Blog, The Sixth

Personal Experience:

I remember being in my 5th grade class when my teacher told us that we would be learning about the Civil War.  I was rather nonchalant about it and felt that it was just another pointless lesson involving overhead transparansies, a textbook, and a reason to go to the bathroom just to get out of class.  At first, I was right with what I thought.  We did the stereotypical things and it made no sense to me why this war was covered so much more then the Revolutionary War.  However, things changed whenever we went to Gettysburg Battlefield and got to experience things first hand.  We got to go up Big Roundtop, reinvent Pickett's Charge, and got to go to the farms that were once used as hospitals during this battle.  This opened my eyes to how important this battle really is.  Not only did I take for granted the closeness of Gettysburg to my home, but also it is different to learn about a way then to be standing where many people have died.  I think this relates really well to the article "A Lesson from the Holocaust: From Bystander to Advocate in the Classroom".  Before this trip to Gettysburg I was not interested in the Civil War and I didn't really understand its significange.  However, once being brought to the scene I new perspective took over.  It really made me sentimental and I felt a wide range of emotions that I did not receive in a textbook.  This trip was a good way to get everyone to participate and to experience a battle by going to where it actually happened.

"A Lesson from the Holocaust: From Bystander to Advocate in the Classroom":

I thought this article was really interesting and made a lot of good points throughout it.  The first thing that stuck out in my mind was the fact that this teacher was teaching at a military academy.  Although that sounds easier and less stressful then a public school, it has its share of cons as well.  All of the students have similar mindsets and are often taught obedience, respect, and not to open their mouths and state how they feel.  Therefore, I think this teacher had it a lot more rough then most of us will have it.  Yet, the idea of "apathy" in the classroom is fearful for any teacher I think.  Silence in the classroom is far from expected but how do we pull students in to a subject and be able to talk about it?  For example, just today I had to give a presentation in one of my classes.  Naturally, I had discussion questions in which little or nobody raised their hand to answer.  It was discouraging to me, as a teacher, because I was wondering what I was doing wrong.  Was my topic THAT boring?  Were my questions irrelevant?  Then I realized it happens all the time.  A student needs to be able to say something in the class and be able to take their opinions and voice them.  After all, that is what discussion is all about.  I agree that too many students are in their "comfort zones" and just swim on by by just sitting in their seat and nodding their head.  I think making students uncomfortable is a good idea but also a dangerous idea.  Bringing up sensitive and personal information can either make or break a learning experience.  However, I find it the best way to envoke feelings with a student.  I particularly liked the beginning of the article with the man explaining his duties as a reporter and then how he ended up rescuing a soldier (84).  It is a good anaology to what needs to happen in the classroom.  It is the students job to learn and play their role as a student; yet, they also need to take some part in the discussion because it creates something better in the learning environment. So what do we do as teachers for assignments that are heavy and how we need to get a reaction out of them without using only a text.  Do we take them to historical sights?  Do we watch an educational movie?   I think it should be about a personal experience and how it changed them as a person and a learner.  Just don't make it in to a therapy session.  Most importantly, a teacher definitely needs to open themselves up before students will.  I think as future educators we need to share personal experiences and emotions with students so they can learn from example.  The classroom should be like an open book where students can share ideas and be able to interact with the material.  If they just sit there and not participate or even take interest then the learning experience simply diminishes.

"Beyond Tolerance"

This article is a real deep and definitely not what I expected when I read the title.  I was surprised when I learned that the teacher was in the World Trade Center during the attacks and had friends die during and after this awful tragedy.  I expected the article to talk about how a teacher who experienced first-hand the attack would have to teach it and how painful it would be for her and the kids to talk about it.  However, it took a turn for something I did not expect.  I really like the whole World Literature aspect and how she took each student to the country to learn customs and their history in order to understand them as people.  I think too often that people look at certain people and think stereotypes and know very little about these people, nor do they care if they know anything about them.  This teacher seemed very passionate about the course and really had them get involved.  it wasn't just simply reading books by authors of this country or that.  It was about learning from experiences and breaking down berriers in order to understand a culture.  I think the title also says a lot about the article and what our jobs as teacher entails.  we need to get students to think "Beyond Tolerance".  As college students and future teachers it is easy to tolerate certain things and beliefs.  We tolerate our professors point of view because it is out of respect.  We tolerate the construction on campus because we know it is more important to go to class then to skip due to your path of travel being blocked. Instead, it is our job not to simply accept things as they are but to question them and to take things with us from them.  If we do that to our students then they will grow up to be more cultured human beings, stereotypes would diminish, people would be accepting of others, and the world would be generally a better place.