Sarah Palin, Advocate for Children

Sarah Palin spoke tonight in her acceptance speech for the Republican Party’s nomination for Vice President. She spoke a lot about her family and how proud she was of all of them, she spoke about how she has more experience compared to er party’s rival, Senator Obama. She mentioned one key thing, one thing that makes her different than any other candidate, in either the Presidential or the Vice Presidential nominee, and that is that she would be an advocate for children who have disabilities.

Having a special needs advocate in office for children is good in theory, but we must not forget that there are millions of children who go undiagnosed with disabilities every year. I was in middle school before I was diagnosed with ADD and dyslexia, which some would say is too long to go to school without anyone noticing. Now I went to many different high schools. I started out in St Mary’s (Cardinal Mccaricks) then I went to Sayreville War Memorial High School. From there I went on to NJ Regional Day School, and finally Collier High School. After high school I went to Brookdale Community College and finally Delaware Technical and Community College. Needless to say, I went to a lot of different schools. None of the schools were alike in anyway.

In high school, the teachers will teach you something one way, and depending on how long they have been teaching, they will not even try explaining it another way. Why? Because the majority of the kids learned it that way and if you don’t then you have the problem. I guess a percentage is fine for them. I’ve long thought about becoming a teacher, the problem with that is there are so many different rules you need to follow. The students need to learn X amount of things by the end of the semester, and by that time, they are mainly studying for the finals and won’t remember anything after it is over.

I remember one of my teachers, a US history teacher who was leaving after the school year to return to Colorado, made us do some interesting assignments. One of them was a PowerPoint presentation representing different colonies. The requirements were that you used interesting graphics, sound effects and a colorful background, this way he wouldn’t be bored and neither would anyone else. He then wrote up the test for the 13 colonies based on our presentations. One of the questions was that we had to match up who gave the presentation to that state.

If I were to be a teacher, I would let him, and the rest of my teachers who wouldn’t conform guide me. Of course doing so would probably get my teaching license revoked. Granted I could probably do that in a special ed environment, but nonetheless I believe that kids, who are perfectly normal by today’s standards, need to have their minds stimulated in alternative ways. What good is it if you make them learn by the book, for the book?

Any teacher can get up there and lecture from the book, maybe even give a PowerPoint presentation from the book, but if that is the case then why be a teacher, when the book obviously has the answers? Teachers should be there to stimulate and educate. To go beyond the book, to make learning come alive, not to make learning a dull experience.

I started this out by saying that Sarah Palin would be an advocate for disabled children. While I applaud her for that, I do not believe that disabled children, should get any better an education than students in a “normal classroom environment”. Why can’t all students do those kinds of fun presentations? If you want to teach about cameras, then why not make a giant camera obscura that you can climb into? If you want to teach about weight distribution, then why not have the students make bed of nails? Reading about it and doing it are completely different things, I believe that teachers are rushed, which makes the drop out rate in this country unbelievably high.

What is the point of the Regions test, if the only thing the students learned was from a book instead of experience? Knowing Shakespeare is great, but only reading Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet because you are short on time is ridiculous. Find a different way to teach it, show the movie, go to Shakespeare in the park, put on a school play all your own, the point is teachers, find a way to make learning fun and don’t be the kind of teacher who you had in high school.

There is an old saying that the best way to learn something is to teach, if that is the case then maybe openning up the way you teach your students could help you learn a thing or two about yourself. Nine months may seem like a long time to the high school class you have, but if you think about it, it is only a short time in their lives, one that which will be gone just as soon as it had started, you may remember some of your students, but if you don’t step up as a teacher, then what is the chances that they will remember you years down the road? Maybe by teaching things that aren’t traditional you will teach them not to be conventional, maybe you will teach them not to conform, that standing out is okay and that being your own person will help you reach far greater happiness than if you conform to what people think you should be. You will only be in their lives for a moment, after that moment you can fade away, or you can stand out. The choice is yours.