“Working the Gap”, the gap being “ the enormous space between what is and what could be.”
In my efforts of creating a positive environment for all students I will carefully observe all the signals coming from the classroom, analyzing, evaluating, and finding the best options for customizing teaching according to what students’ need to learn, observe, and understand.
Ayers, used to mention bridges that will fill up the gap in students’ understanding. Connecting these bridges will be essential to fulfill students’ and parents’ dreams, skills, experiences, and knowledge. How to do that will be not an easy task especially for a group of five graders that do not realize yet the importance of being fully immersed in the learning process.
Clearly, I will have to learn to connect bridges for each and every student, to engage, interact, and transfer positive energy to each and every one of them in order to capture their interest and involvement. In the next five years I will have to learn ways to give them a reason to follow along, taking into consideration the environments, cultures, ways of thinking, and norms that affected their development and learning ability at a given point in time. Each teacher who will deliver appropriate instruction will have to understand, adjust, and continually evolve professionally to a point where quality instruction within United States and international standards can be achieved.
What could and have to be is an educational process that will prepare students for sustainable careers, personal growth, and learning skills that will allow them to survive in the current global economy. Critical thinking, initiative, problem solving abilities, creativity, imagination, and more than anything, the ability to continuously learn, will be very important.
Working the gap between what is and what could be will be influenced by a combination of factors involving policy makers, experts in the field of teaching, and the ability to use current advances in technology to make teachers voices heard and quality teaching generalized as a standard. Practitioners’ experience from schools should be combined with data and information received from across the globe to understand what is working and what is not.
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