Who Am I?
I am an international student from China, and now I go to university in the U.S.. Due to the situation I have, I experienced two different education systems. I really enjoy what I’ve observed during 15 years at schools. As a teacher, I really want to incorporate positive aspects of Chinese education system with beneficial sides of American education system. Since I’ve collected a lot of my personal feedback about the two different educational ways, I can implement what I think is the most advantageous teaching way for my class. In this way, my students will get better learning experience. I want to be an enthusiastic teacher who can deliver this kind of passion to my students. There are so many students who are not willing to go to school and study. They may think homework is the toughest task in the world. Students are trying to escape from such reality. I want to make my students feel comfortable with schooling. I don’t like to force people to do things that they don’t want to do, because things will not go well if the person is not paying efforts. Thus, I want to find out a special way to have my students engage in everyday activities and teaching.
My own experience with social studies is zero. We don’t have the integrate curriculum in Chinese education system. Instead, we separate social studies into different curriculum, such as history, politics, health, etc., so every subject has its own teacher and teaching method. My experience was not that bad actually. The focus of learning subjects like history and politics is to memorize years, event, people, places, and so on. Technically, I experienced a lot of memory tests. This kind of teaching way is binary. On the one hand, students who enjoy history and politics will be doing good on exams without being bothered. Also, teaching pace can be fast. On the other hand, students will not absorb knowledge as good as teachers want. Students may not have long-term memories about what they have learned, since they don’t fully understand. I’ve observed several elementary classes in the U.S., I found that teachers would slow lecturing pace enable every student to follow class. I don’t really agree with that, because top students may get bored, then they may disturb the class.
All in all, combining two different educational systems in an appropriate way is part of my purpose as a future elementary educator.
