Reflection 3

Different strokes for different folks; Or in this case, different approaches for different folks. Everyone has memories of their elementary school education. Memories that consist of early childhood games like playing doctor and cashier at the grocery store using rocks as the form of currency. Those childhood memories are also inclusive of the fun ways you learned important things. As an adult, you can now look back onto those days and remember how you were taught those things and whether or not you actually learned from it. Then, when you finally decide that your true calling is to become a teacher and you are a student enrolled in your first of many education classes and you’re instructed by your professor to reflect on you elementary education with newfound insight, you proceed to analyze your early childhood education with the bits and pieces that you truly remember. Ms. Carroll, though a first name isn’t remembered, the last name definitely holds a place in my mind. Her unique way of teaching and including each of her very diverse students into her lesson plans was something like a walk to remember. She incorporated the beliefs and traditions of different cultures into the classroom environment and never shunned these beings. In her class, students learned to respect the beliefs of others, no matter how much they seemed out of the ordinary for us. Also students learned the meaning behind different cultural holidays like, Kwanzaa in the African American community, Hanukkah in the Jewish community; and also the importance of heroes in other cultures like what Marcus Garvey meant to Jamaica, or what Nelson Mandela meant to South Africa, and even what Gandhi meant to India. It is now clear that her way of teaching would be considered the contributions approach and looking back on those days I wouldn’t change it for the world. If I could go back to elementary school, I wouldn’t ask that she change her method of teaching in the least. Secondary school education was impacted by classes that became less diversified in culture and began to be repetitive. At that point, I began experiencing teachers who taught from the transformation approach as well as the contributions approach and even the additive approach. Overall, the different approaches that my different instructors used combined lead to me really deciding that I want to become a teacher; to be able to impact the lives of people and in doing so maybe they’ll in turn, decide to become teachers.