BLOG #1 - Perspective

 This week during my EDUC 4P01 course, I learned a lot about perspectives and student challenges. The weekly reading focused on STEM learning and challenges, I began by reading about Michael a student who adored dinosaurs and knew all about them from his numerous trips to the zoo and library visits, although his kindergarten report card had no indication of his interests and capabilities, and rather focused on what he could not do like tie his own shoes (Davis et al., 2019). While reading the chapter before class, I felt discouraged for Michael, I felt as though his talents in STEM were being ignored, challenging his interest and capabilities. I felt as though, as a student, my own capabilities were missed. While I was in school I found my teachers focused on my behaviour rather than my interests and capabilities. I frequently received report cards in elementary school detailing my inability to tie my shoes, get ready fast enough or pay attention. I found myself connecting with Michael. Although I was not a dinosaur fanatic, I still felt as though my capabilities were being ignored; rather than being supported and uplifted, I was put in a box and was not matching up with my peers. I went into class wondering how our course would allow me to grow beyond my thoughts and feelings to learn how to apply support in the classroom as a future STEM teacher in mathematics. 

We began our lecture by discussing in pairs where Michael developed his knowledge of dinosaurs, feeling as though this was a disappointing and simple question I openly discussed with my peer about his visits to the zoo and trips to the library as they allowed for him to expand his knowledge and follow his interests, we shared our ideas on the concept board and I was mildly underwhelmed as I was excited to understand how to support students interest in class. I was swiftly repositioned when we moved on, where we were asked to talk to our peers about something we were good at, focusing on several questions on our support systems that nurtured our talents. In a small group, we shared our talents from sports to cooking to academics. I found myself a little stuck, I was wondering what my talents were; I have always thought of my talents as being a gymnastics coach, as my academics and athleticism were always subpar. Although discussing in group, I was able to understand that there is no scale to measure these talents. When discussing what skills would be required to help someone else be good at it. There is no specific way, we discussed how practice and support such as guidance is useful but that we all have our own ways of learning and took our own time to become good at our skills. I thought to myself and Michael how there is no specific thing that inspired Michael to learn about dinosaurs, and he was rather “born with” the interests (Davis et al., 2019). I was not in a sense I rather followed along with my life and let different experiences kind of happen. I learned from our discussion and the reading more and more about myself. How I am my own unique student, how I will represent students I will teach in the future and that even though I was not given a direct answer to my question on how to properly support students I was rather shown how all learners are different, how some follow their interests like Michael, how some need practice like it was suggested in our group discussion and some like me follow their own path and let life happen in a sense. Reflecting on this class, I learned a lot about student differences and the challenges they face when being taught, how their interests may be missed and that it is up to me as an educator to better understand them.