A Bit of Background, Part 1

When I was little, I never knew how to answer the "CW, when you grow up, what do you want to be?" question. My answer was rarely ever the same, and my dreams were constantly evolving. When I was around the age of five, my answer was "nurse, doctor or teacher". By the age of ten, my answer was "lawyer, fashion designer or teacher". By the time I hit age fifteen,  my answer was "researcher, journalist or teacher....or maybe all three if I can swing it".

But as making a university choice became an ever-present reality, I was forced to narrow down just what I thought I might want to do with my life. The looming decision forced me to turn to introspection. Just what kind of work could I see myself doing and actually enjoying? What kind of degree would allow me to pursue a passion in my life? Heck, what exactly were my passions in life? And so I started thinking about what I had spent almost eighteen years of investing my life in; what came immediately to mind was my love for reading, tutoring, working with kids, and volunteering. How did I incorporate all of this into a potential career?

To me, teaching jumped out as the immediate natural conclusion. Better yet, teaching is an immediate way to affect change. Educators deal with the future of our nation on a daily basis, as the children and young adults that we work with are the citizens and leaders that will be responsible for combating the political, economic and social conditions that recent generations have created. Educators get to foster creativity, passion and the critical thinking skills necessary to analyze and create solutions for the future. Educators also get to witness daily triumphs of their students; these are the tangible moments that make the job worthwhile.

And yet there are many schools in which those daily triumphs are a rare occurrence for students and teachers alike. There are schools where students have been written off, unable to be helped by the system that is considered by many to be the cornerstone upon which our nation is built; and unfortunately, I agree. There are many students who are being failed by the current state of American education. But we're also at a pivotal moment in education; there is enormous potential for change. And it is within this constantly evolving environment that I want to make my career.

Educators, as a profession, are moving towards evidenced based teaching practices. This is a huge step in the right direction, in my opinion, because if you look at other established professional fields they conduct themselves based on practices that they KNOW will work. And as new literature and research becomes available, they modify their practices accordingly. It has taken the educational world a long time to reach this way of thinking, but I believe that it is truly for the better and that makes me excited about one of the life paths I plan on pursuing.

Ultimately, I plan to use this blog to discuss many of these practices and the research and literature behind them. I want to generate discussion because I know that for each study that claims there is positive evidence for employing certain practices, positive evidence of certain correlations etc. there is always a counterpoint. And whether you want to teach or not, these issues are relevant to every individual. One of the greatest things about American education is that it is compulsory and free; however, the system cannot be utilized to its fullest potential unless anyone who has benefited from (or maybe even more importantly, has been done a disservice by American public education) participates in the discourse.

I don't expect you to agree, but I hope that you do have an opinion.