Keeping Perspective

So the last week or so has been really hard for me to focus. I have had an extremely hard time writing or studying. And by writing I mostly mean typing in and of itself. I feel like I shouldn't edit this post just so you can get an idea as to how bad my typing abilities have become; however, I won't do that to you. It would be very hard to read and probably not very entertaining for anyone either.

In effort to keep in perspective why I actually want to get good grades and graduate, I bought a book entitled "Letters to a Young Teacher" (I might have also bought it because Boarders went out of business and I got it for like $1.50). Anyway, I have started to read it as 1), an escape from homework, and 2) as a way to remember that I really do want to teach. I have yet to finish this book, but about a hundred pages in and I'm hooked. I love the way Jonathan Kozol brings teaching to most personal level that it possibly could be. He loves the aspects of teaching where the teacher actually learns something of the student, and therefore can help the student better understand the task at hand. Learning and teaching for that matter isn't just a manufactured process to make certain that students make it to the next level and then become successful. Teacher and learning is about relationships, and then building on those to create understanding. I could literally gush about this book for a very long time; however, I won't bore those of you who are not planning on becoming teachers, but I will give you a few snippets that I have found and loved. Most of these probably only make sense in context... but I still liked them a lot!

"That bond of trust and tenderness comes first. Without that, everything is merely dutiful- and generally, deadening. It is not for dutiful aridity that people who love children become teachers."

"... at the end of all those 'ands' and 'buts' there's a piece of hidden treasure where the child tells us something that we never knew about him up to now. And good teachers use that piece of hidden treasure as a key to unlock motivation and to bring the child back into the classroom work..."

"Words like these [proficient, humorous, interesting, colorful] do not teach literacy skills; they teach pomposity... Don't inflict dead verbiage on living children."

There are several more that I have underlined (and yes, I have been underlining things in this book) but those are the ones that I will share for now.