Secret Sauce

Ms. G’s Secret Sauce.

I enjoyed reading the excerpts from the Freedom Writers Diary as well as looking at the way they tied in with the ingredients listed in the jar. I think it would be interesting to compare both of these to UMF’s teaching standards. Some of the ingredients on the list closely correlate to the 10 standards, I find this highly intriguing. The one that I wanted to read was #1 Believe in your students. My reasons…

I am going to be teaching at the middle school level and teaching special education. In some cases I will have gifted students that will want to go beyond the “Maine Standards realm” and they will need a strong supporter that will not try and hold them back or tell them that they have already done enough. I will need to believe in that student to be able to challenge them accordingly. In other cases I will have students that have given up on themselves and know that most of the other teachers have given up on them as well. For these students I will not only believe in them but encourage them to believe in themselves. This will be a challenge; however I feel that I am up for it as I believe that everyone has a natural ability that no one else has, and by finding and building on this I can build confidence in my students. Being confident in you is the first step in believing in yourself.

We can all encourage our students to do what we ask but showing them that they already know something and encouraging them to want to know more is very powerful.