Week 4

Share 3 exact quotes that are meaningful to you (from across these two chapters), and explain why they matter to you.

"The way we "do school" often makes it easy to forget why teaching once seemed the best job in the world and makes it easy to lose sight of what we once hoped for."
I love this quote because at this point I can't wait to teach, I'm so excited for it and have so many hopes and desires of the teacher that I want to be, but that attitude can be quickly changed after the stress of the "job". The attitude we have of our job and of our students and the desire to change them and help them grow will determine how we "do school". I know that for me my job as an aide became much more meaningful to me and my desire to help the students grew dramatically when I learned to love each child and when I had gotten to know them and developed a relationship with them individually. We can have hopes and dreams of how we will "do school" now but we need to remember the most important element of the "job" is our students. As long as we remember that we will be able to fulfil our hopes and be great teachers.

"I respect who you are as well as who you can become."
This has become very important to me because I have learned a great lesson of this exact thing from one of my precious students. Last year I had a child who didn't speak english. The teacher did not take time to support, admire, or accept her culture. She wouldn't listen to her if she spoke in english, and she would sometimes jokingly pretend to speak spanish to her in a making fun kind of way. I watched as this child slowly stopped interacting with the teacher and starting interacting and respecting myself as well as the other aide who happened to speak spanish. As I tried to show her that I accepted her how she was and that I thought she could teach me as much as I could teach her, our relationship bloomed and she grew alot as a student. Our students need to know that we respect who they are and that we have hope and faith in who they can become.

"To provide opportunity is to help learner have a VOICE in what and how they learn and to find their own voice in what and how they learn and to find their own voice through what they study."
This quote stuck out to me alot because we had just discussed this topic of participatory teaching in our ESL class last week. I learned alot about the benefits of involving students in the process of deciding what they learn. They are able to create a voice when they are given the opportunity to participate in what and how they learn.