Blog Post #10

Do You Teach or Do You Educate?
To Teach(v): (1)To show or explain how to do something. (2) Encourage someone to accept a fact or principle. (3) To give information about or instruction in. (4) Cause someone to learn or understand something. (5) Induce by example or punishment to do or not to do something. These are all definitions of a teacher in this video. It doesn't seem so bad to be a teacher when you look at these different definitions, until you read what it means to educate someone.
To Educate: illuminate, enlighten, inspire, empower. One who gives intellectual, moral and social instruction. A mentor is an experienced and trusted adviser. A guide is a person who advises and shows. These are all things that an educator would do. If I had to choose, I would much rather be an educator. To teach is to pour information into someone. To educate is to give them the power learn something themselves by encouragement. Children need educators not teachers. They have enough people in their lives that tell them what to do and order them around. It is time that we have become educators and give them the power to do it themselves. Guide them through their schooling. Show them what they should do and let them step out on their own and do it themselves. Inspire them to get out of their comfort zone and reach into places that they wouldn't normally go. These are things that an educator should do. I for one would much rather be an educator than a teacher. The video ends with this quote, "Education is the kindling of a flame, not the killing of a vessel." -Socrates. We should kindle their flames, killing the vessel(the student) will bring nothing but crushed self esteem in the end, and failure as far as academics go. 
I intend to show my students how to do things, but let them make their own decisions about how to do it. There are so many teachers out there, and we need more educators. Children need examples because many don't have an example at home to watch. I want to be more than just an ordinary teacher. An ordinary teacher pours facts into a child's brain, expects them to remember it for a test, and then never remember it again. Once that student is out of their classroom, it isn't their problem anymore.  I want to make learning fun, create a fun environment for my students and empower them to learn things for themselves. I want to be the educator that is remembered for making an impact and for showing them that they can do anything that they put their mind to, if they just try. 


Tom Johnson's Don't Let Them Take The Pencils Home
In this blog post, Mr. Johnson wrote about a confrontation that he had with his supervisor. He wanted to allow his students to take home pencils and paper. She was not for this idea at all. He had all of his parents sign waivers to allow the children to bring the pencils home with them, and she still was not allowing it. She had come up with so many different reasons as to why they couldn't bring the pencils home, until finally the real reason came out and that was because she was worried about low test scores. Apparently, students who use pencils at home have lower standardized testing scores. She was extremely rude about the subject matter at hand and would not listen to his side of the story. She made the point about how the students would just use the pencils to play hangman, which she referred to as a "sick and twisted game". 

My first point is that the students were given "a drill-and-kill bubble test" as Mr. Johnson put it. I took drill-and-kill to mean the students had facts drilled into their heads and then they had to take a standardized bubble-in-the-answer test. Not all students are good at taking standardized tests, and most students who memorize facts forget them by the time the test rolls around. So who is really being short handed here? The students are. The research that she was speaking about was obviously not a relevant point to bring up to support her argument. 
The second issue I had with this was something that was brought up in a comment. The commenter said "why not keep them from bringing books home because they could be used as a stopper to fix a wobbly table". I agree with this 100%. If you are worried about hangman being played, then just leave books out totally, because they could be  used for something other than reading. For Gertrude, the supervisor, to  use the argument that the pencils could be used to play hangman is absurd. Even if they are using them to play hangman, they are using their brains in a creative way. This leads me to my third point.
Is this post really about keeping children from taking pencils home, or is it representative of the fact that so many "educators" tend to worry more about testing scores than the students actually learning something because they want to learn. I can recall countless times of memorizing facts in High School that I couldn't remember today, even if my life was in jeopardy. There is a difference in learning something and memorizing something. This supervisor was more worried about testing scores than actually worrying about whether the students were learning or not. This is the problem with the education system today. Who cares about testing scores? If they are learning new things, then that is great, but a test doesn't prove if they have learned something or not. A test proves if they have memorized something, and most of the time when they have something memorized, it is forgotten about a week later. 
My favorite line was "Okay, you keep telling yourself that, but don't blame me when your test scores are lower." I love the use of "your" right here, as if I am the one taking the drill-and-kill tests."' This was so funny to me. This is another main problem that our educational system has. How is it the teachers fault, if the student refuses to learn. Many students expect the teacher to "teach" them the material, but then decides that they will put no effort into it. "Educators"(and I use the term educators very loosely in this sentence) need to stop thinking inside their box and start thinking about their students in a more positive way. Negativity leads to failure. The attitude of this supervisor could have ruined a classroom full of students had not Mr. Johnson stayed strong in his argument.