Blog Post #10

Our first assignment for this week’s blog was to watch a video called “Do You Teach or Do You Educate?”.  It was created by a college student named Joshua Bloom.  You can access this video below:

http://youtu.be/W0fJKvdjQgs

  

For a three minute video, it really had so much to say!  He starts off the video with a shot of a classroom, then a desk, and then a fire extinguisher.  Joshua then gives the definition of teaching from the dictionary.  It seemed to be very simple and exact and it had a lot of limitations! 

Then, he went on to describe what it means to educate.  He used such words as illuminate, empower, enlighten, inspire, etc.  An educator gives intellectual, social, and moral instruction…he is an experienced and trusted advisor who shows the way.  He is truly a mentor and the goal of real education is to build intelligence and character in our students.  As the video ends, he takes you back to the classroom and the fire extinguisher and slowly fades away from the scene. 

I couldn’t help but feel that he was asking the viewer…

“Are you going to extinguish the flames of your students or are you going to ignite the fire?”

 It was truly a very deep video and really makes you think.  My biggest goal as a teacher is to encourage my students to be lifelong learners.  I want to educate and not just teach a bunch of facts.  I want to put a fire in the belly of my students, so they don’t ever want to quit learning!

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel”.

                                                                                  Socrates

  

Our second assignment was to read and comment on the article written by Tom Johnson called “Don’t Let Them Take Pencils Home”.   You can access the article below:

http://pencilintegration.blogspot.com/2010/07/dont-let-them-take-pencils-home.html

The article was written in conversation form and was about two teachers discussing about whether it was a good idea for students to take pencils and paper home.  One teacher was arguing that studies show that students who take home pencils are more likely to do poorly on standardized test.  Therefore, at all cost, students should not be allowed to take pencils home.

Tom Johnson was much more in favor of letting students take pencils home.  It was apparent that he felt that all learning is not always measurable.  Every time a student has a pencil in his hand, he has an opportunity to learn whether he is writing a paper or playing hangman.  We are all learning everyday with all of our five senses and we don’t need to be concerned about the latest study or the newest trend in education.  There is so much more to learning!

I couldn’t help but think that this article had a much bigger overall message. Teaching, in general, should not be limited or over scrutinized.  We can truly never really know how much each student is learning and, therefore, we need to just offer our students many unique and exciting ways to explore and learn.  Most importantly, as teachers, we need to make sure that we are engaging our students and that they are having fun as they learn!