Hey, Hello, and Hola! I am Robin Alfaro and I pretty sure that if you're an English Subject Matter major, you've had me for a class or two. I'm an English Subject Matter major of course and a Central American Studies Major. I have a great passion for both subjects. English because ever since I was a little girl l'd rather spend time reading a book than infront of a T.V. screen, and Central American Studies because I am Central American (Salvadoran) and I love learning about my own history. I have the most horrible grammar if you can't already tell. I guess that's one of my fears when it comes to being a teacher. I'm sure one day a student will ask me why something is wrong and I'll stand there with a blank face and shrug. However, I will work towards fixing that. Another thing I guess is that I am going to get punked around by the high school kids. I was such a jerk to some of my teachers that I'm sure that karma will have to run it's course. However, I hope to be able, not to just teach kids about literature and writing but help them build a passion for it. I want my class to be an open forum where we learn about ideas and world issues. Then I want to trick them into writing and responding to readings using those same ideas. I'm probably not making much sense but I had a teacher that got us into literature and writing that way.
The reason that I want to become a teacher is because growing up in LAUSD I had way way way too many crappy teachers. Teachers didn't care about us and they were always mean and bitter. So after years of being horrible at math (because no math teacher wanted to deal with me) and being horrible at writing (because every teacher claimed that we should know how to do this already), I decided that no kid deserved such bad teachers and therefore I would try my hardest to be a great one.
How will technology play a role? Hmmm... besides having kids talk bad about me on MySpace? Well, I guess things like YouTube have opened up a lot of doors. Videos of poets reading their work can be streamed, that way you get a sense of the way the poem is really suppose to sound. Homework can now be posted online so that you can't say "I forgot to write it down". Power Point makes lecturing and presentations much more interesting. I'm not sure but the possibilities today are endless.
It's sad to hear about the buget cuts and pink slips that are harming LAUSD. I'm just hoping that by the time I am ready to get in there all this is cleared up. The good thing about being a teacher is that I guess you can move around and most likley you'll find a job. But I really want to stay in L.A because this is where I was born and raised and I really wouldn't be who I am with out it.
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Hola Robin! I don't think you should be ashamed of your "horrible grammar skills," I think they're fine! After all, when you teach a grammar lesson to your students you can be learning at the same time (haha, just kidding!).
ReplyDeleteI feel you in regards to growing up in LAUSD---do not get me started! I was intuitively pretty good at English/writing skills, but I was a goner in math. I think the problem is that the teachers didn't know how to teach themselves, and LAUSD has a huge problem of promoting kids to the next grade who shouldn't be there at all. While this may sound naive, I think our generation of new educators will hopefully bring a new perspective to the profession (and I will never work for LAUSD, but rather any other school district).
As for kids "talking bad" about you online, teachers will always be hated/loved/everything in between. Hopefully we can inspire our students to rise above pettyness, or at least get them interested in one text. If you know how to use technology properly, the kids will love it.
Hey Robin! I’m a product of the LAUSD as well and I have to say that I also had a handful of bad teachers. I think I classify these teachers as “bad teachers” because they did not seem dedicated to their students. My high school teachers seemed to just pass out a bunch of tedious work and expect you to do the work without much explanation. However, I did get lucky in 11th grade because I had an English teacher that cared and taught his students (including me) how to write an essay, instead of assuming that we all knew how to write a well developed essay. My English teacher inspired me to become a teacher and I hope to one day teach my students how to analyze literature and how to write an essay. I agree with you when you said that you think technology is going to play a vital role in the education field because maybe by the time we start teaching, all assignments will be turned in online. I mean, we see the affect the budgets cuts are having at the university level. I don’t think I’ve gotten a hard copy of a syllabus for any of my classes this semester, thus middle schools and high schools might go down a similar role and have their students turn in their work online in order to save money on paper.
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