Philosophy of
Education
Many
of the reasons why I want to become a teacher do not have to do with the
teachers that I had when I was a student or because one single teacher inspired
me to enter into the field of education.
My want to become an educator is much more self realized than anything
else. I realized this as college and
classes progressed. I began to think
about the career that would best suit me, and I thought about the classes that
I found most interesting. When I
considered everything that led me to college, the factors that eventually made
me realize why education was the path for me were, the way I was raised, the
schools that I attended in middle school and high school, and my dad’s career.
In
my family, my dad, mom, and step mom all went to college, so obviously
education was something that was highly stressed growing up. My mom moved my brother and I to Rockford so that we could go to one of the best public
schools in West Michigan. Unfortunately, Rockford is very conservative and for the
most part, racially un-diverse. The
schools consisted of mostly middle to upper middle class children who basically
all thought the same and were fascinated by all the same things. When high school came around, I was starting
to form my opinions that were conflicting with many of the views of my
peers. My opinions reflected those of my
parents, who are fairly liberal people and whose ideas do not mesh well with
the majority of people in the Grand
Rapids area.
When examining how I grew up and how I thought in school made me think
about how I wished I had a teacher that would have pushed me to express my
opinions more openly. With that in mind,
I thought about how I wanted to help kids express themselves, and I can do that
through teaching.
The other thing
that made me want to be a teacher was the career that my dad chose. My dad originally worked as a journalist and
then worked for Governor Blanchard when he was in office. Now he does the public relations and is
assistant superintendent for Kent
Intermediate School
District.
The older I got, the more interested I became in my dads career because
it involved things that are relevant to everyone and things that are important
to our community. I saw the way he was
trying to make things easier for the schools in Kent County
and it caught my attention. My original
interest came in a debate class when the subject was Vouchers for school
choice. I found myself getting more
involved in the subject of Vouchers with my dad there to fuel my curiosity. Then, for a project in high school, I went to
work with my dad and saw the inner workings of his office. This prompted me to become more aware of how
the school system work, and think about the behind the scenes aspect of the
schools. After I got into college and
the time came to think seriously about majors, I talked quite a bit about it
with my dad and he put the idea of education into my head. We talked many times about possible majors,
after each conversation, it became clearer that I was very interested in the
field of education.
The
major roadblocks on my way to becoming a teacher will be my ability to keep
interested in the classes outside my major.
I do very well with the classes that I want to take. The grades in my history and education classes
are quite good; the problem is the math and chemistry classes. I get distracted very quickly when it comes
to prerequisite classes that I am forced to take instead of by choice. This was much more of a problem my freshman
year when I was not as certain about what I was in college for, but my grades
in all of my classes have steadily gotten better now that I know why I am at
Grand Valley. I can keep the fact that I
have a goal in sight, which pushes me through all of the classes that I would
rather not take. I also keep in mind
that once I am done with a class that I do not like, I am that much closer to
finishing school.
After
I graduate from the school of education, attain my teaching certificate, and
begin teaching students, I want to be the type of teacher to help students
realize themselves. I want to teach that
there are no rights or wrongs when it comes to opinions. My area of interest is history, I love it
because it shows how free thinkers can change the world, and that conforming to
one way of thinking wont help anyone and eventually leave you feeling
unsatisfied. I had always wished that I
could have expressed my views more when I was in high school, so I want to help
students come up with their own beliefs and help them to grasp the notion that
its ok if the people around them have different ideas. Absolutely learning in school is number one,
but in an environment where everyone is free to express themselves openly helps
the learning process immensely. I feel
that it is important to provide a solid education and knowledge base along with
a feeling of self-confidence. I will try
to create this feeling by integrating group discussions, a few projects,
opinion papers, and group work/activities in my class, along with lecture to
help guide the students in their progress.
Butcher
Bill and Antebellum New York
Elliot
Gorn, a professor of American Studies, approaches the working class culture in
antebellum New York
through one defining moment. In the
article, his defining moment was the shooting and eventual death of William
Poole, a.k.a. Butcher Bill. The murder,
according to Gorn, “opened old wounds, allowing ancient ethnic hatreds to ooze
with renewed ugliness.” More over, it gave a picture of antebellum New York, the struggle
between class and ethnicity, and evangelicalism and street life.
“The Stanwix Hall affair takes us into deep
antebellum New York City,
giving us insight into popular nativism, working class culture, and urban
street life.” This presents the entirety of Gorn’s
argument, the death of Butcher Bill brought to light the huge divisions in
ethnicity, class, and the struggles of the street life. Gorn gave perspective into the resentment of
natives towards the foreigners, one factor being that immigrants came to New York by the
thousands. He said that in the years
before Pooles death, the rise in population for New York was 70 percent, and was double for
the foreigners. Further, the murder of Poole
gave the natives ammunition to use against foreigners, claiming the death was
an assassination by the Irish on a patriot,
this on top of an already a building resentment. Due to the potato famine, the Irish made up
thirty percent of the incoming foreigners.
They represented fifty percent of all arrests, seventy percent of all
charity received, and an unskilled force to fight for jobs that were already
few and far between.
This
fight for jobs helps define antebellum New
York in mid nineteenth century. Gorn argues that, “the murder of Bill Poole
held special poignancy for many in the middling and working classes,
particularly those practicing old traditional trades.” Poole was a
man of the people, helping many natives to find jobs and give them a handout
when it was needed. According to Gorn,
many believed he was killed because he felt that native born Americans should
be treated with equal employment opportunities.
According to state legislature research, in 1885, 143 of the 256
appointed policemen had an Irish background. A fact that many felt is the reason why Poole’s killer escaped and eventually was cleared of all
charges. Furthermore, the sentiment of
the time was that unskilled immigrants took American jobs and undercut the
wages, a thought that was secured by Mayor Wood, who gave many jobs to
foreigners as payment for votes in past and upcoming elections.
The
working class, natives and immigrants alike, “shared a way of life, one deeply
offensive to the guardians of morality,”
alleged Gorn. The working class
Americans, regardless of ethnicity shared more similarities with each other
than they did with the upper classes.
Gorn argued that the death of Poole was
blown out of proportion as a way for nativists to give blame for their
problems. In reality, the Stanwix Hall
Affair was a bar fight that got out of hand.
Both parties were armed with revolvers and four people were shot all
together, two people for each opposing side.
Gorn mentions that the working class joined gangs and fought to create
an identity for themselves in a working world that was about conformity. The evangelical ideologies that guided many
men in business to make the workplace the center for their emotional lives was
not enough for the working class. “With
work time and free time more clearly bifurcated then ever, and with wage labor
their lifelong fate, men now looked beyond shops and factories for a sense of
self esteem,”
according to Gorn. The ever increasing
evangelical ideals of piety and productivity to give men a sense of worth, was
replaced by these “primitive rebels”
who found loyalty and self worth in violence, saloons, and card games.
Gorn’s
use of the death of Butcher Bill gave an image of a city divided among labor
and identity. He argues his thesis to
break down the sentiment of the time and in such a manner to give realness to
the mid-nineteenth century. Gorn draws us a picture of antebellum New York to show the
animosity between natives and foreigners, the fight for unskilled work, and the
disregard for evangelical ethics among the diverse working class. The Stanwix Hall Affair, Gorn says, “As drama
– as melodrama – Poole’s martyrdom played out
the conflicts working people experienced and named their nameless fears.”