Fear is everywhere. It’s in our culture, society, institutions,
and workplace. It is especially in our
classrooms. It is found in our teachers,
students, school administration, colleagues, and parents. The school walls are
painted with fear. It disconnects and paralyzes our school community from
teaching, learning and growing but we can go beyond it.
Our school system creates fear through a cycle of
disconnections between all members of our school community and in our
conscience. Teachers and students are separated by a grading system which
allows the teacher to be completely in power. Power always creates fear. Teachers
fear not being a good enough teacher, being evaluated based on standardize test
scores, and they fear their students’ behaviors and disabilities. Colleagues
fear collaboration in the event that their ideas would be stolen and they won’t
gain recognition for them. Administrations fear law suits and that their school
might not receive a good annual report card and as result close down. Parents
fear that their children are not getting a good education and are single out.
There is no trust where fear exists. This creates a disconnected environment, a
place where fear hinders learning, growth, a sense of community, and self-awareness.
Students have other fears besides failing. They fear having
their ignorance exposed, prejudice challenged and looking foolish in front of
their peers. Students can hide behind their books, desk, behavior,
disabilities, and silence out of fear. Teachers also bring other fears into the
classroom such as their own personal fears and reflected it onto the students,
which makes the teacher and student relationship more disconnected. Also, the
school’s prejudice of quickly diagnosing our children as brain death, divides
us completely.
We need to get connected to conquer some fears in our school.
The whole school community needs to be there for the students. Teacher must be prepared
to handle all types of students and get rid of their stereotypical ideas and
find an “out of the box” way to teach our children. Administration needs to find a better way to
evaluate our teachers’ and students’ performance. Students need a voice in their own education
to gain empowerment, parent and teacher need to communicate better, and teachers
need to not to teach only for the standardize test, doing all these things will
reconnect us and eliminate some fears.
The only fear the school community can embrace is the fear of our future in the
hands of our students. This why we must reconnect in order for all of us to
grow, learn, have a sense of community, and go beyond our fear
for the sake of our students, ourselves, and our future.
Carolyn Jobes-Padellan
Student at
Touro College, Brooklyn NY
No comments:
Post a Comment