Teachers==Important
After my workday today, I tutored a child in the third grade. I thoroughly enjoy helping and teaching children. So I feel like volunteering with children is a great alternative to a career in teaching. It's the best of both worlds, the industry and education!
The child's homework was the start of learning division. Learning the concept of division with groups and such. It's so strange how methods of teaching the same thing change over time. Over the years, I feel like the learning of mathematics has been more and more graphically. I'm assuming that it is being done since children need to see what they are doing not just in their minds but physically. One thing I first encountered today was that the homework was trying to teach the children that math is similar to a sentence (where things can be expressed in multiple ways). For example, 12-4=8, 8-4=4, 4-4=0 can be expressed as 12 divided by 4 is 3. I certainly did not learn division by subtraction. I taught the child the multiples of 9 trick with your fingers! (I didn't learn this until about 2 years ago while volunteering at UConn) I learned multiplication the hard way with the "toy" I got for my birthday.
People all around this world have stressed the importance of math and science. I feel that knowledge in math and science is significant too, but I feel that the generations after us have to learn the importance of learning to speak and write clearly too. With the internet and new technology, I feel people are having a harder time conveying their ideas concisely (Not to mention relying on grammar checks). I include myself in this group. I hope practicing writing blog posts and writing at work will help me improve in my writing skills. I always despised writing and reading throughout most of my life but now I find both very enjoyable. I mean who could enjoy writing about a subject they have absolutely no interest in and have a minimum number of words (I think setting minimum pages/words is a terrible idea. It seems like it teaches students to express their thoughts in stretched out papers)?
In my opinion, the teaching profession should be much more respected than what it is now. They mend the minds of future generations to come. It's not the easy to teach children the fundamentals of languages, math, and science. Society should commend teachers even more because of their sacrifice for such low salaries (Well, in America at least).
P.S. Any English teacher would fail me for the terrible writing on this blog.