What Advocate Means to Me
As adults, we often lose focus of the importance our role as advocator is with our young students. Children are often treated as though there opinions don’t matter as much as adults because of their age alone. In the traditional educational environment, they are trained to follow classroom rules, to play the part of student and to conform to the standards that have been set for them. With this in mind, as the dominant person in the student/teacher relationship, we must be extremely conscientious of the role we play with our minor students. Children need to know that their opinions, their presence and their emotions do matte.
Some evidence of ways that I reach my students to advocate for themselves and others include:
• Parents are called constantly for good things and bad things. My cell phone number is given out and I actively open the lines of communication between myself, the parent and the student.
• Unit objectives and expectations are explained at the beginning of each unit and lesson and students do not receive credit for assignments until the goals have been met. Not doing the work is not an option.
• Students are given choice in every lesson and unit. Student’s know that their opinion matters and they can ALWAYS come to me to ask if they can approach a standard in a different way than I have offered. Students who take on this independence are praised in the classroom.
• Every lesson has a community element to it. The goal of most units/ projects are to empower people who have been marginalized. Math allows students to look at the numerical representations of society’s norms, technology allows easy access to this real world data and critical thinking empowers students to examine to negative stereotypes and issues facing race and fiscal values for the purpose of making a change I the world.
It is my strong affirmation that is our responsibility as human beings to advocate for the rights of those who have been treated unjustly. Just as it is our role as educators to advocate for the needs of our students, it is our responsibility to teach our students to fulfill their role as the advocator for others.