Blog Post #10

Do You Teach Or Do You Educate?
     There are many reasons for which I chose Education for my major, but it wasn't until after having children of my own that I knew that's what I wanted to do. As a mother, it is a wonderful feeling when your children learn to say their first word, or take their first steps. It is such an incredible milestone, and you were the one who showed them the way. Before you can blink you are teaching them to tie their shoes and how to ride a bike! Young children are like little sponges waiting to soak up everything that they can, and I wanted to continue helping not only my own children, but other children to learn everything that their    little heart's desire. It is truly an AMAZING feeling!
     To teach someone is to show or explain how to do something, to give information about or instruction in, to encourage someone to accept something as a fact or principle, or to cause someone to learn or understand something by example or experience. To educate is to give intellectual, moral, and social instruction to someone. The two should go hand-in-hand, shouldn't they? I think that it is important to do both. When you are a teacher, your students are with you at least seven hours a day, 10 months out of the year. I know that my children love their teachers dearly. They look up to them in such a way, you would be amazed. You have to not only teach them, but you have to guide them. They are our future!

Tom Johnson's Don't Let Them Take The Pencils Home
     In the post, Mr. Johnson is having a disagreement with Gertrude, the School Curriculum Instructional Interventionist Academic Specialist about weather the children should be allowed to take their pencils home from school or not. Gertrude insists that by them taking the pencils home, the wrong message is being sent. She claims that research shows low-income families see pencils as toys. She also believes that they will have lower standardized test scores if they take the pencils home for this reason in particular. 
     What Mr. Johnson is arguing is that this is total nonsense. I can't help but to agree! Does the so-called "drill-and-kill bubble test" really measure what someone has actually learned? I don't think so. I have written about this same topic a few times now, and my opinion hasn't changed thus far. In most cases, as soon as the information that was "drilled" is tested, it is also forgotten. But to appease Gertrude, Mr. Johnson says that he has met with the parents and students and explained ways that the pencil should be used for learning. Gertrude still doesn't believe that the students will be held accountable at home. In reality, all that matters are the test scores. They are what determines many things for the school. It is really a shame that the emphasis on a standardized test score can threaten the jobs of teachers. The biggest question that needs to be asked is: What are they really learning?