Courage Chapters 2&3

I am really enjoying the book. His outlook and views on teaching really speak to me as an educator and as a student.

I was drawn to the 2nd chapter on fear (maybe because I wasn't so sleepy while reading it). As I look back on my schooling, the thing that always held me back was fear. I would stop myself from saying things, hold back from turning in certain poems, skip certain days because I thought I wasn't ready, ect. because I was scared. At times it was because I was intimidated or scared of my teachers, and other times I held back because of other students that I thought were smarter than I was and would be able to explain things better. Now I was never one of the kids in the back of the room (I was always annoyed with those people), but at times I was the student that the teacher pried at. I was always engaged in class, but at times would just say nothing, even though I most likely looked like I wanted to puke because there was so much that I wanted to say.

I think part of it was having so many teachers in the past that stressed the right or wrong...which leads me to chapter 3. I had been told so many times that things were black and white that I was so scared to express an opinion because I didn't think I had it. Who knows, I may have had it all along, or would have brought something to the table, but this fear is what stopped me. This is why my undergrad degree worked so well for me. I was able to bring in a piece of work and have no one tell me that I was right or wrong. They could tell me their opinions, but never that I was wrong in what I was thinking or feeling and the way that I presented it. It makes me want to stress the fact that while I am teaching I am also learning. Not only learning better ways to teach, but also continuing to challenge myself to understand things better.