TWYH chapters 6-14

I like how Erin takes her students outside of their comfort zone and gets to actually see what it is like for her students to come to her neighborhood. She finds out who is a good person and who has huge problems with the work that she is doing for these kids. I think it is a good lesson to learn when Erin’s home phone number turned up in the newspaper. She learned that not everybody is going to support you for doing the right thing. Sometimes you have to just stand up for what you think is right and go with it. Erin learned a lot about herself and her students in these chapters. This is an important step that all teachers need to take in order to relate to their students. It is also good to learn how to present yourself to important people that are interested in your work; Erin learns this lesson when she tells a story and swears during it to Steven Spielberg in a big meeting.

I think that the big lesson to be learned in this section is to always fight for what you think will benefit your students. It doesn’t matter how unpopular you are with your colleagues, the important thing is that your students are getting meaningful lessons from what you are teaching them. Erin started off her student teaching more after getting to the bottom of things and wanting to make sure that everyone got involved. However, her second year she wanted to kind of follow the rules that the school had made. She realized that she had a much harder time connecting with these students because there wasn’t as much hands on involvement. All teachers need to try and find the happy medium between breaking all of the rules and being able to connect with the majority of their students through the lessons. Erin is still learning how to do this at the end of the chapters.