Mom always taught me that if I didn't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Well, this reflection is going to be difficult to write then.
Honestly, my negative thoughts on today's experience reflects mostly on an individual rather than the school as a whole. I literally cannot bring myself to post any reflections on my blog.
The only evidence of teaching "God" in the classroom today was in a complex sentence exercise in which the sentence was "Noah's Ark of Gopher wood was designed by God and built before the flood." The rest was "normal school."
The teacher even told me that students get the same amount and same quality of knowledge at a public school as they would at this private, Christian school. Huh.
And when I interviewed the teacher, I was given the same, regurgitated answer for each question asked. It's not like I just came out and said, "Hey, what's your philosophy of education?" No, I asked a bunch of little questions trying to pull out bits and pieces of a philosophy - to make the teacher reflect and then be able to compile individual answers and develop a brief statement of philosophy from that. Nope. No go.
I'm concerned that the teacher was not able to communicate a philosophy of education. This is supposed to be what drives us every day as we teach in the classroom. We are supposed to be living our philosophy. Of course this philosophy can change, but we have to be aware of it. We must be able to reflect on our beliefs and proclaim them. If you can't even do that, what are you teaching?
No comments:
Post a Comment