Achievement Triangle

When we look at the future, it is clear that the students of tomorrow are continually changing and evolving. The students need to know different information because anyone can look up who was President in 1924 on any computer in less than 10 seconds. We need to teach our children how to think. Teachers need to be educated on how to educate and how to bring about deep meaningful thought. Howard talks about  an achievement triangle,  a way to define the dimensions of knowing and will help us improve our educational quality (p 126). I chose to focus this blog entry on this topic because I believe this is one of the critical components of teaching in any school, and helping every student regardless of their background or culture.

The achievement triangle consists of three parts; knowing myself, knowing my students and knowing my practice. The first part Howard focuses on is "knowing my practice". Teachers of all schools should be highly qualified and prepared to teach their classrooms. In some cases, students who attend lower income schools do not have teachers like this. Howard says, "White teachers know our practice well" (p126). Having a broad range of foundational knowledge helps us understand what we are going to be teaching from all aspects. As teachers, we need to be qualified and ready to teach our students.

The second part of the achievement is "knowing myself". I believe this is what Howard was talking about when he talks about White Identity. If we know that there are differences between our students and ourselves, and address that, maybe it can bring about change. He also talks about how, "Change begins with us, as White teachers in multi racial schools" (p127).  Teachers need to know themselves, know how they learn, know what kind of person and teacher they are. I think this is important because each teacher is responsible for the learning of their students. If a teacher is going to only teach they way they learn, that might reach less than half the class. If the teacher is aware of the way they learn, and also knows how to teach the subject in a different way, the potential for learning grows within that classroom.

The last part is "knowing my students". "The extent to which we can know who our students are is the extent to which we can avoid projecting onto them our own imagine assumptions and biases" (p127) This kind of thing is what is the heart of teaching I think. If we can somehow be aware of these areas and strive to make these three parts work together I think that we can start to bring about change in the world. Knowing students, understanding their backgrounds, truly caring for their education, and believing in them is our duty as teachers.

This part of the book really stuck out to me because it was a good way to visualize what he has been talking about. Hooray for visual learners! Looking at this model, it makes sense that each of these parts of knowing are critical for teachers of diverse learners. One quote that really sums this up well is this, "For those of us who choose to teach in racially diverse schools, this knowing compromises these four arenas: that race matters, that change begins with us, that beliefs greatly influence outcomes, and that teaching is a calling,not just a job" (p126).

If I want to teach according to my worldview, then I must know myself in order to teach my students. I like to think of it as that is my contact lenses. They are in my eyes and that is how I view the world all the time. My practice would be my reading glasses, that I wear to see what I need to teach and understand my profession well in order to teach it well. And knowing my students will bring about a kind of understanding that will hopefully transfer into understanding how they learn.