From Teaching Philosophy...
In his book,
To Know As We Are Known,
Parker J. Palmer quotes Thomas Merton, who says, “The purpose of
education is to show a person how to define himself authentically and
spontaneously in relation to his world—not to impose a prefabricated
definition of the world, still less an arbitrary definition of the
individual himself” (12). In
other words, the main goals in education is to enable the individual to
discover who
he or she is, discover what the world is, and discover his or her place
within the world. I completely agree with Merton’s statement; the reason
we have public education is so that future generations may grow into
functioning members of society and humanity will continue to grow and
prosper. By establishing a relationship between the self and society,
we, as teachers, are equipping the individual with a strong sense of
self, which will enable them to lead lives of purpose and significance.
Incorporating Discover Into Lessons...
I believe that the goal of education is to help students discover themselves, the world, and their place within the world. In the Poetry unit I taught in October at Benjamin Franklin Middle School, I encouraged students to use poetry as a way to express themselves. As a class, we studied a variety of poetic genres, specifically haiku, cinquain, diamante and quatrain. Every student wrote at least one poem within that genre, and I allowed them to choose their own topics. I encouraged the students to choose topics that they were interested in personally, whether it was a particular sport, hobby or person that made a difference in their life. This forced the students to examine their lives, what makes them who they are, and describe it on paper. During the lesson on diamante, we also examined the use of voice and tone in poetry. I placed two diamante poems on the overhead; each had the same topic, but a decidedly different voice and tone. We discussed as a class the importance of word choice in writing poetry, and how different words convey different meanings.
Lessons that Relate to Discover:
-
Haiku (Lesson 1) Materials: Brainstorming Handout
-
Cinquain (Lesson 4) Materials: Cinquain Brainstorming Handout
-
Diamante (lesson 6) Materials: Sample Diamantes
-
Diamante (Lesson 7) Materials: Diamante Brainstorming Handout
-
Quatrain (Lesson 10) Materials: Guidelines for writing a quatrain for test
Other Lessons Not in Unit:
In the Tech School Essay Unit, students were required to develop a personal essay describing why they want to attend Buck's County Technical High School, or why they do not want to attend Buck's County Technical High School. This was a 3 paragraph essay that required the students to develop a topic sentence, use transitional words, include sentence variety and carefully proofread to avoid spelling errors. If the student was applying to B.C.T.H.S., he or she needed to include what fields he or she was interested in in the body of the essay. This required the students to formulate goals for the future, and discover what areas might interest them.