Being a “good” teacher is something I believe every educator
wishes to be acknowledged as. However, I don’t know if “good” is the
appropriate adjective to use to describe teachers and what they want to be
remembered as. Chapter one opens with a little bit about the current state of
classrooms nowadays and how the diversity amongst students has changed
drastically from years past. Being a para-professional at a school for special
needs, it is interesting to see the change of dynamic in classroom diversity.
Even through my own years of education I have always been in pretty diverse
classrooms. However, I recall looking through old yearbooks of my grandparents’
and noticing that every single person was white. Fast-forward thirty years
later I look at my mom’s yearbook and notice a similar trend, only now there
were several Hispanics in some of the pictures (My family lived in the same
area most of their lives, so the high schools were all in the same
neighborhood.) Fast-forward another ten years to when my uncle was in high
school, and I saw that about half of the students were Hispanic. It’s evident
to see the trend and the diversity as it increases, but with the student
diversity and stagnant change of educators, teachers must be aware of who they
are teaching. Differentiated instruction is one way of going above and beyond accommodating
these learner differences to seeing diversity as an array of strengths on which
to build (Wilfolk 10).
Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development breaks down an
individual’s learning skills by age and maturation. Preoperational stage
develops language and begins to use symbols to represent objects. Has
difficulty with past and future—thinks in present. Can think through operations
logically in one direction. Has difficulties understanding the point of view of
others (Woolfolk 45). I work as a paraprofessional at a school for special
needs and I specifically work with behavior students in middle school. It is
interesting to see that my students seem to be a stage behind Piaget’s
development. The students I work with are all around the age of 12 and all use
some type of symbol to represent different objects. I feel it is important to understand
these stages might not always meet age expectations especially in special
education. My current 1:1 student has several behavioral issues and it is
crucial to help him through tough situations that he needs a clear expectation
to follow. We see small progression and a decrease in behaviors, however his
inability to understand others’ viewpoints remains and will most likely enable
a behavior.
Talking about aggression is always in interesting topic
because frankly we all have a form of it. As an adult it is easy to get pissed
off when someone cuts you off driving because you know they pissed you off, you
can match the action with the reaction. As a kid, aggression can come in
different ways and a child may not know how to interpret it because they simply
do not know any better. I’m not talking about getting mad at your brother
because he ate the last ice cream bar out of the icebox but more so, the unknown
they are introduced to everyday through models in their life. One very real
source of aggressive models is found in almost every home in America—television
(Wilfolk 106). When I was younger, I watched a lot of gangster films with my
grandpa that showed a lot of violence. I remember seeing this in the movies and
was always aware that it was wrong. As I got older, video games became
increasingly more violent yet I still knew that games like Grand Theft Auto
were fake albeit fun. It is crazy to think that most shooting games now have
free mode which essentially allows you to go on a shooting spree. I am guilty
of doing this, as most boys find this awesome. Where do we draw the line,
especially with the increase of school shootings across the country? We are all
appalled when we hear about mass shootings, but turn a blind eye to the smut
the media desperately pushes on our kids. Ratings don’t mean anything when
discussed with kids, because to them it is just a rule. We have to address the
purpose of the things these children are surrounded by.
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