Blog Post # 10

Do you Teach or Do you Educate, was an eye opener video for teachers. It gives a reality check on who are the real "teachers" by explain what to teach and what to educate means. The video gave several descriptions on the definition to teach which are:" show or explain how to do something; give information about or instruction in; cause someone to learn or understand something; induce by example or punishment to do or not to do something." Then the video went on to say or are you an educator? An educator or to educate is to enlighten or empower. "One who gives intellectual moral and social instructions; mentor, experience, trusted, advisor, and guides a person and shows them the way."
As I become a teacher I would much rather educate my student than to teach. I feel that if we educate the students they will have the knowledge and the skills to do anything they set their minds to.
The quote in the video that really sticks out is by Peter Brougham, and he said "Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave." To me this means that with education anything is possible. You can't stop anybody from accomplishing their dreams and that is what "impossible to enslave" means to me. When you give a person education that is like giving someone freedom, and I really believe that.

The article Don't Let Them Take Pencils Home was a very good article by Tom Johnson. I feel that giving the student's the option to learn is good by allowing them to take pencil's home. It is sad to see the quote "It's not that, either. I have a journal article about how students who use pencils at home have lower standardized test scores. So, for the love of test-taking, we need to stop our students from taking home pencils." Most teachers only teach so far by only teaching the material that is required and that's it.
Yet "we" the student's miss all the important information in between and are left out on whats needed to know for the real world. It was good to see that a solution was made on how the pencils could help educate the students better. The author even wanted to work out a parent pencil program, so the parents could also educator their children while they were at home. I believe that if the parents got more involved in their child's education, then the child would succeed farther beyond the child who had no support. I am not saying this is going to be true for all the students, but theoretically it would work that way.