Blog Post #10

Do You Teach or Do You Educate?

This week I watched a video called Do You Teach or Do You Educate? It was a very insightful video. The video described a teacher as someone who basically shows or explains information and basically gives facts. However, an educator is a mentor and an adviser. Someone who helps students in every way they possibly can. This video really opened my mind to the differences of being a teacher and being an educator. The comparison between the two is definitely debatable.

As a future educator, I want to do more than just teach my students. I want my students to learn their materials, but also I want to have an influence on their lives. I want my students to feel like that what I teach them in my class they will keep with them the rest of their lives. I plan on doing this by getting students involved into our lessons. Also, I plan on building a healthy student-teacher relationship with students so they will feel comfortable to come to me as an educator whenever help is needed.

Don't Let Them Take Pencils Home

This post is entitled Don't Let Them Take Pencils Home by Tom Spencer. It is a very humorous post reenacting a (possibly fictional)conversation between Mr. Spencer and the academic specialist at his school. The specialist barges into Mr. Spencer's office and urges him to stop allowing his students to take home pencils. He says that research shows that students or more likely to score lower test scores and are more like to play games like hangman than to actually use them to be beneficial to their education. Mr. Spencer argues that although he understands the research, he does not particularly agree with it. Mr. Spencer feels that students often only use the pencils as entertainment tools because they come from a place where the mentality is that the primary use for the pencils is entertainment. He argues that the pencils can be used for learning if given the chance and used correctly. He doesn't hold his students accountable for wanting to use the pencils solely for entertainment. That is why he tries to find projects to keep the students interested. He also said that students playing games and going on the pen pal networks may not be a bad idea because there could be learning happening that they don't know about about. After reading this post, I could not help but wonder if maybe the pencils could be a metaphor for technological tools like a laptop or an iPad. It seems like the specialist could have been arguing that maybe students should not be able to take these things home because they can not be monitored and would more than likely use them for something they are not suppose to. Also, students could play games on them instead of actually doing assignments and other things. Lastly, pen pal networks could be another way of saying social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Mr. Spencer could be arguing that technology should be given a chance and could be very beneficial. If students are given projects that keep them interested and focused, then they will not stray off into doing other things like play games. Even if they do play games or get on social networking sites, it does not mean learning is not taking place.