The teacher is the gatekeeper....reflection 10

When you hear the term “gatekeeper” what is it that you think of? Looking at the words individually you see the word gate that can be transferred to passage, path, etcetera. When you see the word keeper one may think of authority of a thing or guardian. So then looking at these words together you may see guardian of the passage. At least that’s what I see. As a whole I think of a gatekeeper as someone who holds the key to a passage where you are traveling. When Philip Jackson coined the phrase “the teacher is the gatekeeper” not only was he referring to one teacher in one classroom of thirty-five students but the phrase also has a new or alternate, rather, meaning. Teachers as a whole are gatekeepers to students’ education. Whether the student decides to travel down the path to their success is up to them. Teachers are merely there to hand them the key to the front door. The phrase was coined because Jackson, along with many others, understands that gate keeping is one of the tasks that keep the teachers busiest. In this case, teachers are the ones who “determine who will talk, when, and for how long, as well as the basic direction of the communication” (175). Teachers are the ones who initiate the pedagogical cycle more often than the students. Yet they aren’t the ones who start the learning process. A student with a drive to succeed requires only encouragement from the gatekeepers. Every level of the learning institution has a different end to the path which is traveled. In high school the gatekeepers help the students to achieve their diploma as professors assist their students to receive a degree. On the topic of gate keeping, I’m almost positive that you’ve experienced a time where you thought you were having a hard time with a certain class or teacher in particular. Now that I think of it, you can compare teachers as gatekeepers to bouncers for a party. Don’t act shy; you know exactly what I’m talking about. You know the night that you were trying to use your best friend’s ID to get into the party and you were turned down. I’m sure your tried again and again and then finally succeeded; even if you had to wait until you were legal. I think that teachers being gatekeepers to education is very similar to that type of situation. Sometimes there are teachers that we often found difficult and would testify to any judge that the teacher didn’t like us and honestly I can say that I’ve felt that way before. Yet now, being in a course where I learn the values of teaching and of multicultural education, I see that there was never a teacher that provided loads of homework because they didn’t like me. They did this to prepare me for my scholastic career. Of course I’m not saying that I didn’t learn, because I did. I’ve learned that I too, am going to be that teacher where you dread entering the class for the beginning of the school year or semester, but you are going to love by the end of the term. Thanks for listening.


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