Blog Assignment #10

Do You Teach or Do You Educate?
This video aims to set a distinction between what it means to one who teaches, or one who educates. It opens with some dreadfully haunting and spiritualistic Indian style music accompanied by depressing background images as it flashes dull and drab dictionary descriptions of what it means to teach. The music takes a turn and becomes more upbeat however when the message shifts to descriptions of what it means to be an educator. The text and background images also become more lively until the video ultimately ends after flashing some quotes from Peter Brougham, Martin Luther King, and Socrates about educating.

The main idea of this video is to get people to think about their own philosophies and how they approach the classroom. It is designed to want to make you reflect upon your habits and what kind of model you want to represent. Do you want to simply be a teacher imparting knowledge and understanding on a seemingly shallow level while doing nothing more than pushing your students to understand your portrayed information on a surface level, or do you want to be an educator who instills deeper values, promotes imagination, innovation and inspiration, fosters personal growth and development, and opens up endless opportunities for your students? The choice is up to you.


Don't Let Them Take Pencils Home
In this post, a Mr. Tom Johnson chronicles a discussion with Gertrude, his school curriculum instructional interventionist about the dangers and negative effects that occur when children take home pencils. Tom argues that he finds nothing wrong with it and in fact encourages the behavior. Gertrude protests him by detailing some points about how standardized test scores are lowered because of this behavior and why she believes it is a problem. Tom rebuttals by describing to her a program which he has developed to help his students work with their parents to learn constructively by using the pencils and explains that test scores can't truly depict the breadth of learning and supplemental education that can come about by using the pencils.

John Spencer has a very interesting writing style. His posts always have subtle humor and sarcasm while making intelligent points and shedding light on the odd ways in which some people approach problems in the educational system, albeit I personally find them somewhat dry which can cause my attention to fade. In this post particularly, he references standardized testing and how educators can become too ingrained with the outcomes of the scores. He alludes to people who are dissatisfied with the outcomes blaming the shortcomings on irrelevant notions and labeling them as problems when in all actuality they could be solutions. Regardless of the problem however, the focus should be on finding these solutions rather than arguing over procedures and making sure students are being properly educated as opposed to just worrying about test scores.