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Sep
2
My Passion for Education
September 2, 2008 | Tagged A, Dr. Chris Moersch, Education, Educator, LoTi, passion, paulbogush, philosophy, teaching, Technology, wfryer, YouTube | 19 Comments
Now that I have hopefully caught your attention, or at least made you hungry, I am going to explain my passion and what fuels it in regards to education.
As a youngster growing up, I attended four different K-12 school districts stretching from Kansas to Oklahoma. Throughout those school years I experienced a wide range of teachers and instructional methods. Both of my parents were former educators and would always look for the best school systems before identifying a home to purchase. Thus, my education has been influenced not just by teachers and administrators but also by my loving parents. It is this parental interest that partially fuels my passion in education. I so believe that parents need to be involved in their child/children’s education as much, if not more, than teachers and administrators. Parents that participate and interact in a positive manner with their child/children forms and shapes a great deal of the child’s character. Those parents that neglect or abuse their child/children cause so much damage in so many aspects of the youth’s life. Unfortunately, many of those issue affects the student at school. Thus, this area of concern is another passion point for me as an educator, I raise this point as a result of reading a discussion started on Plurk by Paul Bogush. In all honesty, I do not know of any good educator that has not seen the good, bad, or ugly as a student or instructor and chose to interact with students through those times in hope of making a positive difference and showing he/she people do care. What does bother me in those and a variety of other situations are those teachers that do not want to become involved whether it is working with students.
In building off of this point of being positive with students I want to point out a video that has been running ramped on social networks of Twitterand Plurk. This video truly expresses my feeling for believing in students regardless of race, sex, or home lifestyle. This video comes from Dallas, Texas.
Now did that video make you think? Did you ask your self if you “Believe”? Honestly, if this video did not send the same message as I am trying to put forth when explaining my passion for education, those fellow educators that have shared it too would not be “believing” in their students today.
Another source that fuels my passion for education centers around the engagement of students. I ask you now to reflect upon your own education experience and ask yourself Which teacher(s) influenced you and why? Let me guess, those educators have a common characteristic regardless of who is answering this question. I would say that our influences were direct results of educators that engaged us with higher order thought provoking questions, provided real world applicable scenarios, and interacted with us on a personal level.
One evening while reflecting upon the same question that I previously stated, I read through a variety of blogs looking for resources to be used in with my college students. I came across a digital story created by Wesley Fryer. The digital story fit my need quite well. It is titled: Strive to Engage not Enthrall. The emphasis was for students to be engaged and not enthralled. Wesley was trying to make the point that students need opportunities to be inspired, challenged, motivated as well as time for reflection along with collaboration. Over the next few months while providing professional development workshops I stressed that communication between educators and their students was a major key for success. Two additional videos that I would like to bring to your attention about the need to permit students buy-in or take ownership in their own education are 1. A Vision of Students Today 2. A Vision of K-12 Students Today.
To emphasize that need to improve communication and student engagement, I participated in the national mentor certification training developed by Dr. Chris Moersch. Dr. Moersch first developed the program in 1994 and it was known as the Levels of Technology Integration. As the needs of our students and educational systems changed, so did the name is now recognized as Levels of Teaching Innovation(LoTi). LoTi combines the emphasis combines higher order thinking/questioning (Bloom’s Taxonomy), student engagement through the use of authentic real world forms of assessment and the integration of technology as a transparent resource.
It is the vision of Dr. Moersch along with my own experiences and passion that drives me to continue discovering tools and pedagogies that nourish the motivation of 21st Century students. I feel that students of today and tomorrow will need to be self-motivated, anytime anywhere learners. For those reasons, I find it my “mission” to pass along the positives of education and the tools that can be used to motivate and engage students of the 21st Century. I will end this post with a phrase I use a lot: To teach is to educate and to educate is to teach.
Comments
Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)19 Comments so far
Plurk
I love your cookie metaphor. The technology is but one yummy ingredient that can bring the cookie together. I believe that we put the curriculum and learning first, but sometimes, we, as educational technologists, can get so excited about a new technology that we forget to articulate your cookie metaphor to ourselves and to others.
I’m glad you brought up Dr. Moersch’s LoTi program. I ran across the old LoTi instrument in some research I did last year, but I didn’t know the name had changed and was now updated. Thank you for sharing!
And, yes, I am hungry now!
I think your blog looks good.
I know education is important to me.
I say this because next year if my grades are low I can’t play hockey.
Anyway I think your blog is great you should come see mine
http://www.william.edublogs.org
It may not be to much, but it is simple.
please leave a coment or to
[...] I thought his post on his pation for education was great and it got me hungry. http://dmantz7.edublogs.org/2008/09/02/my-passion-for-education/#comments [...]
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The comment’s actual post text did not contain your blog url (http://dmantz7.edublogs.org/2008/09/02/my-passion-for-education) and so is spam.
The child in that video made me think a little bit. I think that teachers do have the most important jobs in the whole world because they prepare us for the rest of our live. If the world went as it should then teachers would receive the salaries that the athletes in the world get, but there are way to many teachers for that to happen (they should still get a salary better than what they get now).
Education is very important to me. I have no sports that require good grades, but I still aspire to do the best I can. My sixth grade teacher taught me that grades were not the world, so I don’t worry about them. But I still continue to get very good grades in school. Your blog has taught me a lot and I shall continue to think about what you wrote for a very long time.
Hello,
I think that it is great that you have a strong passion for teaching. I know of a lot of teachers that are very dull and boring that act like they don’t want to be there any more than us students.
If you get around to it, you could possibly check out my blog-http://jeffa09.edublogs.org/
Thanks
-Jeff
I think that what you said was important because teaching is one of the most important jobs.
Hey,
I think it is cool that you have a passion for teaching because there are a lot of teachers who dont want to be there and there are a lot of teachers who love hanging out with us students at school.
Check out my blog.
http://ryana09.edublogs.org
Hello,
This is a very inspiring post, not many people care as much as you do. I believe it is very important to have a passion for teaching because the knowledge that you teach and your students retain are literally our future. People like you make a difference. Thank you.
http://brian09.edublogs.org/
Hello,
I truely love this post. I absolutely agree that parents should be more involved than teachers or administartors because the parents don’t know what goes on during the day while their child is at school. I like the part where you mentioned the raisin oatmeal cookie.
Hello,
I think that you have a very strong point. Not as many people feel the same way as you do, and I feel that it is great we have at least one person who feels that way, but I can name more. I would like to go into the education field when I am prepared enough for college and hopefully feel the way you feel. Thank you for making a difference.
hi i am herky and well when i read your post i was thinking:oh no another post about teachers and students, but as i kept reading i just could not stop reading it you wirte with a passion that its unexplainable i guess maybe this is yuor passion for education and i do think that education is the most important thing becasuce without knwoledge we are nothing.
thank you for witing this post it really made me think outside the box and really made me think what education really is.
hello,
I stongly believe that education is important, and I understand where you are coming from, you have a strong passion for what you believe that and I completely respect that.
[...] http://dmantz7.edublogs.org/2008/09/02/my-passion-for-education/ [...]
Hello!
This posts really had a strong meaning. If you think about it what would the world be like without education?
Would we be able to speak, talk, even walk?
Our worlds leaders wouldnt be here without an education.
Check out my blog If you have a chance!
julyaf09.edublogs.org
enjoyed the blog like all the information it gave you
This post made me think. The future is dependent on how education is given to children. If we never learned, how could we read or write or learn how to do anything? It does not matter whoever, because everybody deserves an education.
You are a fabulous writer! Great information. I’m going to recommend your post to all of my friends! I enjoyed this blog and I liked all the information it gave me. Bye!
The cookie metaphor to me is a great way to show how so many thing in education are connected. Like you said real life activities and technology help to make the cookie.
Hi my name is Ulises, i think it is really cool that you have a passion for teaching children. Just like you mentioned, there are teachers who don’t get involved with kids and I think that if you teach you should inspire kids to do something and enjoy education as well.
http://ulisesf09.edublogs.org/