Just Some Thoughts

Just Some Thoughts

            Just some thoughts I wanted to get out there.  I’ve been out of a school for a long time, except for going to my kid’s elementary schools, and I never realized how much school has actually changed. 

Going to the middle school as part of my 346 class was the first real eye opener.  Teachers now deal with a lot more than  I ever experienced when I was in middle school, then called junior high school.  Different budgets or lack thereof, different classroom dynamics, different rules and regulations, different technology, no child left behind, resource officers, and the list just kept growing.  There are many different aspects that teachers today have to deal with that just did not exist when I was in school.  Now that I have been in a high school for the last couple of weeks, this time for the first time since I left high school, things have also changed.  Many of the changes I have seen here are much the same that I saw in the middle school.  The new technology that is available is amazing, I mean just the internet alone, and excuse the expression, in the classroom is light years ahead of anything I had access to, even when I went to college.  Again though I have seen so much more that teachers have to do than besides teach or prepare to teach.  I can't make a list of what more they have to do or deal with that is different than what I was exposed to as it would go beyond just a few thoughts.  People outside education just have no idea what goes on during a teacher’s day,  that it doesn’t end when the bell rings for the last class and that it goes beyond teaching.  To be honest I had some, not all though, of those thoughts too, I think many people did and still do.  It all goes back to that old saying that you need to walk in a person’s shoes to truly understand what they actually experience.  Just in the observations I have seen over the last two semesters really has changed many of my views.  One thing I want to mention specifically that I saw that was really interesting to see.  When in Central Falls I observed, on two separate occasions, the same science class.  In this class the teacher had the students in groups.  Now this wasn’t different but what was different was that the group was assigned one specific topic, and each member one aspect of that topic.  As the teacher put it the student was to be the expert of their one topic and the group to be the expert on the group topic.  He then explained that then the student was to teach their aspect to the group and then the group would teach their topic to the class.   To me that was great, it was different and it really means the students would be involved and invested in their own education.  It is things like this class that the public, in large, does not see.  Teachers do more than what is widely known.

          So these are just some thoughts I have on what I have been experiencing since I have returned to school.  The observations that I did in the middle school and the ones I am doing now in Central Falls really have opened my eyes to what is going on in the schools today and what teachers really do on a day to day, and class to class, basis.