what does it mean for a teacher to "bloom"?
I love metaphors. Thinking of myself as a teacher in "bloom" is exciting and relieving at the same time. I entered the College of Education at MSU and thought to myself that because this is one of the best Education programs in the country, I would know it all by the time I graduated. With one semester left, I realize that is impossible. Every day in field is a completely new day. I step into the classroom and I learn something new or see something I didn't expect to see. Kids are surprising. I think that to bloom as a teacher means to take it all in, and learn from it. Each experience tells us something about ourselves as a teacher, and as a person. It is hard to say what kind of teacher I want to end up being, because I know that even that will change as I am going along. But when I think about my career as a teacher in constant "bloom", not knowing it all right now seems a lot less scary.
What I do know is that even if I don't have all the answers, I have learned a lot. I hope that this class helps to boost my confidence as a teacher, and helps to prepare me (as much as possible) for my future students. One of the most important ideas I have taken out of my education so far is the responsibility to teach for all students. To do this, I think that it is critical to incorporate diversity and multiculturalism into all aspects of the classroom. I want to learn how to better reach all learners, and foster meaningful learning with all of my students. Literature is a great way to do this, even if it may be one of the more obvious places to do so. I am happy and grateful for this class because I think it will help to develop creative ways to reach students through Language Arts, and will provide us with information that can be applied to all areas of learning.
I think back to the teaching courses I have taken in the past, and I think that the best way to bloom as a teacher is to learn from others, but also learn from our own mistakes. That is another important goal of mine this semester. The only way to become better is to self-reflect and take others feedback. That is what makes the process of becoming a teacher successful, and is something that we can definitely do during this course.
2 comments:
Kelley I really love your idea of "blooming". I never really thought about it in the way that you've expressed--what a relief it is to still be in the blooming stage rather than knowing it all right now, it definitely helps reduce the stress-level. I always thought that we would have to know everything by the time we graduated too, but it's really an ongoing learning process. I think you're right that as teachers we are continuously blooming in new and different ways and that our ideas of how we want to teach will change as we learn and grow in our own classrooms. I also like your idea about self-reflecting. I know that sometimes we become so busy with other things and the processes of our classroom that we don't take the time to stop and reflect on how we're doing and whether or not things in our classroom are working. Like you said, right now is the best time to learn from our mistakes and so I hope that is something I'll also be able to do this semester.
Kelley,
I'm glad that you enjoyed the metaphor of "blooming." I hoped that it would help you all to see learning to teach as a process, not a finite destination. Another metaphor I use sometimes when thinking about learning to teach is snowball rolling down a hill. As it rolls, it just adds more and more to itself, it might bump into something along the way and lose a little, but then it just builds back up. And with teaching, the way we add "snow" is through other people and through experience - just as you said. I think that in order to help you decide what you want to keep in your repertoire and what you want to "fall off" along the way, you should use this semester to unpack some of what you wrote about. Consider what, exactly, it means to you to incorporate diversity and multiculturalism - what does that look like in a classroom? what does it sound like? why is it important? Those questions are hard to answer now, but hopefully through readings, discussions and classroom experiences you'll be able to paint a super clear picture of your ideal classroom would look like. I hope I can help you with that.
Sarah :)
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