Field Experience

Sometimes I get to talk to my field experience teacher and some other english teachers during lunch. On one occasion, my field experience teacher shared with me the many struggles his students face on a daily basis. Some of them have jobs in the evening, some take care of their sick and sometimes dying parents and grandparents, some of them deal with pressure to join gangs on a regular basis, some of them are pregnant dealing with adult problems at the age of 16, some of them have been shot in drive by shootings and are left wheelchair bound or lying in a hospital bed, paralyzed. As I listened to the stories, I couldn't believe it, but unfortunately it's the truth. 

Besides compassion for the students, I felt a certain determination to make the classroom different from their tumultuous life outside of the school. As a teacher, I have the responsibility of creating a safe haven for my students. I have to develop an environment that fosters thinking, learning and growth. Just as Jeff Duncan-Andrade said in his TEDx talk, Growing Roses in Concrete, these students are roses crowing out of concrete and they need to be nurtured if they are to keep growing. 

Not only does the education take their mind off of their troubles, it also gives them tools to improve their future. That is something the students need to be aware of. They need to take a snapshot of their life right now and assess whether or not they want to be in the same position as an adult. These kinds of reality checks put things in perspective for students. Come to think of it, I might include this in a revision of my unit plan....