For this first C4T we were able to choose our own teacher to comment on. I chose Elementary teacher Joe Bower. Mr. Bower blogged about he had decided to remove rewarding and punishing students to gain respect and get rid of manipulation. He has said that if any of his students or kids tries to bribe or manipulate him to get their way, he is able to say to them that he doesn't manipulate them so they don't need to do the same to him.
I commented on his blog and told him that my 8 year old nephew currently lives at my house and he has a bad habit of manipulating my sister. The reason being because she does the same to him which is her own fault. I am choosing to adopt his method in my future classroom feeling that it may be very useful.
The second thing Mr. Bower blogged about was you can't judge a teacher by their test scores. He compared this to farming. He said he is a fifth generation farmer and is the first in his family to become a teacher. His father and grandfather taught him a lot about farming which included the best seeds to buy and the best conditions in which to plant them. In order to get the best crop, you want the best conditions in which your seeds can grow. The difference in teaching is that you cannot chose your students like you can choose your seeds. You aren't going to have the best students around. In fact, you are going to have some of the most impossible students out there.
I commented on this blog and told Mr. Bower that I really enjoyed his farming metaphor. It made perfect sense and it's true, we really have to put in more timeand effort on those conditions we want those struggling kids to have in order to be successful, but there's only so much we can do.
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