A New Journey
--Kristine Specht
We enter into education as people who do care enough to change what has been, to influence the world by incorporating some positive ways that we have experienced or to figure out a better way together on a new journey. It is our job to teach how we can help the young ones think in a way that they can recognize their own truths. We must teach those to think for themselves and also how to recognize a lie and its symptoms.
EPISODE 2 POEM
The Undeniable Pressures of Existence
By Patricia Fargnoli
How we are pushed past the point of exhaustion and how to relate as a teacher. Not all of us are in our element. What can we do to recognize those who are not in their elements? How can we strive to provide a comfortable space for all?
Future is unknown. What we need to do is to prepare our children to face the unpredictable, which is what the future is.
Andre Roberfroid, Former President and Associate of Montessori International
Education is not about creating somebody ready to fit into a preorganized position, so the purpose of education is much broader. It's to help people become full human beings and members of the human community.
The 2015 podcast about racism in education, becomes more relevant in a year that protests against police brutality toward people of color have come to the forefront of everyone's television. Connecting these issues are not far stretched as Michael Brown's mother is featured on the podcast crying out in desperation, "You know how many black men graduate? ... Not many." A mother who was bussed to Francis Howl school, while Michael Brown graduated from Normandy School Collaborative, the non-accredited school, 3 weeks prior to his murder.
Hearing this story is important, because it points to how the Education System is affected by racism and by political aspects of the System.
THE PROBLEM WE ALL LIVE WITH - Podcast
FREE WRITE
THIS IS THE YEAR
THIS IS THE YEAR THAT ENDED A LONG CAREER
THAT 13 YEARS OF UC EXPERIENCE FELT LIKE IT WENT NO WHERE,
BUT EMERGES A TEACHER OUT OF PASSION.
WHERE I FOUND MY PLACE AND HAD TIME TO THINK
AND TIME FINALLY STOOD STILL
AS I HAD ALWAYS WISHED IT COULD.
I CAUGHT MY BREATH AND HELD MY FIST HIGH
AND MARCHED WITH THOSE WHO GAVE A DAMN
TO FINALLY BE AND TO DO SOMETHING
FOR WHAT HAS BEEN IGNORED TOO LONG
MOMENTS WERE WASTED;
NOW IT'S TIME FOR IMPORTANT THINGS AND
IT'S A YEAR MOTHERS FIND TIME TO SEE THEIR CHILDREN.
THIS IS THE YEAR.
SEPTEMBER 2020
Dear Greg Michie,
I am recording some of my thoughts today to help me remember as I go through this class "Foundations of Learning" at the University of Redlands with Brian Charest. We are nearing the end of the class and words in your book keep popping in my head many weeks later, unlike some of the other readings that I only can reference through my notes. I really appreciated the practicality of it all. Learning to teach in this time and space is particularly strange, and imagining ourselves, or at least myself in a teaching space sometimes does still freak me out to be honest, but my goal remains to be someone I wish my kids had as a teacher. I know that as a 40-year-old mom of two high school graduates, your words reflecting on the pregnant teenager in your book was so heart-warming and raw. I was 8 months pregnant at graduation when I walked across the stage. It was a difficult journey absolutely to say the least and I appreciate your honest look at these very real predicaments that are the lives of students. The story about how the girls wrote to Sandra Cisneros inspired me to ask you to visit us virtually, in our space, to see if you might offer us some advice and encouragement of how to get through this pandemic during this election time, and still be able to connect to our future students to offer ourselves to them in a way that you have to your students. How were you able to maintain those relationships? It would mean so much to me and I know I would echo that for other students in our class if you have the time to.
Sincerely,
Kristine Specht
Emailing Greg Mitchie
HOLLER IF YOU HEAR ME: THE EDUCATION OF A TEACHER AND HIS STUDENTS
Page 53
At best, they were being treated as less than adequate; at worst, they were being demonized.
Page 93
nothing is going to change the fact that a person is and always will remain a human being.
Page 177
I knew that the birth of a baby shouldn't mean that girl had been sentenced to an unfulfilling life, I also realized that it made finishing her education that much more difficult.
FreeWRITE
On Learning, Friendship, & Being Seen
Dear Future Student:
You may not realize this, but all the things you negatively think about yourself are not worth spending any amount of time. It will only trip you up. Learning can only happen when you let go of all that and focus in on what is ahead. All the people with you don't have to be a part of your journey if you don't want them to. Only you get to choose who can join and who is left behind. See yourself first and them you can be seen the way you want to. Know who you are, what will you stand for and what will you stumble on. You may feel powerless, but you have the POWER.
FREE WRITE
“I remember when walks home from school were cutting right through the Van Nuys Drive-In,
I remember when I could walk right into a liquor store and buy a pack of cigarettes after getting off the bus,
I remember doing my homework at my friends' house while he played piano practice”
“I remember my summer school days of taking courses that we wanted to, not because we had to,
I remember long nights at the football field and early mornings on the bus,
I remember passing of the spiral notebook, our memorialized letters to each other to communicate with friends during the day”
-Kristine Specht