Thoughts from UNCC Grad School Class - Online Forum

How many years have I taught? In the classroom, 0.5, on the court, 6. This first semester of teaching represented my initial attempt to command the attention of 25 students at a time and impart essential academic knowledge. My current challenge deals with 9th graders: resentful, sleep-deprived, hormonal machines.

The teaching philosophy I adapt markedly parallels that of my coaching philosophy. The coach must serve as a paradigm of poise, patience, respect, and endurance for learning. However, the coach, or teacher, in the end may not be the individual from whom a player or student learns best. In fact, rather to the contrary, the greatest learning often is divulged through the support and guidance of a peer. The ideal learning environment through this philosophy, therefore, would consist of peers’, rather than teachers’, not only fostering the understanding of a concept in fellow peers, but actually introducing new ideas and theories. While ideal on paper, this is far more difficult to realize in a classroom outside of one’s fantasies. However, recently I have found my own piece of this dream in my own classroom. Having introduced a student to a new concept in tutorial one afternoon, I relinquished the soap box to this young woman during class the following day. With the attention of 24 adolescents, K. enlightened her classmates about the ways of compound inequalities. This model of peers teaching peers is one that I found to both promote positive class relationships as well as highly affecting teaching and learning. It is one that I will surely make every attempt to repeat in the upcoming semester.

The high school in which I work is far from being a competitive member of the CMS team. It has been targeted as a school that needs immediate drastic improvement; indeed, immediate improvement. Whispered rumors in the copy room of Dr. Gorman’s secret mission to close the school abound. Illegal actions such as restricting access to students’ enrolling in EOC classes for fear of their scoring below proficiency on the EOC have been taken by our principal in order to prevent our school from sinking to the front page headliner “Beyond the Market; Depressed Times for Education: Another School Closes.” In a school with one of the highest free or reduced lunch rates, an often depressed, disillusioned staff, and devastating lack of teachers, one could argue that there is less than a glimmer of hope for our school.

I would like to argue differently. A new teacher recently informed me of her severe distaste for the complacent school culture in reference to the forced curve on math finals. The curve is dramatic, for example changing a 36 to a 60. She passionately pointed out that we will never help students by lowering standards. Teach for America has indoctrinated me with this notion. That makes 2 of us at the school. How many others will it take? The answer: All. Even more than pushing my own students to success I must charge myself to morph the mindsets of fellow teachers to raise their standards and motivate their students to achieve their best, despite incredible obstacles.

To close, three things truly valued by me about teaching are safety, encouragement, and passion. Safety because I have the opportunity to create as safe an environment as I can for my students; an environment where they face no physical or emotional harm. Encouragement because I can serve as a positive motivator in my students’ lives, for some I may be the only one who makes an effort to fill this role. Finally, passion. I can pass on a passion for learning, a passion for change, and most of all, a passion for social transformation that if passed on efficiently and securely, will prepare my students with the reason, will, and academic confidence to create a lasting positive change for the community in which they grew up.