My New
Classroom
By Paul
Booth
I was brought
up in the world where the teacher told me what I needed to know, and if I did
not understand what was taught in class I look it up in the textbook. Where I
saw the confines of the school building as the place where learning happens. Now I am finishing my formal education,
finishing my last class, last textbook, the last time a teacher is going to
assign a paper for me to write. This conclusion
does come with some fear.
I have a real fear that I will go back into my classroom and close the door, stop learning and plateau having been discharged from the world that I was brought up in. I fear without that structure I’ll stop reading journals, looking for answers, and stop working at my craft. I know this conclusion all too well. Fortunately for me I do not live in the world that I grew up in, this program has showed me that.
I have learned in this program is that even if I find the door to my classroom to be closed that it is not the only way to access my future learning. Through this program I found that life as a student is not only found in the traditional classroom. My classmates do not have to sit next to me; my teachers do not have to tell me what to read and what to write and the information that I gather does not have to come from a textbook.
My future group of teachers, the people that I learn from, will be the people’s blogs or twitter account that I follow on the web. I will learn by websites and videos that students and coworkers suggest to me. More than ever in the two years that I have been in this program I have found that most all of my question, my new ideas and the explanation that I was looking for can be found through my laptop.
My community of students who’s questions and responses that I have learned from in the past, who have helped me through challenging problems and guided me to the solutions will be found on the web too. They will be the people who responded to the blog post and comment to my twitter account.
I will still read articles that will get me to think about how and what I am teaching but they will not be handed down to me from someone else. They will be chosen by me, they will be chosen because they will the fix that I am looking for in my classroom. They will be chosen because I want to read it, and learn about.
I know that I am not done being a learner because I am going to lose my MSU email account again and will stop, for the second and last time, being A21417931 (my student number first given to me in 1993). I know now and I have started to teach my own students is that education is not only found in the classroom.
I have a real fear that I will go back into my classroom and close the door, stop learning and plateau having been discharged from the world that I was brought up in. I fear without that structure I’ll stop reading journals, looking for answers, and stop working at my craft. I know this conclusion all too well. Fortunately for me I do not live in the world that I grew up in, this program has showed me that.
I have learned in this program is that even if I find the door to my classroom to be closed that it is not the only way to access my future learning. Through this program I found that life as a student is not only found in the traditional classroom. My classmates do not have to sit next to me; my teachers do not have to tell me what to read and what to write and the information that I gather does not have to come from a textbook.
My future group of teachers, the people that I learn from, will be the people’s blogs or twitter account that I follow on the web. I will learn by websites and videos that students and coworkers suggest to me. More than ever in the two years that I have been in this program I have found that most all of my question, my new ideas and the explanation that I was looking for can be found through my laptop.
My community of students who’s questions and responses that I have learned from in the past, who have helped me through challenging problems and guided me to the solutions will be found on the web too. They will be the people who responded to the blog post and comment to my twitter account.
I will still read articles that will get me to think about how and what I am teaching but they will not be handed down to me from someone else. They will be chosen by me, they will be chosen because they will the fix that I am looking for in my classroom. They will be chosen because I want to read it, and learn about.
I know that I am not done being a learner because I am going to lose my MSU email account again and will stop, for the second and last time, being A21417931 (my student number first given to me in 1993). I know now and I have started to teach my own students is that education is not only found in the classroom.