The Art of Theater

I am currently a freshman and still just taking my basic classes so I haven't really taken any classes pertaining to my major yet. This semester I am in Theater 281, which is classified as Theater History II. I am just taking this class for my performing arts credit so before taking this I really had not had much theater experience. In this class we study the history of theater from about the Shakespeare age to the present. We learn about the different transitions theater went through to get to where it is today. The professor for this class makes theater history so interesting for me. I have really been enjoying learning all the past genres of theater from around the world. We have been learning about things like Japanese and Indian theater, which are both types of theater that I had never heard of. It is really interesting to me to find out why our movies and theater today is the way it is because of certain things that happened in the past. When I go to movies or plays now, I have a new appreciation for everything that makes them complete. Now, I don't plan on every doing anything that involves theater in my career but I think it is going to be good just to have this knowledge on something that is different and be able to appreciate it.

I've Got an Issue: Education Major Haters

Already, in the short time that I have been in college I have found that some people have a negative opinion of education majors. While in high school I would tell adults that I planned to major in education and they would always say how great that was. Now when I mention it to my fellow peers I am sometimes responded by remarks like, “Ohhh…” and “Well, okay..” , while the conversation awkwardly ends and negative thoughts run through their mind. College students seem to think that education majors are simply people that can’t do anything else so they decide to become teachers. I think that this stereotype came about because of the large number of people, mostly girls that decide to become teachers when they don’t know what else to do or don’t really want to do anything.
Personally this makes me kind of upset because I have always had a passion for teaching. I have wanted to be a teacher for most of my life and have always loved working with kids. I feel that to be an effective teacher you have to have at least some passion about it. People are basing what they think about teachers and education majors on a certain group of students, which is not fair. I have found myself almost becoming embarrassed to tell other students what my major is, fearing the way they might judge me. This is not something that I want to do; I want to be proud of my major and my passion. If these people would just think about it, there could not be any other major without education majors to teach students in the first place.

Problems Facing Today's School Systems

In a very opinionated article about today’s public school system, an undisclosed writer talks about how the school systems are merely babysitting the students and teaching them how to memorize material instead of actually learn it. The article was titled, “American Public School Problems” and was placed on http://mb-soft.com/public2/school5.html. In this article, the author uses very strong emotion to grab the reader’s attention from the very beginning of the article. The author uses the technique of repetition to enforce the points being made. The author repeats that “the children today will not know how to think when they are adults” various times throughout the article to make his main point clear. The author also uses many current social examples to display this current problem in the school systems. From this, the reader is able to understand the broader range of this problem and its effects. I think that the author does a good job of making this topic and his effects known to the reader; yet, he does not provide the reader with possible solutions to this growing problem.

Helpul Advice for Teachers and Parents

The website, education.com is a very helpful website for teachers or for anybody who spends a lot of time with children. This website provides valuable information regarding new research on schools and learning abilities of children. This website provides many articles dealing with learning disabilities, what programs are good for students, and signs to look for in a child’s learning and interactions. This site can be very beneficial to teachers who want to improve their abilities as a teacher and want to help their students more. This website provides good information on different ways for a teacher to be more available to students and what mindset to have towards children. This website provides up to date research on various studies done on a child’s attitude towards school which allows the teacher to have a better understanding. This website also has a large amount of articles that are very effective for parents. It allows parents to know more about what is going on in schools today and allows them to know more of what they should be aware of in their child’s learning.

My Future Career

During my time here at Texas A&M University I will be getting my degree in Interdisciplinary Studies in order to eventually teach early childhood education. I have always wanted teach around the age of second grade. Throughout my whole life I have always imagined myself being an elementary school teacher. I always looked up to my teachers during school because most of them made a very big impact on my life. I feel like elementary school teachers, besides parents, are one of the most important people in a young child’s life. The child relies on their teacher for so many things at that younger age. I would love the feeling of being there when a child first learns to read or write and being there for this big accomplishment in their life. I love being there to help a child learn. It is so inspiring to see them progressively get better and better at a certain subject. One day a child can not understand something at all but then with a teachers help they can gradually start understanding it more and then to see in couple weeks, or however long it takes, they are able to read that book or do those math problems. Seeing this makes me so happy and is the main reason why I want to teach.