"Whether the teacher is authoritarian, undisciplined, competent, incompetent, serious, irresponsible, involved, a lover of the people and of life, cold, angry with the world, bureaucratic, excessively rational, or whatever else, he/she will not pass through the classroom without leaving his or her mark on the students.""Critical reflection on practice is a requirement of the relationship between theory and practice. Otherwise theory becomes simply "blah, blah, blah," and practice, pure activism."
"Education does not make us educable. It is our awareness of being unfinished that makes us educable."
From, Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom. 1998
I want to use this space to share and develop my ideas on what makes a day in a classroom effective. With effective, I do not mean the quantity of facts a student learns, but the quality of learning and whether the student learned something about him/herself and his/her connection to the world. In other words, this is a space for me to place ideas on curriculum that I eventually will use once I become a full time educator.
Just because I quote Paulo Freire, does not mean that I'm automatically "down/real/progressive," I'm aware of this. But nevertheless, I want to get as close as possible (if not entirely) to a point in which every single activity I design works towards the empowerment of the student. This does not mean that the sole purpose of my class will be to boost the ego of my students. No. I plan to be strict and my class to be rigorous. I believe in hard work and lots of it. But I'm also aware that my standards should not be based entirely on what I believe are high expectations, but in a relation to my student's level.
Well, enough disclaimers. Let's get to work.
The goal is to post a complete lesson plan at least once a month. Let's see what happens.
