On Education

I earned my degree in Secondary English Teaching.  I have not yet been in a classroom actually teaching since I gained the degree.

I was not ready for the demands of being in a class.  I either didn’t have the guts, or I was being really wise.  I took a few years skirting the education field and now I have an opportunity to teach in a manner that I believe I can be successful.

This time I am ready.  I’ve really gotten my head around the issues I saw in myself before and now I am rearing to go.

I want to be an effective teacher.  I could not go into the field until I knew I would be effective.  I needed those years to mature, to explore and to really get a hold of who I wanted to be.  Now I have a pretty good idea of what I want to be.  I want to make a difference.  I want to be a professional that helps others help themselves.

When I was student teaching I had an incredible cooperating teacher who was quite honestly one of the most gifted and hard working mentors one could ever have.  They were preofessional yet personable, demanding yet understanding, they looked at rules as guidlines yet held their classroom in a loving, secure grip.  I learned so much from those three months from them.  I learned that I do have a connection with others and I can be effective.  I also leaned that too much of a connection was troublesome at the very least.

The students taught me more about myself then I taught them, but it gave me a clear purpose and an idea for what I needed to do.  I needed to grow up.

Education is one of the better ways to grow as a person.  It allows you to see things in different ways and judge with evidence not prejudice.  Education is never wasted even if you do not use your degree in the exact manner in which you first planned to do.  The fact is with a dgree no matter what discipline your options are increased.  You not only have more earning potential, but you also are taught how to think. 

Thinking critically is the most important skill we can pass on to the other members of our society.  An intelligent, informed society is the only way to ensure that our democracy survives the  fall into apathy that plagues our system. 

Critical thinking allows you to look at evidence, piece together differeing opinions, churn them, mix them, lick the spoon and put it back into the oven for thirty more minutes.  It is the skill that allows opinions and thoughts to be based on other criteria than knee jerks and advertisirial absorbtion. 

Thinking is what the human mind wants to do.  It is a skill and a tool that our ancestors had to harness to survive and thrive.  We do them honor by imitating them.  We need to keep that spirit alive and well.  That is why education is such an important field and one that I did not want to enter until I was ready.