Now in the case of the first point, Home and Community, what this made me think of as a teacher is trying to explain to students why what we are discussing in class is important. I still remember when I was a student in High School and often times I would come across peers of mine that would ask the question ‘why are we even learning this? When am I ever going to use this is in real life?!’. And now that I reflect on this, I must admit that I think those students were completely justified in asking that question because I see it as a mistake on the part of the teacher to not address the concerns of their students and try their best to explain why the information they are covering is important. The more I think about it the more crucial the issue appears to be because if a teacher lacks the ability to give an explanation as to why what they are learning is important, it begs a person to ask: is the reason for the silence on the part of the teacher due to the fact that what we are learning is indeed not important?...
This is actually a good question that all of us as educators need to ask ourselves because it can be a useful tool to help us gauge whether we are doing our job properly in educating future generations.
When it came to the point about conceptual knowledge, it made me think the importance of being able to teach lessons in a way that students have a deep understanding of the topic at hand. It is crucial that students do not feel pressure to just impress us as teachers, but rather that they want to genuinely learn for their own benefit. I remember when I was a student, many times I found myself and those around me desperately wanting to know what was going to be on the exam so that way we could focus our memorization on just that information because all we cared about was getting a good mark, not whether we actually understood what we were studying. I want to explain to students that pure regurgitation of facts benefits no one. I want to create an environment that students will want to come into in order to learn and I want them to understand that once they start focusing on learning and gaining and in depth understanding of concepts then the good marks will come naturally.
The point of providing feedback really hit home with me. When I was in my first year in university I remember being in a politics class that I thought I was doing really well in because I would come to every single class and I would always participate in class discussions. However, when it came time to receive our midterms marks I found out I was actually doing terrible! When I confronted my teacher he pointed out that although I do participate regularly I fail to relate my points to that week’s article reading, and I remember thinking to myself: ‘well then why not mention that to me?!’. I was furious! For half of the term there wasn’t the slightest indication, not even some sort of non-verbal body language that could have hinted to me that I was not putting forth satisfactory work. However, this taught me a valuable lesson, and I promised myself that if I become a teacher I will always give feedback to students so that they know what they are doing correctly and where they need to make some adjustments, so that they can correct themselves and improve for tomorrow.
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