I have found that when I write about my experiences in education, I am inspired to take action in my life and work. When I see teachers at other schools, I know I can apply what I’ve learned in my own classrooms. So, I’ve been writing a number of posts about how I’ve used my education to help my students and myself, and how I’ve changed schools because of my positive experiences.
We have a lot of educators in the blogosphere that are passionate about helping other teachers learn in the best way possible. So, Ive decided to do a post about education for the teachers out there, to encourage them to share their experiences about what they’ve learned from their education. I’ve also decided to write a post about empowerment for teachers (and parents) to share their insights about how they can empower their students to achieve success in schools.
We all know how easy it is to turn into an entitled, bitter, bitter, bitter person, so i think this post is pretty much a no-brainer.
I think the biggest obstacle to empowerment that the teachers out there have is that they don’t know how to show their students how to empower themselves. When they explain their school’s systems, they don’t seem to recognize that they themselves are the reason why these systems exist.
I think we need to empower our kids to stop being afraid of failing, to stop being afraid of not accomplishing something, and to stop being afraid of the unknown. If we can stop being afraid of failure, we can achieve anything.
I think this is where I go a little off track. The reason I say this is because we are in the first year of a new school year and I feel like most of our students are doing great, but we just need to be more aware of the fact that there is much more to our students being successful then just getting through the first few months of school.
So, empowered education is basically giving our students more than they know what to do with. There are many components to this, but I’ll give you an example. A few weeks ago I was reading a story about an organization that was trying to get the students of a large school to quit being afraid, and they were asking students if they had any ideas to change the way the school was run.
I was thinking of this in particular because I recently attended the Annual Conference of the North American Association for School Psychology and was part of a panel discussing students’ school-based behaviors and how to change them. It was a really great discussion, but I was thinking about the impact that these behaviors may have on students’ overall academic achievement.
This is why I believe that educators should try to foster self-awareness. When we are in a position of power, we should attempt to see what we are doing and adjust accordingly. If we feel that the current situation is not helping students become more successful, we should try a different approach. But it’s not only the behaviors that we should be worried about.
I think the biggest single problem with students is that they are often in a time of limited resources. They are often in a position where they are struggling to get things done, and they are feeling overwhelmed. This can be especially true in an education context where resources are limited. When students are confronted with a lack of resources, they often just do the same thing over and over and end up frustrated.