At this point, my interests are pretty extensive. I'm going back and forth between a sci-fi anthology of Ray Bradbury's works (really weird), and a book on the Philosophy of Art (which is making a lot of sense).
I'm also working on an autobiography that revolves around my long-term employment with Starbucks. It's sort of like that guy's "How Starbucks Saved My Life", only way more snarky. And I'm convinced that my stories about companionship between partners and our connections with customers will be a little more vivid. Because they make this story more than I do. Gill's personal story of white privilege, and him losing it, and then developing new meaning in his life, was more shocking to people like him than it was to people like me.
Besides, his portrayal of Starbucks is how it used to be at least seven years ago. I felt a huge sense of nostalgia while reading his book, but at the end I thought to myself, "this is not how it feels for so many others."
I think everyone has the potential to tell a story. How often are we impressing this upon our children? How much are we encouraging them to explore and develop their own life experiences? In many ways, schools preach safety, the well-worn path of academia, the illusion that you will become successful if you squeeze yourself into that four-year-university-right-out-of-highschool demographic.
And so many kids are learning right now that that's just not how it works anymore. You're not guaranteed a job when you're done with college, because chances are, there are none. Or you have to compete with people twice your age, with more experience.
So what do these kids do? Go right back to school to get their master's, because that's all a lot of these kids every really learned to do: jump through hoops, fulfill the requirements, be rewarded with a piece of paper.
I think we should do what the Europeans do: tell the kids to take a year off. Get a job. Travel a little bit. Make some mistakes. Figure out what you really love. Then go back to school. You appreciate it more that way. And getting the party out of your system allows you to better focus on your long-term goals. Education is meant to enrich your life experiences, not monopolize them.
I think that's a big motivator for me, as a future educator. I want to impress upon my students that they are not learning in a vacuum. What they are seeing, and learning, and producing, is relevant to what is happening in the real world. And we should shatter this polarity between sheltered school community and everywhere else. Learning should not be isolated to the classroom. We need to impress upon children that the world is a classroom. Learning happens everywhere, not just within the confines of a text book. School should be a hub where we share our experiences, and testing should mean showing how we have internalized those experiences.
I'm rambling. Insert random picture.
Yeah, it's always good to end it with your heart smiling. <3
I agree that everyone has a story and that we need to provide spaces for students to do that. How might you do that in your classroom?
ReplyDeleteWell, one of my big motivations for becoming an art teacher is because I want to give kids a place to tell their story. A lot of that desire is borne out of my own experiences in the classroom. Art was my sanctuary. And it became an avenue of exploration for me, exploration of the world around me, as well as myself.
ReplyDeleteVisual expression is therapeutic. It can be telling when kids don't have the words to say what they feel, or they may be too inhibited to say those words.