Looking Back: A Reflection on My Life as a Student

Autoethnography. A term I was not familiar with until a few short weeks ago. For class, I had to complete one, and it took one of my fellow classmates to put it into perspective for it to make any degree of sense.

A scrapbook.

Yep. This thing but school related.

More specifically, a scrapbook dedicated to my life as a student. The goal of the assignment was to reflect on past experiences a student in order to understand the type of teacher you are going to be. This is, largely, because what we experienced as a student molds our views on education and schools. I never put much thought into that, but then I realized that is really rather obvious and I just rarely considered the validity of that thought. But the reality is that I always said, “When I am teacher, I am going to do this and this because my favorite teachers did that and it worked for me.”

For the sake of this assignment, I focused primarily on my experiences as a high school student. I know many may say that college was the “best four years of my life” or speak to how influential college is for them, but for me it was high school that I credit for making me who I am today. This is not to say that I did not grow or be shaped by my experiences in college, as I did mature a great deal in those four years. But it was in high school where I started to become the person I am today.

The core idea of this autoethnography was to collect “artifacts” that shaped, reflect or relate to our experiences as individuals in democratic society, while connecting to education whenever possible. The basis of this assignment was to relate these artifacts to six domains: school, teachers/administrators, our friends/peers, the self, family and community. I had a great deal of trouble finding some, until a number of epiphanies hit me hard. High school yearbook, pictures, stories (with quotes from the classic “Billy Madison”) and my old soccer trophy (which I totally didn’t deserve) rounded out the items that guided this project.

Through this assignment, I learned a great deal about myself as a student and have a greater idea of the teacher I will become. As a student, I was told that education is important and that the more educated you are, the better potential you have to succeed. I was told that I had this potential since I was a child really, but was also told that the society I live in has hundreds of thousands opportunities before me, and it was up to me to find and take them. All I had to do was work hard, handle myself responsibly and then I can succeed. As a teacher, I aim to give my students these same life lessons and opportunities. I want them to be able to explore their options like I was able to and develop the skills and abilities to seize any opportunities that they see. That is what I feel is my job as an educator.

A brief reaction to "Teach"

The documentary, Teach, by Davis Guggenheim chronicles the lives of several teachers in a “slice of life” style direction, sampling some of the struggles they face as teachers as they briefly discuss their motivations for becoming educators, the struggles in their classroom and their hopes for the future of American education in the coming years. While not necessarily a startling film, it does present several realities about education in the United States, and subsequently dispels a few misnomers about teachers and teaching. In this regard, Teach is quite eye opening and is a highly recommend film for teachers, especially future ones, to view.

The accounts that Teach documents are similar, yet also very different. Each of the teachers experience struggles in the films whether it be because of struggling students, budget cuts, or even the extreme (but very real) case of child abuse and neglect. While these issues may have been dramatized for effect, these are all situations that educators will face. One could call it “the nature of the business.” Regardless, the difficulties presented in the film are very real and is something many people, to an extent future teachers included, do not realize that teachers face. Students can be difficult to motivate, control and connect with causing them to struggle in class. Curriculums can be limiting and inhibit individual teacher creativity. Budget cuts limit resources, teachers, and classes. And teachers are responsible to report child abuse, no matter how difficult it may be. Teach does admirably in bringing these harsh truths to light, revealing that the life of a teacher is much harder than people presume.

Fortunately, Teach does end on a high note. While the film feels grim at times and definitely makes one feel a wild torrent of emotions ranging from frustration to sympathy, Teach can also amaze and motivate. Amidst the images of adversity, they are images of hope. The documented teachers in the film are shown going out of their respective ways to tend to their students, providing the attention they feel they deserve. Regardless of the individual situation, the teachers make sacrifices for them. One stays after school to assist the student in his work. Another spends a fair amount of money on developing photos for her class. Another motivates students to speak out to the Board of Education due to impeding cuts threatening their ESL program. Another contacts the authorities because he suspects child abuse and is concerned for the boy’s well being. All these teachers go the extra mile for their students. In some cases, it is their responsibility as educators, but for the most part, there is no part of their job description to sacrifice so much for them. This film presents teaching as the noblest of professions as each of these teachers sincerely want their students to succeed, to become good people and hope that their education continues to push them forward on this path.  

One could say that Teach presents the image of the ideal teacher: selfless, mature, considerate, responsible and motivated by an intrinsic desire to do "good." They teach because they want to and the job truly feels rewarding at the end of the day, despite the difficulties they encounter. It sheds light on the plight of the teachers, but presents a blueprint on the type of teachers that the United States needs. Education has its fair share of issues, but with teachers like the those documented in Teach, there is light at the end of the tunnel. 

The Value of Education

“No one can take away your education.”

I have lost count of how many times I heard that growing up. Parents, teachers, elders. Everyone said it. Everyone you turned someone reminded you of that. From a young age, I acquired this impression that education was important, better yet, vital to success. If I earned a good enough education, I could successful like my father. In hindsight, this goal is ironic because my father became successful without a formal education. But my parents, more or less, pushed me to not think like that. No, they wanted me to be successful in school. They wanted me to take it seriously. And I listened. I listened because I was impressionable and obedient.

Truth be told, I credit a lot of personality and opinions to my parents. I took whatever they said as the highest word that any one could provide. Their opinions, at least in my more formative years, were fact. Whatever Mommy and Daddy said was “the end, be all.” Everyone else was wrong. Except maybe for the teachers, and that was only because my parents pushed me to take school seriously. School is where I was going to become intelligent, successful and a “grown up.” I always treated the teachers with respect, did my homework and pushed myself. Without school, I wasn’t going to get anywhere. Sure, perhaps I viewed all of this out of necessity, but an education was going to provide me with opportunities I wasn’t going to have otherwise. I needed school.

Whether I realized or not, this crafted a very high opinion education for me that I carry to this day. It is likely the reason I chose to pursue my Master’s Degree right out of college. It is probably the reason I want to be teacher. Education has become the vehicle of social mobility in the United States, and teachers are the engineers of this vehicle. Education, consequently, is something of a very high value to me and something I firmly believe that people should have access to, commit his or herself to and become successful through. Through education, people acquire the knowledge and skills that open a number of opportunities for them. This is a given, naturally, but education yields more money and a more productive society. Around the world, education is readily available and subsequently leads to lower crime rates and lower Gini Index, which means wealth inequality will decrease due to better job opportunities.

But this is all a given. We know education offers these things. We know education provides these opportunities, and is a reason why many of us value it. It’s what I used to value it. But then I realized something that gives me such a high opinion on schools and teachers. It is the reason why I wish our education system could improve. It is the reason I will try my best to improve education in my career as an educator. Education makes better people. A good school with great teachers provides an excellent education makes better people. We become smarter, wiser and more cultured. We acquire knowledge and skills that can develop new ones. Interests are stimulated that have the potential to be pursued. The world becomes less of a mystery. Ignorance is subsided. Minds are opened and ideally a motivation to become a better person is instilled in the student. Education was one seen as a means to create citizens than exist and succeed in a democracy, and vote and rule themselves responsibly through the means of an election. This much is still true, but now it has become so much more. Education is now the means in which can succeed in a society. We need great schools to do this. We need great teachers to make it happen.

Democracy, Schooling and the Role of Teachers

Signing up for a class entitled “Teaching, Democracy and Schooling,” I will be whole-heartedly honest and admit I did not have much of an idea of what to expect in the course. I did have a handful of expectations, of course, being that I enrolled in the course as the first of many steps in my education to become an educator in the United States. With that mind, my expectations for the course could perhaps be best summarized as this: the class would be teach and discuss the basics of being a teacher in the United States and understanding what it meant to be a teacher in this country. I entered the classroom with these concepts in mind and was meant with a good degree of excitement to realize the class would greatly expand upon the very basic expectations I had previously established.

 To say my expectations were accurate, however, would be something of a lie. From the onset, the course is not a methods course, and I suppose my expectations would have defined it as such. The structure of the course is far more exploratory and thought provoking, raising questions about the meaning of education in the United States, how it dies to the democratic concepts that founded the nation and the place teachers hold in society. This raises many questions; some obvious and some not so obvious about the state of education in the United States. With these questions come complex issues such as politics and curriculum, the No Child Left Behind or Student Success Act, inclusion and immigration and standardized testing and funding. The list goes on, becoming more and more complex as issues are dissected.

While addressing these issues is something I firmly hope to accomplish (and sure I will as the course progresses), it is the larger questions that I find more intriguing. What does it mean to be a teacher, especially one in a democratic society? More specifically what does it mean to be a teacher in the United States? As teachers, what are we responsible for? What should be our goal be, regardless of subject matter, as an educator in modern society? There is no easy answer to any of these questions. But it is these larger (almost metaphorical) issues that I seek to address.

In a single class activity, these larger issues are already beginning to be considered. In particular, the idea of being a teacher in the United States is a discussion piece that I expect to be a recurring issue. Education in the United States is something of a controversial issue due to the lack of a clear definition of its role in US society. The Declaration of Independence does not define a right for citizens to receive an education, being more of a political piece to establish independence from Great Britain. Despite being a radical piece, outlining the most basic rights of US citizens, it does not establish a right to education. Its companion document in the Constitution does not address this glaring issue either, however education became synonymous with American democracy. It has evolved into the “great equalizer” in American society; progressively growing into the large institution it is today.

Education, despite not being explicitly addressed in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, is arguably one of the most democratic institutions in the United States, however it took some time before the notion of “public education” came to exist. As Jaroslav Pelikan writes in his selection “General Introduction: The Public Schools as an Institution of American Constitutional Democracy” from the larger work The Public Schools: “the ideal of the “public school” system of the United States…has held that in a democratic society…the best way to raise up a leadership cadre in each generational cohort is to begin with the shared experience and the shared curriculum of the institution that we used to call “the common school” (XVII). The shared experience and curriculum, as revealed in the introduction to The Public Schools written by Susan Fuhrman and Marvin Lazerson, has constantly evolved due to the connection between public school and citizenship (XXIV). If education is connected to citizenship, it appears that the role of teachers has been defined in more a subtle manner by the passing of time, educational theory and politics rather than an explicit document. It is the responsibility of teachers to teach students how to be responsible, capable citizens in a democratic society who can exercise their civil and political rights, such as voting, with confidence. On a literal level, it does not sound too glorious, however, it is brimming with opportunity. It gives teachers the freedom to open the mind of students and explore possibilities, with the understanding that it accomplishes the ultimate role: to truly educate students in the grand design of the “great equalizer.”