October 6th, 2010

The article in our IS 101 books by Schwartz really struck me because a lot of what he touched on is so true.

 The references he made to the teacher who used a point system for her young students was exactly like what he had at my school.  I remember being in first grade in Mrs. Snyder’s class.  She had so many books in her room.  The books were organized into four different categories.  Red books were for people that just started learning how to read.  They had a red circle sticker on them.  Blue dot books for a little bit harder.  Yellow books were hard to read.  They had a lot of bigger words and more words in general.  Green dot books were the highest level books in the classroom.  Sometimes they didn’t even have pictures in them.  They were long and challenging.  We used to get a cool sticker for every book we read.  And we would have to bring books home at least once a week and read them to someone in our family.  Then they’d sign a piece of paper saying we read it, leave some comments, and the next day Mrs. Snyder would put the corresponding stickers on our reading charts.  At first I started with Blue Dot books.  But they just ended up being too easy, so I moved onto Yellow Dot books and took them home to parents.   Mom and Dad listened to me read and signed my papers and I got stickers.  There was one girl in my class, Alexandra, that brought home at least four Red Dot books home a night!  So she would get stickers for them!  It wasn’t fair at all!  Alexandra wasn’t a stupid kid either, she could have been reading Yellow Dots if she wanted to.  My goal was to read Green Dot books.  Once I had moved through all the Yellow Dot books, I moved to the Green Dot books.  I’d usually bring one Green Dot book home a night and read it to my dad downstairs.  Dad used to ask me questions about the book and make jokes after every page.  I loved reading with Dad because I always felt so proud after finishing a book.  Alexandra kept bring Red Dot books home.  But I guess there was nothing I could do about it.  At the end of the year, the student with the most stickers (books read) got a prize.  Alexandra won.  I came in second place.  A very sad second place.  Mrs. Snyder gave Alexandra a prize and I went home with nothing.  I wouldn’t have wanted to read all those Red Dot books.  They were just too easy read and very boring. 

As a child, I think I viewed learning with a “performance” attitude most of the time.  Although the case of the books was one time I didn’t let competition take over completely, most of my school career was based on approval.  School was always fun for me, but it definitely was viewed as work.  I didn’t approach school with a passionate attitude towards learning because that wasn’t how teachers had made school seem.  School was school.  We weren’t there to worry about our preferences, we were there to work.  I think Schwartz’s view education and our attitudes toward it are very accurate.  I enjoyed reading the article he wrote and comparing it to my own educational career.