Community and a bite of cereal

So, I had this deep thought in Social Studies today as we were talking about how History repeats itself.  When I was snacking on Kim's cereal, I reflected more about the book we read today in class.  We said History repeats itself, why don't we learn from the past?  Some people view the events in the past such as World War II and the Jews, the concentration camps for Japanese Americans, and what we read about today, Native Americans being forced into "our" civilization; and these people "repeat" these type of events, because they believe that maybe this time it will give them power and that this worked in the past at another way of getting rid of or dewindling down another race or religious group.  This brings up the point of how community is so important.  I never thought about how important community is until this class.  I was always taught never to judge anyone no matter the color of their skin, their religion, their family background, etc.  But, I think some people think, "well I don't judge them, but that doesn't mean that I have to be friends with them."  To be honest, this is what I thought in some ways myself, not as harsh as it sounds, and I even had these thoughts toward people in my own community that I shared the same beliefs with and had similar background with.  Just because they were like me, did not mean I had to get to know them or even try to be friends with them.  But, just tolerating someone just because its what we think we have to do, doesn't make an effective community.  Understanding where people come from, who they are as people, what they believe, experiencing their culture, communicating, etc. makes a community function more successfully and the outcome is far greater.  This is a subject area that students need to be engaged in and everyone involved. 

Last semester, I really got into learning more about the Holocaust and Hitler.  I had read and learned about this time period in school, but did not really get a grasp of what happened until I read the book Upon the Head of the Goat.  I started thinking, Why didn't anyone stop it?  Why would someone do this?  What was their point?  Who did Hitler and his soliders think they were? I still do not know a lot about this time period, but just because Germany needed someone to blame their problems on, Hitler picked on the Jews and the gypsies and others.  Where was community in all this?  There was none, except very riged and separate communities, Jews and Anti-Jews.  Again, I still don't know why and what all truly happened during this time, but I feel like if people of different cultures, religious practices, race, etc. would enrich themselves with each other's way of life and experience what each experiences, then outcomes these history events might have been differently.

Community--being in one and acting like one, are two different things.  As teachers, teaching it and experiencing it, are two different things.  It can make a difference.

Black Ants and Buddhists

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the "Black Ants and Buddhists" article.  The teacher handled this situation amazingly.  If she had not let the students begin to work out the situation on their own, and had told Som Jet that it was okay in America to kill ants, or gotten angry, because of the situation, then the students and herself would have missed an incredible learning experience and meeting people from around the world.  After the incident had happened with Ben stomping on the ants and Sadie jumping up and down from a "black ant" bite, the teacher reminded them about their class rules (or we should say procedures) and asked them where would this apply.  This just reinforces how important it is to have these class procedures that the students and the teacher in collaboration come up with, so that they can easily refer back to these procedures and how to handle a situation.    

Look at all they learned.  They learned about diversity, not only about different views across the world, but the views of their fellow classmates that were present right their in their classroom.  The teacher did all she could to discover more about different views of Buddism, Hinduism, Isam, and others about what had happened in the classroom.  I loved the teachers thought mentioned in the article, "You could live your whole life, hanging with White Christian Americans, crushing ants and swatting mosiquitoes, thinking you were acting like everyone else on the planet, and you'd be wrong."

The students learned to take responsibility for themsevles by helping keep the classoom clean and remembering to take lunch boxes with food in them home.  Some of the students even took what they had learned from the classroom home, and started being more responsible there.

There are several more lessons that were learned; from diversity, personal responsibility, principle of guerrilla warfare, learning about power and government, and several other learning experiences, and this all happened from spilled juice and ants....

Just Because I Really Like This Song

Just wanted to post this music video below, because it is one of my favorites.  

We are the world
We are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let's start giving

There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives
It's true, we can make a better day, just you and me 

We Are The World - Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ro...

First Day Jitters!

I actually found out about this book from Ms. Kasee Jones, but wanted to share with all of you if you have not read or seen this book.  The children's book, First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg illustrated by Judy Love, is an excellent book to read not only to children, but for ourselves!  I won't give away the ending, but this book follows the morning of someone's first day of school, in which, we all have or will experience as we enter the beginning of our teaching careers!

The Beginning

As future teachers, it is our jobs to be lifelong learners not only for ourselves, but for our future students and the lives of others we will encounter.  Life's a journey, we will be learning and teaching, no matter where we go or what we do or who we will meet.  My desire for this blog is to learn more of how to better myself as a learner and a teacher from other blogs, and hopefully, have a hand in teaching others with my own.  This is a journey we will be following together, maybe in different directions, but with the same goal and aspirations.  I look forward to reading everyone's posts and enjoying our experiences we will have through block and future teaching experiences together!