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Marianna Sidella

Eng1, ACESPRING2018

May 08, 2018

Literature Review Essay – Teaching is a work for heart

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”

Those words belong to Nelson Mandela a figure that through his writing and ideas won

the apartheid in South Africa. But what is education? In which way can education

impact our lives? If somebody would have ask me twenty years ago I would say

education is boring, going to school is boring, if I wanted to learn something I would go

library and pull out a book. But one day this idea changed, how it changed you would

ask me, the answer is Claudio Menga. Claudio Menga is the best teacher I have had. I

was 16 years old and in high school, one day my Italian teacher was sick so we had a

sub teacher. Claudio Menga. I remember like it happened yesterday when walked into

the class and told us: “ We can waste those two hours of our time or I can change your

life”. I had my book with me, Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, at first I thought

“please leave me alone I want just read and listen to my music”. So without answering,

I got my book and I started reading. My classmates (all girls) thought he was attractive

and sit around his desk. He asked them if they have ever heard about Socrates. They

shook their heads indicating “no”. So he would start talking about his man that lived in

Ancient Greece and would go around the Polis asking everybody “I know that I am

intelligent because I know that I know nothing. What do you know?” , at that point, I

turned off the volume of my music and pretending I was still reading my book I

listened to everything he had to tell us about Socrates. One of the quotes that really got
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me was “There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance”. After that day I

was not the same, I could either waste my time or change my life, so I decided that I

wanted to be educated and keep studying. And here I am 19 years later keep studying,

reading and choosing the “one good “ that Socrates talked about: “knowledge”.

Education is considered the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction,

especially at a school or university. But what’s one of the most important aspect of

school? If I would ask that to Richard Rodriguez, he will answer that it was his teachers

that become mentors during the school years to push him to study and became the

famous writer he is today. When Richard Rodriguez entered first grade at Sacred Heart

School in Sacramento, California, his English vocabulary consisted of barely fifty

words. All his classmates were white. He kept quiet, listening to the sounds of middle-

class American speech, and feeling alone. Thanks to the support of his teachers this

didn’t stop him to study and improve his English: Rodriguez earned a degree in

English at Stanford and one in philosophy at Columbia. Stronger is the bond between

teacher and student, higher are the chances that the student will be successful in

school, the relationship between teacher and student is really important and will

influence the success or the failure of a student during the process of education.

A teacher can be what Mary Pipher calls a “Change Agent”. Mary Pipher is a

therapist and a writer that emphasizes how important is writing in order to connect and

empathize with other human beings, so it is possible to change the way human beings

interact with one another and think about each other. She focuses on a set of criteria

that new writers can apply to their writing in order to be a “change agent,” or a writer

who composes “change writing.” Contempt, defensiveness, fear, respect, empathy,

connection, clarity, perspective, tone, timing, resistance, hope. Those are the criteria

that writer should use in order to be a change agent. If we transfer some of those criteria
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to a teacher will have a “change agent” if we want to use Mary Pipher’s or a champion

in a kid education using Rita Person’s definition.

Rita F. Pierson is a professional educator since 1972, she taught elementary school,

junior high and special education. She was not just a teacher but she also enhanced her

career as counselor. In each of her roles, she left a special message to all the other

people in her same role : the importance of getting to know the students, show them

how much they matter and support them in their growth, even if it was modest.

Joylene Wagner, musicianship teacher with the Los Angeles Children's Chorus and

editorialist for LA Times also heard Rita Pearson at TED Talk and she was intrigued by

her argument “Every kid needs a Champion” underlining the importance of the

relationship between a student and his/her teacher. Furthermore they both convene that

"All learning is understanding relationships" as George Washington Carver stated.

As a reference to what has been said so far, I want to report a study conducted in

1993 by Ellen A. Skinner, now professor of Human Development & Psychology. Her

report was called Motivation in the classroom: Reciprocal effects of teacher behavior

and student engagement across the school year published on the Journal of

Educational Psychology. The author examined the effects of teacher’s behavioural and

emotional engagement during the school year on 144 children's of age between eight

and ten years old. This study confirmed the importance of the student–teacher

relationship: teacher involvement was central to children's experiences in the classroom

and that teacher support and engagement improved children's motivation across the

school year.

Many are the teachers today that want to underline the importance of the

relationship teacher-student and how a teacher can make the difference in a student
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education. Teacher has to work the magic and make the difference in students’ life.

Another important aspect for teacher now is to work effectively with students of diverse

racial, ethnic, social class, and language backgrounds.

Regarding “the magic” what caught my attention was a video on one of TED Talks.

The video was called “Teach teachers how to create magic” and Christopher Emdin

was on stage. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics, Science

and Technology at Teachers College, Columbia University. He focuses his attention on

how can Magic can be thought to future teacher. What is the magic he is talking about?

For Christopher magic can be found at rap shows, barbershop banter or at Sunday

services. Christopher suggest “You've got to go in there and hang out at the barbershop,

you've got to attend that black church, and you've got to view those folks that have the

power to engage and just take notes on what they do”. He started a project at his

university where all the students come in the classroom and watch rap concerts so that

they can watch the way the rappers move and talk and study the metaphors and

analogies and start learning little things that are the keys to magic. This is how you can

teach the magic and “make the classroom come alive”(Emdin, Christopher).

Regarding working with student of different ethnicities Sonia Nieto noticed that

teacher needs a better way to interact with students that come from different cultural

background. Sonia Nieto is Professor Emerita of Language, Literacy and Culture at the

School of Education, University of Massachusetts Amherst . She argues that teachers

today need to modify their approach , they need to be more “patient, tolerant, curious,

creative, eager to learn, and most important, non-authoritarian with students” Sonia

quotes Lizette Roman words in her article . "Placing equity front and center: some

thoughts on transforming teacher education for a new century” published on the Journal

of Teacher Education. So in this article Sonia Nieto proposes three ways to make equity
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the core concept of school programs: take a stand on social justice and diversity, make

social justice ubiquitous in teacher education, and promote teaching as a life-long

journey of transformation.

In the past education was also the result of a private need to improve one's linguistic

competence, it can be a path entirely of people who are far from schools but become a

fundamental goal in the life of a person. It comes to my mind Malcolm X that from the

jail felt the need to speak on behalf of all the African American people in the United

States so he started a process of self-education. He struggled to find his voice and his

style, but he didn't let the circumstances and his sour stop him. He had to learn to use

the most appropriate terms and ways to communicate his thoughts and he did it from

prison, he turned his sentence into an essential passage for freedom. The process of

self-education is even simpler today since the advent of technology and internet. In

particular, today with Wikipedia we can learn everything about any person or event that

we are not aware of. We also have tools that can substitute a real lecture , for example if

we need to prepare for the placement test in math for College we can go online and

follow step by step a program that will help to success. This is possible thanks to

invention of a young man that was working as hedge fund analyst in Boston and started

tutoring his cousins remotely so he started uploading math tutorials on You Tube. That

was in 2004, today this young men who’s name is Sal Khan founder of the Khan

Academy has up to 100 million registered users from all over the world. At the

beginning he thought Kahn Academy "it's a good supplement. It's good for motivated

students. It's good for maybe home-schoolers." . Then he started to receive letters from

teacher saying, "We've used your videos to flip the classroom. You've given the

lectures, so now what we do --" So, in TED talks “Let’s Use Video to Reinvent”, Sal

explained that Education Khan Academy can be a powerful tool for teacher to put aside
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for a moment the traditional method of teaching offering videos about complete math

curricula and other subjects. He invites teachers to give students video lectures to watch

at home and do exercises and homework in class, so the teachers can go around the class

and help the students, also the student can give peer review and be more interactive with

each other. This will give the chance to the teacher to have a closer relationship with

students.

As a student I believe that a teacher/professor is an important figure in every student.

Thanks to the connection between the student and the teacher education become a

fundamental goal in students’ lives. In my case was the strong bond that I had with my

philosophy teacher that was my mentor and my guide during high school that lead me

to education and made me feel thirst for knowledge.

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Work Cited

Emdin, Christopher. “Teach teachers how to create magic”. TED: Ideas Worth Spreading,

October 2013,

https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_emdin_teach_teachers_how_to_create_magic/t

ranscript?referrer=playlist-talks_from_inspiring_teachers

Khan, Sal. “Let’s Use Video to Reinvent Education.” TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, Mar

2011,

https://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education?refe

rrer=playlist-re_imagining_school#t-1237971

Malcolm X, Coming to an Awareness of Language. Readings for Revolutionary Writing,

Edited by Kirsten Ogden, Bedford/St. Martin’s, Boston, pp 252-255

Nieto, Sonia. "Placing equity front and center: some thoughts on transforming teacher

education for a new century." Journal of Teacher Education, vol. 51, no. 3, 2000, p.

180+. Biography In Context,

http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A114331474/BIC?u=pasa19871&sid=BIC&xid=d

373b960. Accessed 16 May 2018

Pierson, Rita. “Every Kid needs a Champion.” TED: Ideas Worth Spreading,

https://www.ted.com/talks/rita_pierson_every_kid_needs_a_champion/transcript?lang

uage=en

Pipher, Mary. SEVEN The Psychology of Change. Writing to Change the World, Riverhead

Books, New York, 2007, pp. 89-107.

Plato. A Socratic Dialogue. Pleiad, 1926.

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Richard Rodriguez Achievement of Desire. Readings for Revolutionary Writing, Edited by

Kirsten Ogden, Bedford/St. Martin’s, Boston ,pp.315-321.

Skinner, E. A., & Belmont, M. J. (1993). Motivation in the classroom: Reciprocal effects of

teacher behavior and student engagement across the school year. Journal of

Educational Psychology, 85(4), 571-581

Wagner, Joylene. “Learning Matters: The Importance of Understanding Relationships.” Los

Angeles Times, Los Angeles, 18 Sept. 2015 http://www.latimes.com/socal/glendale-

news-press/opinion/tn-gnp-learning-matters-the-importance-of-understanding-

relationships-20150917-story.html