I was talking to a teacher recently, who came to teaching after two other careers - one in Law. She said that she was finally drawn to working with children, as she put it, at the early end of the spectrum, rather than when they encountered the judicial system as adults.
Hearing her put it that way suddenly set of a sequence of associations in my head.
Exhibit 1.
Whenever I think about the health-care system, especially in developed countries, it seems so skewed. Huge amounts of money are spent on care of acute illnesses. In comparison, a lot less is spent on preventative medicine. [e.g. How much do we spend on promoting exercise and preventing obesity, compared to treating diabetes, heart disease, etc.] And, sadly, developing countries tend to copy the rich countries in this regard.
Okay, that is just the way I feel.
Exhibit 2.
When ever I need to explain something, I find it very difficult not to start at the very beginning. I think I get this from my father.
Here are two examples. When my son asked me to tell him the story of Passover, I had to begin with Abraham. If you don't know who Abraham is, how can understand Jacob, and his 12 sons. And if don't get that, then you won't understand the context of the Israelite slavery in Egypt.
Today the same son wanted to know what the equivalent to an architect is for other (non-Civil) branches of engineering; specifically car design.
I see no logic in my answer now, but I began by explaining how in the beginning all engineering was Military Engineering, and how the first branch from this was Civil Engineering, and how things like Mechanical Engineering are much newer, so the corresponding design specializations are also much newer, and some are not yet well-established.
Anyway, it is just me - I need to start at the very beginning for every little thing.
Exhibit 3.
I argue, from a theoretical perspective, that I am drawn to teaching Math, and maybe Science, in middle school (6th-8th).
Why?
I am an engineer and scientist by training and profession. So I would be much more at home teaching science. So why teach math?
I argue that you can't be a good scientist if you are scared of math. Also, I believe that math taught alongside physics makes the math more interesting, and the physics much easier.
Why middle school?
I have this bias that elementary math education is only about arithmetic. I want to catch the children at the point that they realize that math is more than just arithmetic. That is where I feel the excitement kicks in. That's the best time to catch them.
Both these ideas may be valid or not.
Exhibit 4.
My wife and I have a discussion once - If you believe that independent/private schools are better than you local public school, and if you have the money for only 3-4 years of private school, which 3-4 years would you choose?
One valid school of thought is that it is all about college, so sink you money into a good college preparatory high school.
But then you could argue, that if you don't have your study habits and academic foundation formed in middle school, then however good the high school, you are not going to be able to take advantage of it.
I personally argued for the first 4 years of elementary school. My argument was that children have to like school - and elementary school decides that. If your child does not like school, then everything else after that is wasted.
Maybe true, maybe not.
What I realized today is that all this seems to point to my wanting to get to the root of every chain of events, or of every 'problem.'
This suggests that I'd probably be happiest teaching the youngest group of children that I can enjoy working with. 3rd-5th?
No comments:
Post a Comment