster when I wasn’t thinking about the work that was to be done that day or the next.

 

 

Nothing along the lines of severity I’ve heard elsewhere, but here goes nothing. In my sophomore year of high school (the last full year in person pre-COVID), whilst I was skipping class I had come across some guy who used to be a straight A’s honors student. He was skipping too, so since he hadn’t been in school in a while, and since we haven’t talked in a minute, I decided to skip with him and talk about nonsense and life at the time. While we were sitting in that staircase, I had to know why he didn’t really show up for classes anymore considering he did so well the entire first year. He told me “I don’t have a real reason to anymore.” Though this seems like a harmless enough statement, it changed the way I kind of viewed how I should approach doing things for the future of myself. Sadly it was the last time I have seen him since, as it was roughly the end of the school year, and since he was already failing horridly, there was no more reason to keep going that year. After that, we had a month of school and then COVID started around the world around November/ December. Though I never seen him again, he really did change something in me, even though it seems kind of cliche. My junior and senior year of high school, though tedious and highly unrewarding, I finished my two years above 95 average. The reason I changed so drastically when he said that is because I have a “why” because I have half my families names on my back. I can’t really afford to mess up and lose what hope we have left for the generations to come. More specifically, I have two younger siblings and a niece who watch my every move, especially with them growing up, so if I don’t succeed, there’s not too many good role models here, so I think I can bear that burden long enough. So yea, that’s my life changing revelation when it comes to my relationship with my studies.