The Infamous School Board Meeting

The meeting started by awarding high-achievers in the school district. First the elementary students, then seniors in Goshen High, then adults part of a successful committee. They went through some of the happenings currently in the district to keep the board informed. One interesting proposal was about iPad and Android apps for each of the schools. It was highly praised, as was mostly everything presented at the beginning, including test scores and IB courses. Interestingly, the school sports very high test scores on AP and IB exams despite having around 65% of students on free-reduced lunch.

            Another cool program was the Music Together program, which uses singing and dancing to establish connections between parents and their young toddlers. This program is apparently a really big deal and Goshen is the center for research and development of this program in the country (I learned this elsewhere). That pretty much ended the reporting section, where people presented their data and the board applauded them and asked for any questions. Next was the Action-item section.

            During the action section, the board would read over an idea, possibly do a quick overview of it, then the president would call a vote using the audible word “I” as a vote for yes. All the votes were unanimous, and it seemed there was not much time allotted for anyone who might disagree.

            I think it is worth mentioning that I heard many of the vocabulary words from the sheet while listening to the talks. Specifically, I heard the terms, summative test, magnet school, and charter school, and I know there were a few more that I forgot to record. It was interesting how applicable those terms were already.

            This meeting was pretty much what I expected. I viewed the democratic system much the same as a do now, but I did expect much more arguing and negativity. There was a surprisingly low negativity content in the room, very few critical comments, and no arguing—much more civil than expected.

            School boards seem to be a group of top individuals in the school system who are in charge of various sectors of the schools who can all put their minds and opinions together to make decisions about the schools. They use democracy to find what the majority of the members want to make the calls on financial, school content, technological, and allocation-based decisions. Rather than having one person do it or a large body like congress, which takes a very long time to pass anything, a small elite group is used to make decisions. They have the power through that system to approve or deny proposed actions to happen in the school system. They can provide funding for certain departments and take it away.

            This felt a lot more connected to the classroom than I think most board meetings would be. They had students involved for a good portion of the meeting, and they covered topics that related directly to the classroom such as the AP and IB exams. Some of the content, more financial stuff like the increasing of the cost for free-reduced lunch, seemed to be distant from the classroom because they didn’t address how that would affect the individual students. However, for the most part, the meeting seemed to keep daily school life in perspective.

            Though as I said earlier, there were no heated debates, I still learned a lot about the workings of the school board and its functions.

What is Takes to be a Teacher

This post will address the nine most crucial experiences and actions that make great teachers, according to Grant and Gillete and the GC Education Department. As a future teacher and molder of adolescent lives, I am expected to have experience with all types of learners and their families. Unfortunately, this is one area where I am lacking. In high school, the fast learners, people who responded well to lectures and moderate visual aids, were grouped into one educational track. We were sent on the advanced placement route starting our eighth grade year, and from then on, I took class with mostly students of similar learning types. I did, however, get to tutor native Spanish speakers in multiple subjects, which opened my mind to an entirely new way of thinking. Becoming critically active is also of great importance. But I’m not really sure how.

I have always taken my education seriously. In high school, I was eighth in my class and ended with a 4.19 GPA cumulatively. I worked hard not because I was told to, but because I knew that education meant learning, and the more I learned, the better I could be at any job of my choosing.

Being a role model has been something fairly new to me in being an educator. I have a younger sister who I have been a role model to for some time now, but my first experiences with being a role model outside of family started my senior year. I became a leader in the Cross Country team, Swim Team, and Marching Band as well as in my youth group. I realized that when a conflict arose, it was my job to step in and mediate or fix it. I set examples for those around me by doing what is right and good in the community, and many others followed.

As far as volunteering in an organization where people are different than I am, I again reference my experience tutoring Spanish-speaking children alongside many other young adults. I volunteered once or twice a week, and I was called to interact with kids who are not from the same country as I, who often spoke a different language, and whose culture was much different than my own. I also tutored beside tutors with much different styles than my own. I interacted with people I would have otherwise never had a conversation with, which was eye-opening.

I hadn’t really thought about “recharging my battery” as something that needs doing. I always thought it would just happen, but according to my friends, I “wait until my battery is completely dead to recharge it,” which is what I hear you’re supposed to do with batteries anyway. It apparently makes the battery last longer. However, I’m not quite sure that works the same way for humans, so this is one that I will have to work on.

Practicing democratic principles seems fairly easy.  I’ve been part of a democratic society my whole life. I have experienced democracy in small ways throughout life, but I guess never on a large scale first hand. Going to the school board meeting will help with that. But I have experienced the idea of voting and electing officials and representatives for athletic teams and school clubs.

Identifying allies is something I’ve never had trouble with. I can read people very well, especially when they speak in small amounts. It’s easy for me to discern who the people are who would most be able and willing to support me and my quirky personality. When I was in Colombia, I had to do this with speed and assurance because having allies was key to surviving the trip with a sound mind, free of mental break-downs.

Obviously, to become a great teacher, it is in my benefit to study what effective teachers do. I have already been studying my teachers for some time now. The best teacher I have ever had, Mr. Gunther, is who I have done the most studying about. His class was always structured the same way. He started from the complete basic point of the topic he was teaching, and he moved on from there. He included everyone in the classroom all the time, and he made sure we knew how important our education was to us.

The two of those actions/experiences I am most versed in are probably taking my education seriously and being aware of my status as a role model and being active in the community. From a young age, my parents instilled in me the desire to learn. I was always encouraged to ask questions and find answers. This aided me when I reached the level around sixth of seventh grade when going to school is not fun anymore. This is the point many students stop trying hard in class and stop performing just the minimum to pass tests and classes. However, because I always wanted to learn, I continued to take my education seriously. I wracked my body sometimes in order to balance academics with athletics, and I always knew that if it came down to it, my academic performance was more important by far than my athletic. I made sure I received good grades in all my classes because I wanted to show visibly to those who would judge me, such as college admissions and employers, that I take my grades seriously. I worked hard consistently through high school to get a 4.19 GPA, and I continue to work hard in college, learning about all subjects of life so that I might be able to relate to whoever I come across in my career. Now, as I approach that career, of being a teacher, I find that taking my schooling even more seriously. If I don’t take it seriously, how can I expect my students to do so? My attitude toward teaching will always rub off on my students. If I want a great teaching experience and students who actually want to learn, I have to put off the attitude that learning is worthwhile, and I have to practice that attitude all the time.

As I said earlier, I also have a great deal of experience being a role model to those around me. Leading by example is one of my best traits. I might not be excellent at instructing people on good character or convincing people to volunteer in the community, but I do those things myself, and I make friends with tons of people. When people see that I’m friendly, happy, and confident, they tend to accept the actions I take as good ideas. Being a good role model isn’t as easy as simply acting as I want others to act, but it is a large part. When I was the team captain of my cross country team, I had to step in and take action where I would rather have stayed out of the way, which is the second part of being a good role model: responsibility. I had to take responsibility of the goods and the bads of the team. I gave pep talks before races and directed energy in positive directions. I was a listening ear or comforting hug after a bad day. As a role model, everything I do is judged, so I can’t afford to “go crazy” one night or act against my values in public. There were times when I let myself down, but I made sure those incidents were contained to my family and me.

I was a leader in my community as a whole as well as in my school community, which added to my responsibility. I was a tutor for a program that helped students whose first language wasn’t English. I started a non-profit fund to help financially unsound students, and I was a leader in my youth group. No matter where I was, people knew me as one of these titles—titles of respect, responsibility, and authority. People looked up to me, and I knew that. It wasn’t always expressed to me, although it often was, but I knew the younger generations were looking at my every move and that what I did would come to form their futures in some way. This is the same kind of responsibility teachers have. Every day, they are the adult models for dozens of kids and adolescents. They are role models and the primary connection (besides parents) to the older generation for most kids. They will be influencing futures and personalities just as I experienced as a leader in my community.

Despite my plentiful experiences in those two areas of great teacher-building actions, I still lack in a quite a few areas. One of the worst is my ability to “recharge my battery.” Being a teacher is hard, and I know that. Trying to make learning fun and coax students into doing things they so adamantly do not want to do for about six hours each day would drain anyone’s life energy. In the 21^st century, teacher are expected to multi-task like never before, using multiple technologies and social interactions at once as well as performing the usual activities of teaching such as generating lesson plans and grading papers and assignments. Doing all this and handling kids is a good way to run the body’s battery down quickly. Therefore, finding ways to recharge that battery is of great importance so teachers can continue to lead lives that kids will look up to and so that they can be active and enthusiastic in class.

I am also not as well versed in studying effective teachers as I would like to be. As I said before, I have studied, especially, my favorite teacher, Mr. Gunther. However, outside of that experience, I have been too busy learning the material that the teacher presents to focus on the techniques he or she uses to teach them. I know this is an important action to take part in because experience is by far the greatest teacher. Take language for example. I can spend one semester in a Spanish-speaking country and learn as much as I would in two years here. The same goes for larning about education. Future teachers will learn much more much faster if they look at those who are already teachers and study what works and what doesn’t in the field rather than learning about those subjects theoretically in a classroom.

It seems I have a few characteristics and actions of being a great teacher taken care of pretty well, but I am a long way away from being the teacher I want to be. I have much to learn and much to experience. Thus, my journey as an educator continues on.