Tag Archives: education
What are your Special Needs?
“All the other children at my school are stupid. Except I’m not meant to call them stupid, even though this is what they are. I’m meant to say that they have learning difficulties or that they have special needs. But this is stupid because everyone has learning difficulties because learning to speak French or understanding [...]
Mind your own mind.
At the beginning of my first year of teaching, I hung a sign on the wall of my bilingual third-grade classroom that said, “En este salón, todos son maestros y todos son estudiantes.” In this room, everyone is a teacher and everyone is a student. Without realizing it, I was voicing the philosophy behind the [...]
star students need a helping hand.
For the past twenty years, the school where I work has awarded scholarships to high school students from area public schools. These kids apply and are selected because of their high academic achievements, despite a dismal education system in Guatemala. Each year, around two hundred students submit applications and essays. Fifty are interviewed. Twenty five [...]
Why I Teach
Teaching is, hands down, the hardest job I’ve ever had (and I’ve had a lot). Yet the rewards of working with children every day, seeing them grow and grasp new ideas, far outweigh the stress. Less than a year after quitting my advertising career and completing a whirlwind teacher certification program, I stood before twenty-two [...]
