Roster # 11

Pete Penksa

Professor Shkorupa

Edu 202 – 3001

21 March 2022

The Students Understand the Teacher, and the Teacher Understands Them

It may sound cliché, but I want to become a teacher so that I can help people. I want to

help young adults realize that they are capable of anything that they put their minds to if they put

others first and know precisely what they want in life. Self-fulfillment in your career often comes

from doing something you are talented at, and public speaking and explaining things in a way

that everyone understands comes naturally to me. My field observation was so exciting, I know

for certain that I want to become a high school physical education teacher. Years down the road I

can see myself coaching the golf team and being the most admired teacher in the entire school.

Throughout my life, I have possessed the potential to be someone great, but I was a horrible

person during high school who wasted nearly every opportunity given to me. As a teacher, I will

recognize wasted potential and bring it out by showing people the Law of Attraction. I am

mindful that people learn in many ways; after taking an inventory of philosophies of education,

the results indicate that I will be a well-rounded teacher that everyone will understand. My sense

of humor won me awards in school, and I will use it to make my discussions so entertaining that

the students will love coming to my class.

First, let me describe what I believe to be the purpose of high school education. A high

school is a place filled with opportunities to learn and grow as a person, if you perceive it that

way. High school should get you prepared for college or your future career, while you
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subconsciously teach yourself how to interact with peers. When I am a teacher, I will motivate

my students to make use of these opportunities, because you only get one chance at high school.

I have always been an above-average learner in school. Straight A student in elementary

and middle school, with honors classes too. Something changed in high school though. I no

longer desired to be the best at every subject. I knew that Centennial High School was on a block

schedule, meaning you get to take eight classes each year instead of the normal six. Only needing

24 credits to graduate, I knew that I could do it in less than three years if I desired. So, I chose

not to put forth the same effort in high school. I was a latchkey kid, a student that went home

from school to an empty house. Sadly, I preferred it that way because I could do whatever I

wanted after school. Instead of doing homework, I could be found at the skatepark every

afternoon. I hid my report cards from my parents, ditched class often, and then answered the

phone when the school called home on a recorded message to say that I was absent. I ended up

graduating by the skin of my teeth through summer school my senior year. Thankfully I have my

life back on track now and I am currently maintaining a 4.0-grade point average in college. Once

teaching, I am going to be prepared for all the tricks that students will try to use to manipulate

me because I was that kid with all the tricks myself once. If they try to play dumb with me, I will

see right through it because I will know them individually. Then I will make sure their parents

get involved. My parents would have never let me get away with all the things I did in high

school if they had the slightest inclination as to what I was doing with my free time.

Getting parents involved is key to helping a student reach their full learning potential.

After all, the parents of the child should know more about the child’s potential than the teacher.

“Parents can advocate for more rigorous academic courses, higher scores on standardized tests,

greater access to technology, or other practices” (Sadker, p. 320). It is worth noting that I will
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never refer to my students as kids because I think they deserve more respect than that. Students

will know from day one that they are going to be treated as young adults, which also comes with

being held to a college standard. This displays that I respect them enough to know that they are

capable of being responsible. Children are smarter than most people give them credit for, but

different students have different learning modalities. Or as Howard Gardner puts it, multiple

intelligences. Upon taking the multiple intelligence test, I found that I am primarily a visual

learner, meaning I am excellent at remembering pictures or diagrams that explain a topic.

Finding out about my learning style has helped me study for my college classes immensely. A

good teacher should know all eight learning styles if they wish to have every student learning at

the peak of their ability. With that, I believe a good teacher should also be able to blend the five

philosophies of education into their lesson plans. Saying that a student should get the right to

choose all the material they learn would not be fair. Saying that a student should not get the right

to choose what they learn in high school would not be fair either. Therefore, I tend to fall

somewhere in the middle of the student and teacher-centered learning philosophies.

Another thing a teacher should consider is whether they fall under the “wounded healer”

or the “divine child” archetypes because I have concluded that these people, like myself, would

be more likely to fall victim to countertransference. Countertransference is usually referred to in

therapy, but it can be applied to anyone in a position of authority, including teachers. It occurs

when you start treating a student in a different way than normal because of personal feelings that

you have developed, and it can be quite dangerous if your emotions are going unacknowledged.

Awareness of the countertransference phenomenon may be the only way to transform it into

something useful if you can inform the student how they may be making others feel about them.
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I can see myself putting so much time into my lesson plans and coaching lectures, the

performances I put on for my students will be a show worthy to rival Cirque Du Soleil. In all my

years of making people laugh I have realized that if you can relate your humor to the work, your

jokes are much more likely to be accepted. They also come across as wittier, at the price of some

corniness. If a student told a joke in class that is related to the subject, I would support the class

clown because it makes learning fun, and it easily could help the rest of the students retain the

information. When I was in high school and middle school, I found it much harder to be myself

around my teachers because they did not appreciate my sense of humor the way my elementary

school teachers did. It makes me emotional when writing this, but by the time I was a senior in

high school, I hated most of my teachers for not understanding me and my potential. There was

only one faculty member in high school who made me feel I had potential, and that was the dean.

This will not be the case when I am a teacher, because my main goal is to meet students like me

and help them realize they are capable of anything they put their minds to. The problem is that

knowing what you want in life can be quite difficult to figure out while you are in high school.

It takes meditation to find your calling in life, no matter who you are. Students will be

taught to focus on the future and the things they are grateful for, not the negative stuff that has

happened in the past. When one puts helping others first while at the same time knowing exactly

what they want in life, one can manifest literally anything. That is the simplest way I have been

able to tell people how to practice the Law of Attraction, but it is so much more than that. I could

lecture about manifestation all day, but the only way someone can understand the power of the

Law of Attraction is by experiencing it for themselves by looking at themselves in the mirror.

Motivating students may be the single biggest reason I want to be a teacher, and motivation is

literally the first thing in the job description of a physical education teacher and coach. That,
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coupled with my obsession for watching and playing sports makes it a no-brainer for me to teach

PE. Five years from now I see my students holding up the State Championship for golf. I can

also see an increase for teacher wages in Nevada, since everyone already seems to agree that

teachers do not make enough money. Being an optimist, I see everything getting better in five

years. Especially because they will have me teaching in the school district.

Students are going to remember me as the coolest teacher they ever had. They will

remember me talking to them like regular people, not as an authority figure in their life who has

a script written on how to help them. There is no exact script on how to help a student, because

everyone has such an incredibly different life. You must learn their story first, which can only

happen if they are willing to trust you enough to show you who they really are. The teacher I

observed told me that the relationships you make with the students are the most rewarding part of

being a teacher, and I cannot wait to meet my class.

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Works Cited

Sadker, Myra, and David Miller Sadker. Teachers, Schools, and Society. 6th ed., McGraw-Hill,
2008.