So I am in an education class because I want to be a teacher! We have to create a metaphor for teaching in this class and we are supposed to make it public. Honestly, I don't know if I want to post this all over my facebook, but I figured this would be an appropriat place. So here is my metaphor.
Metaphor
What I Want to
Accomplish as a Teacher and a Learner
A Home
Foundation- My foundation should always be in Christ.
With a sure knowledge that He is my Savior, and a striving to do what He wants
me to. If Christ is my solid rock, that will remain true, even in the class
room and it will provide me with the strength and security to do what I feel I
need to as a teacher.
Framing- Doctrine: plan of happiness, and divine
potential.
Floor/ Walls- Principles: stewardship, problem/posing
education, and love for our fellow man.
Furniture/appliances/decorations- applications:
Asking questions without feeding them the answers. Having one-on-one sessions
with each of my students at the beginning, middle and end of the semester/year.
Projects with enough direction to help them learn the needed material, but
enough freedom to let them actually learn.
Pattern
The pattern is to understand essential doctrines and the
principles under them, and then to use these to make your own applications into
your life. An example of this would be the doctrine of the Plan of Happiness. In
applying the doctrine of the plan of happiness itself, we can look to David A
Bednar, who wrote of finding doctrines and principles and deriving tools from
those. If you do this you will be teaching along the pattern of Christ and will
be able to find the truths that will lead you along the plan of happiness. There
are many principles under this including love for our fellow man and
stewardship. In applying the former of the two principles we can look to
Pestalozzi, who emphasizes letting children develop more organically than we do
today and insists that we do not give children more than they can handle at one
time. He really believes in the principle of love for our fellow man.
I think that applications to the second two of the
principles could be providing service, checking up on others, and I truly
believe that teaching is a form of stewardship, and if done with a principle of
love, it can make us very happy in our occupation. In “The Evils Suffered by
American Women and Children: The Causes and the Remedy” by Catherine Beecher,
Miss Beecher shows she believes in the principle of stewardship, the principle
of love for our fellow man and that a good application to this can be teaching
because she gives a call to intelligent, hard working women to come forth and
help these youths who are not getting a proper education and are being
neglected. She reminds them that Christ did not ask us to only do a few small
acts of service when it was convenient for us, but to give up all and to follow
Christ, and in this case, following Christ involved teaching, caring for, and
loving these individuals, and through this stewardship they would be serving
their Lord.
Another thing I think it is important to remember as a
teacher and a steward is not to peg students into certain stereotypes and
expectations just because of the way they look or even past grades or initial
examinations. We cannot truly help our students if we limit them to our initial
impressions of them. Perry writes of how students can be stereotyped by their
looks, or even their answers, without really giving them a fair analysis of
what their potential and abilities are. When teachers have a more open mind,
they can better meet the needs and help to direct the abilities of their
students. This also fits into the doctrine of divine potential.
To apply the doctrine of divine potential, we must remember
to see each child not as the world sees them but as Christ sees them, and not
how they are, but how they could be with the proper guidance. In “The
Republic,” Plato speaks of how there is a perfect potential that is not in this
world but is something that we all can try to reach. In his “Allegory of the
Cave,” he speaks of how many are kept in only the shadows of knowledge and
those who have made the discoveries of knowledge need to help lead others into
the light, showing the doctrine of divine potential and the principle of
stewardship. Though we are still trying to reach our divine potential as well,
we must try to use the light that we have hopefully gained to see the potential
of others, and lean on Christ to help us bring the qualities out of our
students that we could not have done on our own. Another person who believed in
the doctrine of divine potential was Rousseau, who talks of how we should let
children learn organically and not have them forced to learn things beyond
their capacity before they are ready for such things. This will allow them to
grow up without resentment and will enable them to enjoy learning when it
comes. Because they enjoy learning, they will be able to truly learn and reach
their full potential. This is a good reminder that often we must allow them to
find their own divine potential for themselves; we cannot force it on them.
While there are many other people
that I believe show the importance of the doctrine of divine potential, one
more that I really find important is Wolk, who taught that our form of
education is really more like job preparation than learning, and because of
this, today we do not help our students to enjoy learning or to find their
unique potential, which is what he argues that school should really be all
about. Also, school does not address vital issues that should be discussed in
the classroom due to a fear of them being too political, thereby making our
youth less aware adults in almost every field. It is good to remember that
while school should be able to help them when it is time for them to look for a
vocation, their divine potential goes far beyond their career. And we should
really focus on helping them actually learn, which is what will help them much
more towards reaching their divine potential.
A principle under the doctrine of
divine potential would be the principle of problem/posing education. This
principle was first introduced to me by Freire, whose entire essay is about the
principle of problem/posing education. If we do not do this, we are using
“banking” education, which simply fills children with information, instead of helping
them learn and question the world and make it better. Problem/posing education
involved asking your students questions, having discussions with them and
allowing them to come up with the answers rather than just lecturing them and
feeding them the answers. I find this so important that I do see at as a
principle and not just an application. Another advocate of problem/posing
education could be found in Adams, who implores that students be given a
broader education where experiences are taken into account because being
stuffed into a classroom is not always proper preparation for life. She
emphasizes just how important it is to allow the children to discover things
for themselves.
