Describe a time when it was important to you to resist a change and why ~ Post 2

     One of the most prominent (and luckily education related) times it has been important for me to resist a change actually occurred in my first legitimate placement in an educational setting, in my second year of university. I was placed at a middle school in St. Catharines, working with an extremely diverse class of grade eight students. My primary role within the class varied based on the subject we were looking at that day. This incident occurred in their math class.

     My job in the math class was to take a select group of students who were not doing their work at a grade eight level and work with them in a small group to try and improve their performance. It was tedious work, as many of these students were largely disinterested in math or believed they were too far behind/ demoralized, etc. The student who was most far behind, Samantha (fake name, before anyone gets concerned) was working at a grade 2 level. After class midway through my semester, the math teacher approached me and told me that I would not be taking Samantha in my group anymore. When I asked him why, his answer revolved around her being a "lost cause", who would "never get it" and he wasn't sure "why her parents even bothered sending her", among more colorful things. Now, in my few weeks I had gotten to know my students fairly well. Samantha was a bright girl, and I knew it. However, she was quiet and reserved, and simply struggled to come out of her shell and make a legitimate effort. Naturally, when I was informed of this pending change, I was upset. I went back to the math teacher next week and requested to keep working with Samantha, as I believed that I could get through to her. After an absurd amount of badgering on my part, I got what I wanted and my group stayed the same.

     Now, I had something to prove. I worked as hard as I could with all of my students. I did math problems with them, I got answers wrong with them. I did everything I could to make them comfortable with me, comfortable enough to try things for themselves. Eventually, that started happening. Students would ask me to leave them alone while they tried to work out a problem. Even Samantha, my "lost cause" was beginning to do higher level math. She was still behind, but she was gaining traction at an alarming rate. By the time I was finished with my placement, Samantha was doing grade 6 level math, and attempting a little of the grade eight math every night. She was never dumb. She never didn't "get it". She just needed someone to believe in her, like a lot of those students did. And they certainly weren't getting that from their math teacher.

~~

     The reason this story came to mind as the one to share this week is simply because of how much it resonated with the first chapter of Hooks (1994) reading. I was able to show my vulnerability to the students, show that that it was okay to get an answer wrong, and this helped them open up to me. It was this openness that allowed me to succeed where their other teachers had failed. I felt like I made a legitimate connection to the students. I didn't feel like they were doing math because I was making them. I felt like they were doing it because they wanted to, or at least wanted to prove to me they could. This marked one of the first times in my life I felt like I was a legitimate teacher, and this week in ADED I was able to better understand and contextualize the moment; I am very grateful for this.

Thanks for reading guys,
Cheers!
   

Post 1!

       Well, as this is my introductory Blog I don't think I can say much I didn't cover in my introductory posts on the Sakai forums (which, if you're reading this, you undoubtedly have access to. Go look!). My name is Ken, I'm a fourth year student at the wonderful BrockU looking to expand his thinking and general perception of education and power dynamics.

       As for course concerns, I will reiterate here what I stated on the forum:I think my biggest concern regarding this class is the nature of an online course. I've never taken one before and the whole thing just has me strangely on edge. I feel like I'm going to miss something important- the whole feel is just different than what I'm used to. With that said, though, the idea of running a blog and contributing to a wiki is something I'm optimistic about. As a future educator I looked into ADED in order to try to expand and build upon my thinking the way my normal courses did not, and the utilization of these different resources seem to be a pretty good start. The idea of examining group dynamics is something I find markedly interesting, and I'm really curious to see where the class is going to take us. Even having the introductary posts on the forums, I feel like I know people in an online class better than I know some students who I sit in a seminar room with but never legitimately interact with - its kind of remarkable.

       All in all, I have a lot of optimism regarding this class. While the online aspects make me nervous, I think I'm going to really enjoy my experience.

Thanks for reading,
Cheers!