Today's Class: A Reflection

When I arrived at the Bolden Center this morning, I was in a positive mood and was looking forward to a productive day of learning and growing. I left the Bolden Center with a mix of emotions and in a decisively less positive mood. I allowed myself some time to digest what I was feeling and take apart the different activities of the day to see how I arrived at my less joyful state...

While it was a bit uncomfortable to write about my fellow cohort members, I enjoyed participating in the first activity we dived into this morning. While we have known each other for five months now, the activity allowed us to see that we still know very little about each other. I don’t know if we can truly ‘know’ anyone. I think about my close friends and family and I know a lot about them, but it’s really only what they want me to see/know and what they feel comfortable revealing to me. I also believe that it’s very possible that we don’t even know ourselves. We are constantly learning new things about ourselves, discovering hidden talents and points we can improve on. If we don’t fully know ourselves, can we know the people around us?

As teachers, we are going to be taking the bits of information we can gather on our students to help them learn and grow. It is important that we don’t jump to conclusions or stereotype our students based on the little information we can muster together about them. We should give our students the benefit of the doubt and concentrate on pushing them as budding learners. We must also remember that our students come into our classroom with their own knowledge and that they can teach us a lot if we let them.

Now on to my mood deflation...

I think my mood was effected during the last activity that we did together. We were asked to make a list of the things we needed in order to work together as a cohort. This seems to be something we are asked a lot, and I left the Bolden Center today unsure as to why we are being asked to make these similar lists, especially when we seem to be saying most of the same things over and over again, and it feels like the response we always get is that we need to be more flexible and go with the flow. I understand that things pop up and that it’s part of the program that we don’t really know what we will be doing in a few months. I accept the fact that our schedule is subject to change and that we need to be able to handle these changes. I’m just not sure why we keep being asked what we need or would like moving forward, when the answer will always be, first and foremost, a detailed schedule and syllabus for our classes. To me, it was a grand letdown to once again respond honestly to the question of ‘what we need’ because it built up hope in my mind for our needs being met, only to have that hope squashed moments later. 

In the future, I will try to think of this question not as ‘what I need’, but ‘what else do I need.’ Maybe then I won’t leave class so disheartened. Chin up. Tomorrow’s a new day. : )