Erin Johnston

This semester, I was so lucky to have been able to work one-on-one with students in the Village Project! I worked at Nicolet Elementary School in Green Bay. I started off the semester with a third grader and we made great progress with her reading abilities. Together we worked a lot on growth mindset and literacy. She practiced words over and over again that were difficult and was so proud when she could read them after much hard work. At first, it was easy for her to just give up, but she grew a lot in resilience. Near the beginning of October, however, she left the program and I started…

Another opportunity to serve students in school… aside from being a teacher! After reading the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, I became more interested in what we can do to help the issue of trauma and its relationship with mental health. The main character, Melinda suffers from a sexual assault right before she starts high school. This results in her being traumatized during the school year. She doesn’t really have any friends and she struggles through her coursework.  If I were not a teacher, I think being a trauma-informed specialist could be another great way to help students. Those who struggle with dealing with trauma are in need of…

Essentialism, Progressivism, and More in Teaching It is important to have an idea of how and what you want to teach your students. Coming up with ideas based on teaching philosophies can be helpful. Two philosophies of education that stand out to me are essentialism and progressivism. Both have aspects to them that I find very important to education. I feel that combining both of these will create a mixture of teaching methods that provide different ways of learning for students.  One philosophy of teaching is essentialism, which is the knowledge we gain of our culture in traditional academic disciplines through core courses. In this way, students learn the knowledge…

Which of these schools really appeal to you and why? As a teacher, I would be drawn to both traditional public and private schools. I am familiar with both environments as I attended public school from kindergarten through eighth grade and private school for all of high school. I like that from a teaching perspective, I would have a broader range of students that I would get to know and work with in a public school. In a private school, however, it would be cool to work with students that are all enrolled there for a specific reason and I would like to work with them to get them strong…