Ah- Hah moments

My first Ah-Hah moment while reading chapter two of "We got this", was when it says that we are most powerful when we labor to understand young people and when we work alongside them. We want our classrooms to have healthy relationships with good cooperation, we do not want them to be colonizations. This paragraph of the book was very eye opening because it proves that you can not completely control kids but if you encourage and support them then they will respect you and learn to respect their peers which will create a good sense of community in the classroom. Trying to be a dictator over students will not have a good effect. They will lash out and not want to be there. My goal is to make children want to be in a classroom. I can't make them want to learn but I can show them how great it is and make it fun for them.

My second Ah-Hah moment in the book was when it says "Systems don't change because we identify them, they change because we disrupt them. These paragraphs are talking about the pay gap between genders and how boys have a substantial amount of more opportunities in a lot of areas of education. If we simply point out this issue it isn't going to stop. There will always be oppression but once we take a stand, start questioning, and completely changing how we do things and making sure that others change the way they are doing things, the oppressions begins to go away. Every student deserves a fair chance no matter their race or gender. Everyone should have the same opportunities to prove themselves and see how far they can go in their life with the right resources.

My third Ah-Hah moment was that as teachers or future teachers, we need to identify why change needs to happen. If we don't realize there is a problem then we won't find a solution. As time goes on, everything changes. Sometimes growth stops or slows and we need to figure out why and think of a new approach. I will always be looking for improvements to make in my classroom. I will look for anything I could do to make my students benefit the most. There will never be a singe best answer or solution but that is why we have trial and error. If something isn't working, change it. If something is working, make sure it keeps working.

In class I did my podcast challenge and a majority of it was about race and opportunities for different students. These chapters had a lot to do with those topic. There is still problems with the policies that are in place within the education system. The discrimination of certain children should not be happening and the book and what we have been learning in class have both covered that. Another thing that links the book and what we are learning is how to make children feel welcome. We learning a lot about how family and school should link together and ways to make children feel safer and school and comfortable enough to reach out and talk to someone. There are so many kids who do not have a stable home life so school might be their only safe space. In the book is talks about a lot of ways to address situations and how to fix problems.

Here are my questions:

How will I make my classroom a welcoming place for every student and how will I make the feel comforable enough to talk to me about anything?

In what ways could I approach a child that doesn't have a stable home life and make sure that they are okay and get them the correct help they need to succeed?

How will I look out for discrimination and make sure I fix the problem before it gets out of hand?

How can I assure that every student gets treated equally and gets equal opportunities and how will I address the situation if that is not happening? What would be my solution instead of just identifying the problem?