What does it mean to teach? To be a teacher?

    As I've gone through the master's of teaching program at UC-Denver, I can literally feel how much I've grown. When I say grown, I mean that my frames have changed. I've learned what it means to take concepts that we've discussed in class and apply them to real-world scenarios. I've learned that though I might not know everything on my subject (secondary French), that I am still a valuable asset to my students. This is because although I am there to instruct, I still spend a great deal of every class learning- learning about my students' lives, learning about their interests, learning about the best ways to instruct them as a whole while valuing each and every student as individuals.

    I've also learned that slowly, but surely, schools are starting to understand their students. This is in large part to a shift towards culturally responsive teaching. When I first started the program a year ago, I had never heard of the term. I had been out of high school for almost 20 years, and from what I remembered, high school was a pain. Sure, I loved learning, but the abundance of homework due in every single class made it impossible to keep up while working the job I needed to keep so that I could afford daily essentials. I'm so happy that schools are finally realizing that students need to time to be teenagers as well. My current clinical teacher and I both agreed to try and keep homework assignments to an absolute minimum, because we know that not all teenagers have the privilege of free time that they can use towards completing assignments.

    I also like how teachers in high schools these days are more likely to accept latework without penalty (up to a certain extent- my CT and I informed our students we would accept up until the end of each roughly month-long unit). This means that students can still save their grades if a life-altering event occurs. When I graduated high school in 2003, if you turned it in late, teachers didn't always accept it, and 90% of the time that they did, penalty points were subtracted for the late submission.

    I guess in short, when I started this program, I started because I thought I was going to be the proverbial night in shining armor for a lot of students who had a  high-school experience similar to mine. Fortunately, education as a whole seems to realize that the way high schools were run 20 years ago isn't always best for the students. It definitely didn't offer an equitable education. Working with the group of future educators that I've been privileged enough to get to know over the past year, I can tell that we are going to continue making a difference in our students' lives.

    To answer the headline question of "What does it mean to teach?", I have to refer to one of the best educators I've had the privilege of studying under, John McDermott. He told us that when we are in our classrooms, to remember one thing above all else: "The person doing the talking is the one doing the learning." I tell myself this constantly in order to keep every student's voice in the discussions.  This will ensure that the students are being taught.