Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on March 25, 2008 - 07:24.
I could not agree more with your article, Maurice. I am currently a graduate student as many others mentioned and a first grade teacher. It seems teachers are feeling the pressure of "teaching to the test" at even the youngest of grades now.
Similar to a few other posters, I spend a good bit of time on character development in my classroom, especially at the beginning of school. We do many activities to model how we should treat others, being a good friend, making the right choices, and many other important life skills or character traits. I believe it is very important to model and show the young students in my class how to build and use good character choices.
As a school, our school also works to build good character in our students. Each week we have a life skill or character trait that we focus on. They announce the trait in the morning announcements and give an example of it. After the announcements we are able to discuss the trait together and give other examples that show good use of the trait. We also have a student of the week in each grade level. This student is recognized not only for academic success but for showing good character. Our students of the week do not have to be limited to just those that do well on a test.
Through my graduate studies, it has been confirmed that having these good character traits leads to being more effective as a teacher. The first few chapters of the book, On Being a Teacher the Human Dimension, discusses how important it is for teachers to have the character traits of honesty, compassion, patience, sense of humor and more. It states in order to be effective we must have more than book knowledge (Kottler, J., Zehm, Kottler, E., 2005). I believe as you stated above this also applies to our students. Our students need to gain more than just book knowledge from us as educators.
References:
Kottler, J. A., Zehm, S. J., & Kottler, E. (2005). On being a teacher: The human dimension (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Character Development
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on March 25, 2008 - 07:24.
I could not agree more with your article, Maurice. I am currently a graduate student as many others mentioned and a first grade teacher. It seems teachers are feeling the pressure of "teaching to the test" at even the youngest of grades now.
Similar to a few other posters, I spend a good bit of time on character development in my classroom, especially at the beginning of school. We do many activities to model how we should treat others, being a good friend, making the right choices, and many other important life skills or character traits. I believe it is very important to model and show the young students in my class how to build and use good character choices.
As a school, our school also works to build good character in our students. Each week we have a life skill or character trait that we focus on. They announce the trait in the morning announcements and give an example of it. After the announcements we are able to discuss the trait together and give other examples that show good use of the trait. We also have a student of the week in each grade level. This student is recognized not only for academic success but for showing good character. Our students of the week do not have to be limited to just those that do well on a test.
Through my graduate studies, it has been confirmed that having these good character traits leads to being more effective as a teacher. The first few chapters of the book, On Being a Teacher the Human Dimension, discusses how important it is for teachers to have the character traits of honesty, compassion, patience, sense of humor and more. It states in order to be effective we must have more than book knowledge (Kottler, J., Zehm, Kottler, E., 2005). I believe as you stated above this also applies to our students. Our students need to gain more than just book knowledge from us as educators.
References:
Kottler, J. A., Zehm, S. J., & Kottler, E. (2005). On being a teacher: The human dimension (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.