6 – Educators & Community

Time to reflect on if I have I ever been a member of a true education community. Is a community a place where teachers actively participate as a group to construct the growth of the community or is a community a place where educators work? I question my membership because I really do not know the characteristics in a community of educators. There has to be a difference between teachers who just work together and occasionally gather for a staff meeting and those who participate as a living community of educators. When I say community, I specifically mean an educational community where the community supports each other through educational means. Just thinking about being in a community makes me feel nervous and vulnerable. I also feel overwhelmed that my participation would have to be that of leader, which makes me uncomfortable because it feels like it would expose the teacher I am. Moreover, this fear allows me to avoid the risk of people judging my teaching negatively or positively. Perhaps I am revealing an errouneous belief that being a leader of a community means that I am the one with all of the great ideas and that people should teach exactly like me. However, an education community empowers individuals to be leaders with out followers. Each member is confident in their teaching, is an effective listener, and is able to self-assess objectively. Most importantly a commnunity of educators is not about me telling teachers what to do; the communication is more about telling teachers what I do.

At the middle school, where I taught five years, I was on a two person team, which consisted of myself and another teacher. Being paired up with another teacher as compared to not being on a team such as in the college I now teach, I was more inclined to talk with my team mate about the behavior our students, the lessons we were teaching, and future events that needed to be organized. I wonder if there was a different approach that we could have taken in being more of an active community? True, we did an excellent job of being a community through discipline, such as calling parents at all times not just during problems. This appears to mirroring common city communities that are facilitated by only taking care of problems and suppressing them. Communities that create positive outlets for the community provides the opportunity for those members to earn intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. In other words, the citizens are working for and with the community through activities that develop and enhance the area. Thus, as a teacher the community my students and I create should be integrated through my teaching practice so that student effort is optimized, instead of separating our work towards developing the community and their math understanding.

Maybe the communities that I have developed were actually a neighborhood since I only took care of my block of students and that was it. I did not work with the other two teams in the eighth grade or any within the school. For instance, I could have taken advantage of the sixth grade students at my middle school by creating a mentor program. Then my students could have the opportunity to teach sixth graders math, allowing them to gain a deeper understanding of basic math skills and foster positive relationships between grades. This seems like a wonderful idea but I still would be hesitant to propose a community idea such as this. What is it with my teacher attitude of “Yeah, you do what you want in your class and I’ll do the same in mine, capiche?” Why am I so shy in professing my educational ideas with other eductators? The teacher walls of my classrooms extend to my teaching philosophy, therefore boxing it in. Then there is the double standard of telling my students to work together and that a team strengthens an individual. Experience can be the greatest teacher and my experience in a educational community is very little. Thus, my confusion of a teacher community results from my cover up of continually rejecting the idea of participating in a community of educators.

I could be just one of those I am an educational nerds that just loves to talk about teaching. The irony is that I rarely talk about teaching to others, I just talk to myself. That does not sound too counstructive. I was so excited to have job interviews since it gave me the chance to be in an enviroment where teachers are challenging my educational beliefs. Of course, the interviews would have been better if there could have participated more with discussions but an interview is more about hearing what I have to say. I guess I have to wait to get hired and then we can talk more. But will I really do that, or will I let the opportunity slide? Reluctantly, I admit that I have I rarely, through out my seven years of teaching, discussed with another teacher about pedagogy. The majority of my teacher talk was about asking how was your weekend and what is going on in your life. Now this is being human and talking about each other lives is important. This communication helps relieve stress off the mind and it serves as the balances between career and life. However, there really was not a balance; all that I talked about was life and ignored educational discussions. What type of impact would there be if I found the balance in my communication within my community of educators?

What perfect timing it is that most likely my next teaching position will be at a Community College. A community college is exactly what the title suggests; a service for the community. This will give me the chance to challenge my fears and experience community in many ways, such as with my students, faculty, local, and gobal. The interesting part will be in observing how each individual community is connected. For instance, I could develop a project with another teacher where students work with informations from the local community and then publish it globally on the internet. This exemplifies how each community has unique potential in further developing the wholeness of a student and teacher. Also, I cannot allow the internet to be my cover up for not participating in a local community. Likewise, my local community should not hold me back in reaching to the thousands of educators on the internet. Again, the magical word, balance, is ringing in my ear. And now it is time for me to discover the balance in all of my educational communities!