Many thoughts have been going through my mind the last few days. I sat in on an academically gifted classroom today. It was a fifth grade math class. I learned a lot of gifted education and how children qualify. I also learned that even gifted children don't always know the answers, nor do they never have difficulty with school work. I am sure many times information in class is boring for them, but today I did not see a single student not get a question wrong. I saw multiple students work on math problems two, three, or even more times. Though gifted children need to be challenged, I don’t think we should assume that they always know what is going on anymore then we should expect a student with a learning disability to always need help.
I have been thinking about why I want to be a teacher. This is not an easy question to answer. I applied for a small scholarship a few months back, and I was asked why I want to be a special education teacher. I have been asked this before by people, and many times I do not know what to say.
I have thought about teaching for years. At one point I wanted to be an art teacher (I used to love art, though I haven’t done any art in years now. My favorite medium was always charcoal. Maybe I can get back into it at some point. I also love taking photos.). For many years I was going to be a social studies teacher, so I could spread my passion for history with others. Then, I was going to be a high school English teacher, because I was interested in teaching writing, and at one time a middle school English teacher. Eventually, I thought there was great need for special education teachers, and I had personal experience with special education, so I could make a positive impact with my students. Now that I am in North Carolina, I also thought of gifted education, and I think being a reading specialist would be cool as well, since I am passionate about reading and reading research. I guess since reading has impacted my life in such a difficult and huge way, I will always be interested in reading research.
I believe all students are gifted. I believe we all have special abilities and strengths in different areas. I fully believe in Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. I believe that we need to help students find their abilities. For students who have disabilities, we need to emphasis their abilities and not just their disabilities, which I know I have said before.
I hope that I can spread my love for writing to students as well and generally educate them about many things of interest. If I can inspire one child, I think that will make a difference.
On another note, I found out today that there is a journal of poetry therapy. That sounds like a journal that I should subscribe to.
Below is a photo of an item I picked up this past weekend at Peak Fest in Apex, NC. I picked up some cute stuff there.
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