You don’t need cordon bleu to make an amazing impact. A well made flavorful mac and cheese is more than enough any day of the week. I think that if we do our job to the best of our abilities and we keep improving our recipe, we will be great!

I don’t know if you need to be vulnerable to be an educator. I mean if you look at the definition of vulnerable, you get:
1.
capable of or susceptible to being wounded or hurt, as by a weapon:
a vulnerable part of the body.
2.
open to moral attack, criticism, temptation, etc.:
an argument vulnerable to refutation; He is vulnerable to bribery.
What you probably meant was that we need to be open with our emotions if we want to be successful educators. We need to be the Robin Hoods of education

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Great post. Great model and never doubt for a second that you are a much better model than those gracing the covers of magazines!!!

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I think you are going to be a wonderful teacher ?

I bet if you ever wrote your autobiography, it would be flying off the shelves like ice cream on an especially hot day :-))
Thanks for sharing!

I am sorry to say that I really really enjoyed reading your blog. I know it sounds awful that I laughed at your plights :-). It just goes to show what a talented English major you are … What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger :-)))

I think the movement should start from the top down and from the bottom up at the same time. Kids should be ready to be led to the well and teachers should be available to lead them there.
Regardless, I loved your story Karen. If only more teachers were quite like yours.

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Freire’s views on education are a product of his time and environment: poor Brazil in the 60s and the economic and social disparities between classes. Nowadays, we have another form of disparity independent learning vs. mindless learning. So, in that respect, Freire’s views still apply to reconcile these two disparate pedagogies, in my opinion, of course :-).

You could assign chapters for students or groups of students to present to the class and you can be the moderator rather than the lecturer, thus achieving two goals: a) they are forced to learn at least the chapters assigned to them because and b) you introduce critical thinking and force the students to go above and beyond, rather than just bearing the brunt of the lecture.

History is just one of the aspects that are dictated by the winner and exactly why we need critical thinking. If we grow up believing what is written in history books, we will never live the truth. There is no universal truth, it is rather a complex puzzle that needs to be completed with pieces in more than one source.