Sunday, October 02, 2005

Young Investigators

i'm currently reading three different books on Teaching. this is apart from other related articles, daily journals, a personal portfolio, a life metaphor, and coming up with a project with my toddlers.

am i insane? (probably) am i a workaholic? (correction. a recovering workaholic...) don't i have a social life? (ahh, don't ask...) why am i subjecting myself to all this work? to think we (my co-teachers and i) are into our second assessment and starting the individual portfolios of our students, i'm still tutoring, and i'm planning to be involved in more extra curricular activities (tell you more on my next post!).

actually, all this craziness (see the first paragraph) is part of my Practicum course. i'm really excited because we're going to apply one of the most effective activities for children -
The Project Approach. i'm planning to do Zoo Animals w/ my toddlers but no specific idea yet.

i'm the only one handling toddlers in my Practicum class. it's more challenging to do the Project Approach with children below 3 since they're not in the stage of questioning yet. but i know how my kids love to explore and experiment so i'm not that worried. it's really a joy to look at the world through the eyes of a child. they have that innocence, almost akin to naivety, and yet when they learn something new, they feel like they've set a world record....

wait, i'm going off track.

anyways, as i was saying, i can't wait to start! :)

while reading one of the assigned books, i came across a paragraph that really struck me. i feel that this truly describes what teaching is all about, particularly the last sentence. read on and be inspired as well.

Teaching is instructing, advising, counseling, organizing, assessing, guiding, goading, showing, managing, modeling, coaching, disciplining, prodding, preaching, persuading, proselytizing, listening, interacting, nursing, and inspiring...And that's not all. When we face ourselves, we face memories of our own triumphs and humiliations, of our cowardice and bravery, our breakthroughs and breakdowns, our betrayals as well as our fidelity.
-- To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher (2nd edition) by William Ayers

have a great week, everybody!

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