On My Early Education
"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original." -Ken Robinson
Learning does not come easily to me, as my elementary school report cards clearly indicate. I have always enjoyed learning and practicing new skills, but it seemed throughout much of my education that all the rules and steps and procedures came more naturally to others. So I worked. And I work. I pour in effort to honing my knowledge and refining my skills, and this is how I combat insecurities about my intelligence.
It occurs to me that at some point in my early education, I would have gladly welcomed an inquiry as to why I worked so hard, rather than consistent report card affirmations that I was doing just that. In some measure, I think the cause may be that I was expected to work harder as a result of coming from a lower socioeconomic status than many of my classmates. On the other hand, maybe I simply worked hard because I was very aware that were consequences to lack of academic success.
In my own work as an educator, my goals are to meet students where they are, to encourage their individual strengths while also challenging them to build new ones, to accept them as individuals with rich, diverse experiences, and to value a variety of life paths. I think we have too often carried the pressure of high-stakes testing into the classroom, offered it up to students as a burden they must bear, and then implemented curricula that are a disservice to the students' capacities for serious, insightful, creative thinking. To some extent, I think this yardstick by which we measure our schools has also established a narrow model of individual success that puts undue pressure on students to make important life choices when the education they receive fails to imbue them with any real self-knowledge. Certainly these are sweeping generalizations that do not hold true in a great many schools, but the trend is evident. As such, I think our perspective needs to be re-assessed so that our classrooms may become centers of creative, practical, and critical thought.
Learning does not come easily to me, as my elementary school report cards clearly indicate. I have always enjoyed learning and practicing new skills, but it seemed throughout much of my education that all the rules and steps and procedures came more naturally to others. So I worked. And I work. I pour in effort to honing my knowledge and refining my skills, and this is how I combat insecurities about my intelligence.
It occurs to me that at some point in my early education, I would have gladly welcomed an inquiry as to why I worked so hard, rather than consistent report card affirmations that I was doing just that. In some measure, I think the cause may be that I was expected to work harder as a result of coming from a lower socioeconomic status than many of my classmates. On the other hand, maybe I simply worked hard because I was very aware that were consequences to lack of academic success.
In my own work as an educator, my goals are to meet students where they are, to encourage their individual strengths while also challenging them to build new ones, to accept them as individuals with rich, diverse experiences, and to value a variety of life paths. I think we have too often carried the pressure of high-stakes testing into the classroom, offered it up to students as a burden they must bear, and then implemented curricula that are a disservice to the students' capacities for serious, insightful, creative thinking. To some extent, I think this yardstick by which we measure our schools has also established a narrow model of individual success that puts undue pressure on students to make important life choices when the education they receive fails to imbue them with any real self-knowledge. Certainly these are sweeping generalizations that do not hold true in a great many schools, but the trend is evident. As such, I think our perspective needs to be re-assessed so that our classrooms may become centers of creative, practical, and critical thought.