What is Worth Learning?

 Things that are worth learning vary from person to person. There are things that people enjoy learning about or things that people feeling they have to know. The worth of learning is based on each individual and how they perceive learning.

In my own class we learned about the different type of curriculum taught to children and how what teachers do can help children become better people. One of the tasks was to create a black out poem of an excerpt from the article Ending Curriculum Violence by Stephanie P. Jones. Mine was as follows:

Doing Right By Our Students

In order to reclaim our schools as sites of real learning and safety rather than suffering and racial trauma, it is necessary to help prepare teachers to critically examine what curriculum violence looks like within their discipline. Both prospective and current practitioners should continue to frame teaching as a reflective and reflexive practice by asking important questions of themselves and their curricula. Teachers should have continued support for professional development that is antiracist at its core and includes narratives of joy and resistance.

Most importantly, it is the wrong reaction for teachers to avoid teaching Black histories for fear of perpetuating curriculum violence. Remaining silent or choosing to omit certain elements of history has the same impact. We must want to do the right thing by our students, even if that means we have to struggle to learn more and seek feedback from students about the impact of our curricular choices. We should want to review and revise our existing lessons to ensure we’re not wreaking havoc on our students’ emotional and intellectual lives.

We do this so that we can begin the process of educational reparations—wherein we repair the harm that we have done to children by reconstructing curricula that have failed them.

I chose to try to create short sentences that can be read as a whole. I think the first line brings a powerful impact, "reclaim safety rather than trauma". In our world is it easy to blame behavior on trauma but why not introduce safety to students who need it. Another line I really thought would stand out is the "Teachers support resistance" line. It is sometimes hard to admit that the people we think should do the best are probably hurting our children. Not physically but in a way where students may not get to learn about certain ethnicities or certain parts of the world because the teacher is not willing or able to teach about those subjects. I think the ending line can be interpreted different ways which may provoke thought on what is supposed to mean. For me "Our students can begin repair to children that have failed" is supposed to be a call to action. "Our students" meant us, the educators of tomorrow that were taught a certain way by our own teachers can help fix the education system so that children can learn more and better. "Children that have failed", I wish there was another word in there to show that the children did not fail because of anything that they did, but because the system does not allow them to be anything other than what it has designed for them.

For me, it is worth learning everything that I can in order to better understand others and to help me pass along information. Everything is worth learning because how can we know what others know if we do not seek out the knowledge ourselves.

What Does Money Really Have to Do With It?

 Schools need funds in order to function as a successful form of education. While the greater cause of being in Education is to support thinking minds, money is a big factor in how that gets done. 

Education systems need money provided through the government in order to keep the school running. Whether that money is used to pay the staff or pay for more equipment for students without the money some schools would lack the ability to keep up with the educational needs of the students. While it would be a perfect world to say that "it is not all about the money", sometimes that could very well be the case for some people. Some may not be able to afford to send their child to a better school or a teacher may choose to work at a different place because it will pay them more. It may be easier to claim that education is for everyone regardless of their monetary situation but that is simply not true.

Many of the articles that were provided gave great examples of how not only is money necessary for education systems, but it is also a need in families. Some students, with a lower income family, may not have access to the necessary tools they need to succeed in the classroom when they are at home. I think the layer of why money is needed for education is prevalent in seeing how many different ways lower funding effects different parts of the teaching process. It is apparent that money is needed in a lot of ways in order to start education, this is not practical in some ways which halts the learning process.

It is 2022, Why Are Schools Still Segregated?

 It is 2022, why are schools still segregated? It is time to change that way of thinking that anyone is above the other. Why are we still discriminating? It is 2022, why are we still treating people as if they are not human based on their skin color? Why is it that I have to seek higher education before I learn about culture other than my own and the culture of the people who took the land to create America? 

One can argue that the schools aren't segregated, it is just based on where these families live, but why do they live there? I listened to the podcast Black History for White People: Redlining, which first of all that is the first time I've heard the real definition of redlining as it pertains to our history. I also learned from it that the government had put systems in place to make sure that the housing and the schooling stays segregated. Why is that okay? Why is it normal for our government to turn a blind eye to all that is happening? Why do they feel it is not their place to step in for the people of the United States? Schools are still segregated because people are scared of change. They are frightened of what could be and their own false perceptions on what other people are. We are still segregated because some people find that easier than just being educated on cultures and topics that are not their own. It is 2022 but we are still segregated because there were systems put into place to keep it that way. That is how the people who came before us wanted it to be and how they left their mark on the world. It is 2022, why won't we change this? Why are we scared to change our society for the better? Why do we stay still and frozen in our own worlds? Why don't we open up to new ones? Why in 2022, are schools still segregated?

What Lengths Am I Willing to Go Through to Do Right by Every Child?

 

I find it fitting that the word "Learn" was at the center of my word it out. Learning is the base line of what everyone wants for children that go to school. It is what we all desire when we seek out more knowledge. I think that sometimes we forget that the education system is meant to teach people about things they don't know about.

To make this word it out I found that many of the articles and videos provided had the theme that education does not seem to be for students anymore. It does not serve students' needs and cannot teach them that they are important and that their opinion matters. This system seems to stifle all ideals that don't fit the mold of the "good student". I think when making this I wanted to capture that in the words and in the color. I choose green words because those should be perceived as the words to look forward to. Kind of like the saying "the grass is always greener on the other side". I left in the words of unkindness for a sense of punch. Words like "failure", "disconnect", "never", and "destroy". I think that they create a sense of urgency when surrounded by words that should not be negative, such as "students" or "school". 

As to relate to the question, "What lengths am I willing to go through to do right by every child?", I think that it is possible to go through a lot in order to connect with students and to make sure they are feeling seen. I know that it would be a lot to do such things, but it may be worth it in order to really help students. Does this come with the risk of losing yourself to make sure others are okay, sure, but being an educator is a selfless job. It is the most exciting thing to see children connect with something you are teaching or something you are doing because it relates to them. I think that all that is worth doing whatever I could to help children relate to the teachings. Relation is the only way we want to learn.

How Does Gender Affect the Teaching Profession?

 Gender in teaching is a funny thing. Women are often seen at the forefront of learning. It is more common to see a woman in education than a man. Why? Many men who enter the profession also come along with a coaching position. I have personally only seen a few male teachers who were not coaches. Do all teachers who enter the career field, regardless of gender, have that same passionate want of helping students reach their greatest potential? 

I do not think that gender affects the way someone teaches. I think each person teaches based on how much they want to. Some are more enthusiastic about it, and some would rather just get it over with. Gender does not affect the way a lesson is taught. There could also be this huge fight over male and female but what about the teachers who do not fit that mold? In these more modern times, there is the option of being absent of gender. How does no gender at all affect the way you teach or how the students receive your teaching? The way you teach does not falter but it is the way you are perceived that does. How do students go about understanding that and would parents be okay with sending their children to learn at a school with a teacher that lacks gender? Maybe it is a thought overboard from the regular gender discussion of male and female teaching, but it has crossed my mind and I could not go without addressing it.

I think there is a stigma that woman should be teachers simply because not very many men become teachers. I do not think I could answer the why they do not, because everyone is different. They all have different reasons and to generalize that is unfair. Gender does not make you better at one thing than another, I think that profession is based on preference. I also think that the way others, like students and other faculty, respond to how you teach and treat others rather than what your gender is.

Is School Equitable?

 Before I even started, I had to look up the word "Equitable". It seemed pretty straightforward, but I had to be sure. Equitable means to be fair for all. Is schooling fair for all? I think the answer is simple and very in your face, but this would not give the education system the benefit of the doubt. 

The education that I received was decent enough that I got through K-12 and am now going through college. However, the amount of information that I did not receive in school that I have now learn outside of it is alarming. Most of the information I have come across are retellings of major historical events that I was taught happened one way but really happened another. Most of these stories are minorities stories that are not taught in schools. This is an easy way for education systems to leave out certain races and culture from their schools. This is not a fair way of presenting information to teach to children in schools.

Another piece of the unfairness of schools is how they treat the students who are minorities. I grew up in a town where the majority of the population were Hispanics. The school had a majority of Hispanic students, yet still many of those students were discriminated against. We had a school resource officer that was put in charge of lunch detention, why would they need someone with that much authority running something as simple as lunch detention? School resource officers have been known to cause more unrest in students, so why do we need them to be around so often? 

I do not think schools are equitable. I do not know if they ever will be. I do know that educators, administrative staff and many others could contribute to making schools more equitable just by doing what they have to skillset to do.