Effective Teachers Affect Lives

After reading the assigned readings a few things jumped out at me:

The first thing was that to many teachers treat the textbook as the curriculum rather than a resource. As I reflect of the power behind this statement I begin to wonder if this idea could have an impact on student's perception of school.
     
        I can remember back in elementary/middle school when homework was to read the chapter of our history book and come back the next day ready to discuss. To me the textbook was the syllabus, and on the first day of school when I was handed a two inch thick textbook my first thought was, I HATE SCHOOL! This has stuck with me through my entire educational career. As soon as I see a big textbook I think this is what I am going to do every day? That's no fun, and I think that it's important that early in education we explain to our students the power of resources such as text books! They are used to develop our knowledge and skills not frame it and box it into a fixed mindset.

The second thing I pulled from the reading was "fun is the result of accomplishment, not the purpose of learning"

     As a Pre-Service teacher one thing I am struggling with is making sure that I am accepted by the students and determining how I will find that acceptance. It is so important to me that the students enjoy learning and I know that's impossible with a barrier of dislike/distrust. I find myself thinking that if I play a game every class period, and have them out of their seats doing something fun, hopefully they will get the hidden message and learn something that day, but at least they had fun and they'll enroll in another Ag course.
      However, I couldn't agree more with the above statement, fun should be the result of accomplishment. If they're learning is focused around fun they may stop learning when it stops being fun. They may look for the fun first rather than later and miss great opportunities. I think rather than being the fun teacher I should teach the students to have fun learning.

One more thing that jumped out at me was "you were hired to affect lives"

     Wow. Such a powerful statement. As education goes through the transformation of testing everything the teachers are being put on the hot spot. School is becoming a factory, focused on putting out numbers. Not students. Teachers are being assessed by the scores their students unfairly receive; when the scores are good the teachers can keep their jobs! What kind of reward is that? Where are teachers assessed on the number of students they affected? How about the one student they saved from an abusive home because they saw the bruises and cared enough to report it? What about the students they encourage to go to college, because he/she just needed one person to tell them they could do it!?

If teachers are hired to affect lives, Why aren't they rewarded for the lives they affect?