Welcome to My World

I am no longer "Alicia." I am now Ms. Hall. Let me introduce myself as such.

I am learning what it means to be a teacher. The experiences this semester aren't completely new; I was in a classroom a few months ago as an observer. This time, however, I am actually a part of the classroom. The students call me "Ms. Hall" instead of "Ms. Alicia," and already I can tell a difference in the way they respect me. They see me as an authority figure rather than a friend, a teacher rather than a student.

I'm seeing so much at the school I'm at right now. It's a school that caters to low-income students, a majority African American. Students there are already having sex, they're drinking, they're in gangs. And they're no older than fifteen. The good thing about this is that school is offering them a chance to not be like their neighbors and families. One little girl, who just turned 14 two weeks ago, has goals written on her binder: "This year, I won't have sex, I won't drink, I will hang out with the right people..."

It's scary that these kids know more about life than I do, definitely more than I did at their age. They can articulate the feelings and thoughts of others better than any college student I've met so far. In their every day lives, they are required to read people and survive; it's no wonder their character analyses are so articulate.

This journal will hopefully be a place where I can do a bit of metacognition about what I'm learning and experiencing. I wish I would have started it sooner.

For now, I'll just leave with a thought I wrote down at the end of my Educational Psychology class today.

There is so much that we can learn from our students, and one of the main reasons for this is that they are not afraid to be creative-- they are not afraid to be wrong.

I keep thinking about two students at my practicum and how they do nothing in class but doodle. What would happen if we allowed that? What if we gave them a place where they were allowed to draw and be creative? I think not only would it expand their creativity, but it would give them the motivation to do better in their other classes.

Instead of giving kids an outlet, we suppress them with medication and over-structure. It's really sad.