Art of Reflective Teaching (ART) - Week 1: Education Tree

3.Create your lineage/genealogy education tree. * You will find as the weeks progress you will add to this tree, enriching it with memories and new perspectives. Post (this initial version) to your blog and reflect on the following questions:

• What surprised you about your educational history?
• What patterns do you notice emerging? 

I first did an inventory of my education, thinking specifically of teachers and events that propelled me. I find I have a very optimistic outlook on things (made much more obvious by my cynic of a husband - who is also a teacher.) I didn't have very many negative learning experiences. I was a kid who loved school, was sad at the end of every year to have to leave my teachers and afraid I wouldn't like the next one as much ( I always did.) I have a mom who was a teacher, has patience in spades, and is incredibly encouraging. Her passion was in English and reading (she has a great story about what inspired her to teach, but I'll save that since this is about me.) My Dad is very engineer minded, strict and had high expectations. I would say my most negative learning experiences came from his pressure to be good in areas I was the weakest (math) and struggled with the way he thought he was helping (drill and kill :P) I realized thinking back on elementary school, most of my meaningful, memorable learning experiences happened in the gifted program. We were able to explore more issues in science, geography, languages, and the social sciences that kept me interested in school and fostered my natural curiosity. It was fun.  I wonder how many of my classmates could have used this approach to keep up their interest in school. Same goes for junior high. My Spectra class was a drop in program so any time my regular class had down time, I could go explore something I wanted to learn about on my own and I was encouraged to do so. I will admit I spent way too  much time playing the original Sim City, but I would argue that had an effect on my planning, design, and systems skills and interests (and we did other stuff too.) 

    I think I was definitely influenced by my english teachers in high school. They were some crazy ladies! One was a former nun and one taught in Australia for a while. They both had the best stories and were very enthusiastic about teaching and students. They made personal connections, had engaging lessons, and were willing to meet you where you were to get you to learn. They fostered creativity and I definitely thrived on that. My art teachers were also very influential. To this day I have a photo of my senior year self and my art teacher on my desk. Again, someone who was enthusiastic, funny, creative, smart and willing to share that with students. I will say that coming back to my high school after some education classes was pretty enlightening. One of my favorite teachers at the time I was in school (b/c he was cool! and let us did whatever we wanted!) seemed to be a pretty awful teacher when I stood back and observed his class without being a student. I realized I hadn't learned much, because we did whatever with not a lot of structure, and classroom management was almost nil. 

    I would say the most common characteristics of teachers that made an impact on me were the teachers who made connections with their students, whether that was through sharing personal experiences or cultivating a common community in the room, and took the time to get to know me (as a person and/or as a learner); they were smart, shared what they knew and admitted when they didn't know something -showing some humility; they were encouraging and enthusiastic, showing happiness in what they did every day as well as encouraging me to do better than I had before. 

    So much comes flooding back to me about school when I think about it. It will be interesting to see what else comes to the surface as we progress through this semester.