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maggieames21 · 5 years ago

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Why I Want To Be a Teacher by Maggie Ames

I realized I wanted to teach at a young age. My mom and I were recently looking through my elementary school booklets. Since second grade, I could not stop talking about how much I wanted to be a teacher when I got older. I was surprised that this has continued to be my passion because usually when people say what they want to be when they grow up, it can change very quickly. I remember at that age I would love to talk to other people, and I liked to help people with their assignments. I would raise my hand at any and every question because I enjoyed sharing my thoughts and ideas with the class. Second grade is where it all started.

My interest in teaching started to development a lot more in third grade. I strongly believe it was because of the teacher I had that year. My teacher in third grade was Mr. Stallings. I do not remember every part of his class, but I remember enough to know that he is my biggest influence in wanting to become a teacher. When I was in elementary school, I noticed I was not the biggest fan of learning about science. For some reason it bored me, and I dreaded the days I had to learn about it. Mr. Stallings started to give me a different perspective about it. He would conduct these experiments where my class had to make soda pop out of dry ice. He did this as our science experiments, and I was always intrigued about it. Mr. Stallings was aware of my dislike in science, but he continued to try and help me find ways to at least enjoy it. Those experiments have always been my favorite way to learn about a subject I never really wanted to learn. This ties into me wanting to teach because I want to be that teacher that can find little ways to make students more interested in a topic that they were not excited for. I imagine seeing the growth in a student in their learning and in them as a person, and that will make it worth it for me. My motivation to be a third grade teacher has only grown stronger since my elementary years.

My siblings inspire me everyday to want to become a teacher. My oldest sister Ashley (far left) is now a high school english teacher in Portland, so I love getting to talk to her about her experiences because it makes me excited. She used to be a gym teacher for kindergarten through eighth grade. I went to spend the day with her at her job, and I instantly connected with the younger children at that school. I interacted with so many little children, and I was so happy to be there with them. My next older sister Kasey (second to left) has that goofy side to her, so she helps me realize when I need to just focus on enjoying the little things which is important when teaching a younger group. My only brother Billy (only boy) is very intelligent, and he is himself a great teacher when helping me with my school work. I know that is not the career he wants to pursue, but he is always willing to set aside what he is working on to make sure I understand what I am learning. That is the selfless characteristic that I want to take with me when I teach because that will make students feel valued. My youngest sister Dori (at the bottom) was the perfect helper as a young kid. I would always pretend that she was my student when we were younger because I would want her to pretend that I was her teacher. I loved getting to take care of her and teach her information that she had not yet knew. All of my siblings give me motivation to not only be a teacher but to be a better version of myself while teaching.

My parents are also a big reason why I have continued to want to be a teacher. My mom has the most patience I have ever seen in a person, and that is definitely something I want to have when teaching a younger age. Not everything is going to go my way, so I need to know how to be patient with my students in order to get the best possible solution. My dad knows how to be realistic in situations and knows when something small is not something to be stressing about. I can let some situations get to me too much, and I need to be able to be upset for a couple minutes but then move on to better myself and my class. He has always taught me that when I am not happy with how something is going in my life. Both of my parents have taught me to love the little moments in life, and to treat people with respect and love. These qualities will help me through a teaching career because students want to feel a connection with their teachers, so they can truly feel comfortable in that environment. These qualities that my parents have give me motivation in wanting to be a teacher because I know they will always be there to give me advice if I lose sight of the important parts of teaching.

I want to teach first through third grade when I become a teacher. I love the energy that younger children bring, and the challenges that they bring. I understand that not any grade will be the easiest, but I would rather spend time getting challenged by a younger group because I feel as if they can push me to become a better teacher and version of myself. Getting to teach all of the subjects to children intrigues me because I can see the subjects some students succeed in and the subjects that others struggle with. I do not want to see any of the students struggle, but it is apart of life. I would love to see how they can overcome it though and be apart of their journey.

I have always loved being around younger children since I was little. My mom tells me that I never put down baby dolls when I was younger, and I always wanted to play the teacher role when I played with my younger sister and cousins. I have many cousins that are at a younger age, and I look forward to seeing them every year because it makes my mood go up every time. It never gets old for me because of the excitement that it brings to me to get to be around them. It always gets me excited to become a teacher one day.

The teacher that I chose that I think represents “good teaching” is Ms. Frizzle from the show The Magic School Bus. I have watched this show since I was a little girl. She creates the perfect balance between education and entertainment for her students. That is the type of environment I want to create in my classroom one day. I believe that students have a better chance at focusing if the learning environment is entertaining for them because it will keep them interested on the topic that is being taught by myself. I chose Ms. Frizzle because of her spunky personality and the unique environment she creates. Students tend to pay more attention if the teacher has a personality that makes them want to learn. It is hard to stay on task when the teacher is monotone and talks at you the whole time. Ms. Frizzle takes them on field trips where they will learn a new lesson, but they will also learn about themselves and each other in fun ways. Realistically, I will not be taking my students on field trips every time I am teaching, but I will try my best to make the classroom an intriguing place to learn. I want the students to be excited to learn, and with some teachers I did not feel excited to learn because of how they set up their tactics. I do not want students to feel how I feel even up to this day in a classroom because I want them to have a good time learning.

One of Ms. Frizzle’s popular catchphrases is, “Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy!” This is a saying I would love to have up in my classroom for my students to be able to read. I feel as if this catchphrase will make students feel comfortable in where they are learning. It will make them feel safe to speak their mind and participate. Mistakes are normal, and you often learn more if you make mistakes at some point in your life. I want my students to know this, so they know it is acceptable to make mistakes. I hope to have many qualities that Ms. Frizzle has when it comes to teaching. She has the perfect mix between giving the children a good education and letting them enjoy themselves while doing it.

This picture is from my elementary years. My class had to fill out this form, and I kept it to refer back to it when I need a laugh. Knowing that I had this passion for teaching at a young age makes me excited. I have continued to have this passion for teaching, and I love to look back at where it all started at.

This is where it all started for me. Getting to go to such great schools and realizing what I want to do because of it is a big reason why I am where I am today. I cannot wait to influence young learner’s lives, and I cannot wait until they influence me as well. We will get to learn from one another, and how could I not be enthusiastic about that?

More like 16 weeks later! These last couple of months in this class has opened my eyes to a new side of teaching. I am happy to say that my desire for teaching is stronger after taking this class this semester. If it has changed in any way, it is because I now have a better understanding of the work that it takes to become a teacher and the different qualities that need to be brought to the classroom. Professor Walton made it that much easier to say that I wanted to be a teacher because he brought enthusiasm to every class, and that is usually contagious. He is a great example of what being an effective teacher looks like. It was a good example for me to watch as I increase my passion to become a teacher myself one day.

I would say that my desire to teach has only increased. Getting to experience what it looks like for a teacher to interact with different students at a grade level that I am interested in was a great opportunity for me as a freshmen. It is so beneficial having Faubion Elementary School right next to our campus because the opportunities are endless for Education Majors. I was always excited to go to one of the classrooms to observe the interactions, the lesson plans and the techniques of the classroom. I felt satisfied every time I left the classroom because I always left with more assurance in my interest for teaching, and I left with more knowledge of what it will look like. It makes me start to imagine how I will want my classroom to look and feel one day. We were given a chance for another observation for extra credit in my class, and I had no hesitation in saying yes to it. With or without the extra credit, these are moments I wanted to take advantage of because I had no excuse for saying I did not have any opportunities. Unfortunately, it did not work out for scheduling reasons, but life happens. Being involved in the classroom, and attending these observations only made my want to teach stronger.

I am thankful for what stood out to me as the most influential in this class. I enjoyed the fact that with almost every lesson plan, there were videos from different movies and shows that were relatable to it. This is something I am grateful for because I think it is something other teachers should incorporate into their teaching as well. Including movies and shows that are well known helps students to understand what message their teacher is trying to get across. This stood out to me because the repetition of using this technique was well known in the classroom. Using these videos to help students is something that I would like to do in my own way in the classroom because most of the time, it is the reason that a student actually understands the material. People learn better in different ways. Some grasp information better by hearing lectures by their teachers and taking notes while others enjoy watching intriguing videos or having hand on experiences. I really appreciated the fact that my professor incorporated both of these techniques because not everyone in the classroom is the same. I am not sure if this is something that everyone in the classroom noticed, but it is something that stood out to me, and it is something that I had a great appreciation for.

The content that we have covered in this class is pretty easy to agree with. The content that I agreed with the most was when we learned and wrote an essay on guiding principles. I actually enjoyed doing this essay because it made me think harder about how it portrays in my life, and how I would show it in the classroom. I was not quite sure about what guiding principles were when we were being taught about it, but as I invested more time into learning about it I started to understand and find more interest in it. The biggest part I learned about was that a guiding principle is something that will help me reach one of my end goals that I have for myself. For example, if I want a structured but easy going classroom setting for my students, I would have to find guiding principles that would help me achieve that. My favorite one to write about was laughter because it is a guiding principle that I believe can help achieve many goals either in someone’s life or in the classroom. I really enjoyed myself when learning about this topic and getting to share my interests about it in an essay.

I do have a few questions moving forward with this class. What do the classes look like in the next few semesters for teaching? Will they be similar to this class, or will there be a whole different approach? What will the experiences in the classroom be like?

I was curious as to the type of classes I will be in for Education in the next few semesters. This was my first class with Education, so I am unsure of what to expect in the upcoming classes for this major.

I did not know if the upcoming classes for this major will consist of the same material from this class, or if there was something totally new to expect. These may not be questions that can be directly answered, but they are just some thoughts I have had with the semester coming to an end.

I am also curious with what the classroom experience will be like. This semester we went to observations where we watched teachers interact and teach their students. I was not sure what it would look like in the upcoming semesters besides the tutoring part.

This is how it feels having my first semester of college basically done. I am so grateful for the chance to be in this class. It has changed my perspectives for the better, and it has gotten me very excited to teach one day. I hope everyone starts to feel this way about the major they are pursuing because it is a great feeling. I would want to say thank you to Professor Walton and my classmates for making it easier to want to come to this class and invest in my passion for teaching alongside them. I am excited and anxious for what is to come!

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zipgrowth · 6 years ago

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Kid-Tracking Sensors May Not Be the Wildest Thing About This Montessori Model

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — On a tree-lined avenue, between shops, cafes and row houses about a half mile from Harvard University, sits a uniquely high-tech school in a narrow storefront. Kids don’t spend time in front of screens, though. In fact, they never even see them. Instead, the tech is embedded into the environment almost invisibly. Cameras record students, who range in age from two to six, as they move around the room, and sensors in their matching green slippers track their exact location and the objects they touch.

This is the flagship location of Wildflower, a 21-school Montessori network that spans multiple states, including a handful in Puerto Rico. But as compelling as the technology is, it might not be strangest thing about Wildflower. A close contender might be its flexible operations model, which fully embraces what education reform advocates call “school choice,” and blurs the lines between public, private and charter schools.

Founded in 2014, Wildflower was borne out of an idea from Sep Kamvar, a professor at MIT’s Media Lab, who was looking for a school for his son as a new resident of Cambridge. Not finding anything he liked, he enlisted a handful of veteran Montessorians who, together, created the outline for the micro-school, which has locations serving kids as young as three-months old through to grade 12. Along the way they picked up a clutch of supporters, including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), the Walton Family Foundation and various venture capital firms, which have given more than $10 million in grants (CZI also provides grant support to EdSurge).

Wildflower began its life as a private school network, charging students tuition north of $15,000 a year, explains Matt Kramer, Wildflower’s CEO. However, Kamvar (who has since left the organization) provided scholarships to some students in an effort to better reflect the diversity of the Boston-area community where he lived.

“As the number of schools grew, that became no longer a workable plan,” Kramer says. He began a quest to learn how to fit the model into different governance laws, with public funding.

Like the Montessori model itself, the Wildflower network was never designed to fit into traditional notions of what a school system should look like. The network is decentralized, meaning schools share some resources but otherwise operate independently of one another. It’s neither public, private nor charter, but is open to operating in all three spheres.

In Puerto Rico, its schools are administered by the territory’s department of education, and teachers are on local district payrolls. Minnesota operates the only full charter school in the group, although Wildflower was recently approved for a charter in New York. The network’s other schools operate independently, supported through tuition. Some students use vouchers, to reduce costs to either 50 or 90 percent of standard tuition based on need. “It depends on what exists in the local area,” Kramer says. “We even have [a school] in Indiana that uses vouchers through age 12.”

As for staffing, Wildflower keeps things lean. It’s set up so that two teachers, or teacher-leaders as they’re called, can run a classroom or even a small school site without any additional administrative oversight. Teachers-leaders come from a variety of backgrounds, but must be Montessori trained and meet state teaching requirements.

Schools can run without the overhead of an office staff, which creates flexibility but can also result in headaches when the model rubs against charter-school accountability requirements that were written for schools with a much larger staff that can keep up with reams of paperwork.

Kramer says Montessori schools also struggle with showing states that students master standards, since kids focus largely on independent pursuits during the day. Wildflower students do not take traditional classroom assessments. Instead, their growth is measured in ways that reflect Montessori values like observations and portfolios. As a result, the network has designed special assessments that satisfy both states and Montessori purists (and still, public and charter schools are not exempt from standardized assessments.)

These complexities create some hurdles when it comes to navigating accountability in charter and district environments. Another challenge with the model is also one of its selling points: its intentionally small class sizes.

Each school serves about 25-50 kids with about 8 to 10 at each age level. “That is well below the necessary sample size for a test score based accountability,” Kramer says. “Trying to shoehorn in micro-schools for accountability requirements that were designed for bigger schools is tricky. It requires forward thinking [state-level] authorizers working with us to figure it out.”

A Modern Take on Montessori

Wildflower classrooms look like traditional Montessori classrooms. The environment is designed around the child. Wall art is sparse and hung low to line up with a child’s line of vision. Furniture and objects are intentionally small to promote independence. Materials are made from wood or metal, not plastic, and technology is virtually nonexistent.

Wildflower Materials, Image Credit: Wildflower Schools

Teacher-leaders heavily curate the environment that children interact with. “There’s a basement full of materials that rotate to stay interesting for kids,” says Mary Rockett, a teacher-leader at Wildflower’s flagship school.

Wild Rose, another Cambridge location and one of the larger schools in the system, is broken into two distinct classrooms: one for preschoolers up to age six and another for students as old as 11. Large windows let both classes observe each other—something teachers say is aspirational for younger kids, who are encouraged to look up to older kids who may help them learn.

Operating in storefronts, school footprints are too small to include outdoor spaces, which are encouraged in Montessori schools, so classes use local parks instead. This intentional approach is designed to reflect what kids might do with their time away from school anyway, like playing outside or going apple picking. “It feels more like some cross between homeschooling and regular institutional schooling,” Kramer says. “It feels like you don't have to step so far from reality to our school.”

A glimpse into Wildflower Montessori School and Wild Rose Montessori, Image Credit: Wildflower Schools

The schools hew closely to traditional Montessori method. Students spend large portions of their day choosing how to occupy their time, while teachers observe and sometimes suggest—or “guide” in Montessori parlance—students to try something new. Teachers often take turns interacting with students and stepping back to observe children and log their progress.

Students do receive short lessons in science, geography, language arts, music and other core subjects. Sometimes its by request, but always when teachers and students feel they’re ready. Otherwise, days are largely untethered from traditional structure. In general students learn through interacting with objects placed strategically around the classroom, designed to slowly build skills and scale in complexity.

Kids are also largely well behaved. They’re given model language by teachers and regular lessons in what’s known as grace and courtesy—learning how to politely decline help and resolve issues with classmates on their own. “The environment has been specifically designed to meet their needs so they don't need to ask for something,” Rockett says. “That eliminates a lot of conflict.”

A certain level of independence is expected from kids—even young toddlers are taught to put on and remove the sensor-carrying slippers each day. A young child might sit for long, uninterrupted periods of time pouring beads from a pitcher into a small saucer and back again, interacting with others only when she wants. After a certain period of time—hours or days—a teacher-leader might guide her to a more challenging activity around counting. “It’s about preparation of the environment,” Rockett says. “Making sure there are enough choices but not too many.”

Image credit: Wildflower Schools

There is no such thing as too much observation for teachers, who keep track of engagement, concentration and interactions using paper charts. They also keep track of whether students are moving through curricular sequences, like counting, addition and multiplication, and how quickly.

Such record keeping comes directly from methods pioneered by Maria Montessori, the early 20th century Italian educator whose work forms the basis for the model.

“Maria Montessori did all this tracking of concentration levels in the classrooms,” says Rockett. “She recognized patterns and we try and recreate those.” Children are tracked on how long they interact with an object, whether they have something out but aren’t using it or whether they’re actively engaged and concentrating. The goal is to find the periods of time when children are at their most creative or receptive to instruction. Often it’s after returning from the playground or a long activity where they have had to switch environments. But Rockett acknowledges every child is different.

It’s in this meticulous logging and data tracking that teacher-leaders see the most promise for technology. “The real challenge has not been collecting data but having time to analyze, synthesize and interpret data,” Rockett explains. “If tech can do that for me, that's really exciting.”

Cameras and Sensors and Slippers—Oh My!

From the start, finding ways to improve observation and record-keeping using tech was a key goal. Transparent Classroom, a cloud-based record-keeping system designed for Montessori classrooms, serves as a digital progress log, though teachers still have to key in data manually.

But at Wildflower, the tech goes beyond digitizing observation logs. The organization has a team of in-house engineers developing cameras and sensors tucked into classroom materials and slippers.

From raw sensors and cameras to wearable technology, Image Credit: Wildflower Schools

All Wildflower schools operate as “lab schools,” where new approaches and experimentation are encouraged. “We take a fact-based approach to improving our way of doing things,” Kramer says. While the goal is for this tech to evolve into something that works for all Wildflower schools, it’s starting small. The cameras and sensors are developed and tested by an engineering team in a lab before being brought to pilot classrooms.

For now, technology isn’t very useful for anyone—the collected data is still too raw and unwieldy to be of much help.

In theory, the sensors track where students are and which objects they’re near, while cameras can help distinguish interactions from proximity. Where sensors might be able to tell a teacher that two children spent an hour next to each other near an abacus-like counting chain, the cameras can identify how they were interacting with it.

“The data, as you can just imagine, is just enormous,” says Kramer, adding that they’re working on AI that can sift through it to make it resemble something a teacher would collect.

“We are not yet at the point where I can use a lot of the data they are gathering,” Rockett says. But she speculates that one day it could lead to better observations about students, such as letting her know objectively if she’s spending too much time with any one child. That will ultimately require useable data from both sensors and cameras.

Engineers and teachers are also working though a number of challenges related to privacy. Wildflower doesn’t want kids’ faces captured, and tries to de-identify data whenever possible. Yet it hasn’t yet decided whether to process images on site or at other off-campus locations. Kramer says Wildflower follows a set of standard protections around data privacy, and so far parents have been understanding—largely because parents are briefed about the data collection when they first tour the school.

Kramer contends that the data being collected is relatively low-risk and gathered only in areas where teachers are already collecting similar information. And because the data is so archane, its use outside the Montessori context—for the general public or even parents—is limited.

For Rockett, the appeal of the technology is that it augments the work she’s already doing, and is entirely invisible to kids. “I consider myself one of the most Montessori purists I know and I feel very strongly the day it interrupts the children and its development, that's the day we stop implementing it in our classroom,” she says. “But if it can support teachers in supporting children without ever influencing the classroom, I'm all for it.”

Kid-Tracking Sensors May Not Be the Wildest Thing About This Montessori Model published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness

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