Who Are You?

I am passionate about three things (well, maybe a couple more than that): My daughter, the Knicks and trying to send good teachers out into the world. While the first two things are mine alone, you play in active role in that last one.

In your syllabus, I talk a bit about my own vision of helping you develop your attitudes and shape your beliefs about who you want to be in a classroom. I am serious about that; my job as an administrator is fundamentally dependant on the teachers who are in my charge, and the better they are, the better I can be. That's how it will be for your students one day--their success will, at least in part, be linked with your own.

To that end, this week I would like you to think about the task you have chosen to undertake as your profession: teaching. As a future educator, you have the capacity to change the world. Sounds hokey, but it's true. I take that seriously, and I hope you do too.

So, here's how I want you to start...

Please click on the link below and peruse the various quotes I have provided on teaching and education. (If you don't like any of mine, please explore on your own and come up with one you like better). After you've read and ruminated on all of them, I would like you to choose one that encapsulates your vision, notion, idea, and/or core belief of what it means, what it IS to be a teacher.

I would like you to approach this the same way you would if you were writing any good paper; start with a thesis (the quote you choose), and develop it with your own understanding of what it means. Provide support for your thesis with relevant details that will demonstrate your vision, illustrate your ideals and, in the very near future, create your "teacher persona."


http://www.box.net/shared/m16uilzoxq

*Note: Please DO NOT post your philosophy statements here. Rather, I'd like you to print a hard copy (single-spaced) and hand it in to me in class on 12/7/09.

The Perils of Praise

For the past ten years, psychologist Carol Dweck and her team of researchers at Columbia university studied the effects of praise on students. Her findings are rather interesting. As you know, I somehow left all the hard copies of this week's reading behind. Anyway, here it is. Read this week's reading and, as always, offer your insights on the implications of this for yourself as a future educator. Feel free, as always, to use a personal anecdote to illustrate/exemplify your argument. We certainly all have experience with praise--or the absence of it...