Blog Post 10

Do You Teach, or Do You Educate?

I really enjoyed watching this video; it really made me think about why I really chose to be an education major. There is nothing that I love more in this world than having the opportunity to help people. God has blessed me tremendously, and has given me a strong passion to help people. I have had so many opportunities over the past years to travel around whether it is across the world or across the United States and do what I love and that is to minister to people. I feel that teaching is the perfect place for my passion.
As a teacher, I do not just want to be an enforcer of rules, or a great explainer of math, but I want to be someone who students look up to, feel comfortable to share with, and someone who inspires them to learn. I want to be a teacher that students will look back on and think, “I really learned a lot from her.” I do not just want to teach my students facts; I want to teach them to love to learn and to never stop. I enjoyed the video very much because it made me think about why I really want to teach.

Tom Johnson’s Don’t Let Them Take the Pencils Home!

After reading this blog, at first, I was very confused. But, after exploring the blog a little bit, I read that it is actually set in 1897 and is a story following a man named Tom Johnson. Tom wants to get every student to own a pencil, but he is having a hard time doing so. Even though this story is set in 1897, it deals with problems that today’s schools face. In this post, Tom Johnson is dealing with a woman named Gertrude who has a problem with pencils being taken home because she thinks that the students are using them as entertainment. Gertrude’s main point is that children who take home pencils usually score lower on standard tests. But, she isn’t seeing Tom’s point. Tom is making the argument that pencils can be used to help students learn and that entertainment isn’t really a bad thing. Students can use the pencils to play hangman, or they can use them to write or do educational things. Tom says that he is keeping students interested by giving them the pencils and that the pencils will help in the long run. I think that this is a very creative idea by author and teacher John T. Spencer. He addresses present day problems while including the past. I really enjoyed this blog.