The key component in my personal vision for 21st century schools is student centered schooling. This includes classroom being structured around kids and even school schools being structured around kids. I think that when we decide on what the curriculum is going to be we are going to need to start thinking about not only what the students need but also what they want. They need to be at the center when we design our schools. Is a strict bell schedule best for most students? Do students learn best in rows? What is the ideal number of students in a classroom for learning? I know that to do these things requires money and lots of it but maybe that needs to be part of our vision for schools. Maybe my vision for school is that they are amazing buildings or place students are dying to go to each day.
The big thing I am doing this semester to move towards my vision is really working on knowing my students. I started this by passing out a survey. I have been using these as a starting point to asking my students questions about their lives. When I start teaching full time my goal is to incorporate the things I have learned in to my teaching. I hope to find a way to do an interest-based unit. Following what the students want to learn and building it around a topic I have to cover in either geometry or math analysis. I don’t know if this will work. I think in order to do this I need to find a unit that we are already teaching and write a unit ahead of time and run it by my master teachers. I think this may be too lofty of a goal for my student teaching and instead work on doing a couple lessons with in a unit.
My goals for my first two years vary. I would like to write, what I’m going call, a student centered unit. I am going to try this during my first couple years. I’d like to find a more experienced teacher to work with and have this be more of a lesson study. As a first year teacher I want to focus on reflection so this is one way to do that. I will write a unit (hopefully with another teacher) and then compare the way my students do in that unit to the way that other students have either done in the past or in other classrooms. I’d like to make this a strong enough unit to teacher two years that way I could try it twice and fix things that didn’t work. I’m afraid of two things. One is that I will be at a school like I was last semester where there is no support or I will be at a school like I am now where everything is all laid out and there is no variation.
My overall career goal is to look at why we teach math the way we do. Why are we doing algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2, pre-calculus? Is there some advantage to this? What is the best way for students to learn? I want to look at texts maybe newer and more current ones and find out if other schools are doing it differently and having more success. I would like to do this either as my master’s thesis or after I get my master. I would like to perform research in my school experimenting with new curricula. My hope is to change from the inside out instead of just blindly following what is dictated. My main goal though is to keep all the change that I am doing focused on the students.
I believe my goals fall under the idea of creating new curricular path, powerful teaching and comprehensive support for all students. To be the kind of educator I want to be I need to look at the students and be able to see what is engaging and what is not. I think that is the key way I will support all students. Also, by doing research and trying new things I will be a powerful teacher. Lastly my whole goal focuses around the idea of new curricular paths.
