Who is Mr. Staal? tech class

Me,
My name is Brandon Staal and I am an individual who has always had a passion for teaching children and helping them develop. I have many work and volunteer experiences that correlate with teaching children and have made me the fun, caring and enthusiastic person I am today. I worked at a powerskating school where i taught students how to skate since i was in grade 9 and still currently work there. I worked at a junior firefighter camp and taught 10-11 year olds about fire safety for the last 4 summers. So through these experiences in has driven me to be a good educator and gave me my teaching passion. I also love sports, especially lacrosse and hockey and i am a fanatic for socializing with in outdoor or cottage like settings.

Thats me= Brandon Staal

Brandon's Personal View on Hidden Curriculum

What is hidden curriculum?

A hidden curriculum can be defined as the lessons that are taught informally, and usually unintentionally, in a school system. These include behaviors, perspectives, and attitudes that students pick up while they're at school. This is contrasted with the formal curriculum, such as the courses and activities students participate in (Boutelier, 2016).

 

The hidden curriculum begins early in a child's education. Students learn to form opinions and ideas about their environment and their classmates. For example, children learn 'appropriate' ways to act at school, meaning what's going to make them popular with teachers and students. Also students can gain many positive attributes and habits in the school system through teachers creating a respectful and well-mannered classroom.


                                                           
It’s importance to me as a future educator:
Hidden curriculum is one aspect of teaching that I have always developed a passion to talk about and has always been a huge emphasis of what I want in my future teaching philosophy. As much as course content is of importance for students to learn; if they are unable to be polite, personable and have the necessary social skills do work effectively in a workplace or in life then it won’t matter how much intelligence they have. I am a huge advocate for associating course content with hidden curriculum in the class as a teacher because students can so easily develop positive habits of being polite and respectful to one another in the classroom which can lead to positive habits in their future. As a future elementary school teacher, these students are in class with you for almost as long they’re with their parents so you have many opportunities to try to shape these students into successful well rounded individuals within society.


Past Experiences Leading to This Passion:
My father is the main reason why I have such a determination to associate hidden curriculum into my classroom. My father always reminded me to use the words ‘thank you’, ‘sorry’, ‘excuse me’ and even with my friend parents; I had to call them mister or misses and then their last name until I was told otherwise by the parent themselves. At the time I always wondered why my dad cared so much until I got older and I started to get a rep for being a very polite child and I had very good social skills and I would say I was quite likable. This is not being said for me to seem arrogant or cocky because I give the credit to my father for making me develop these positive habits and consistently giving me the reminders for such small aspects of being a respectable person like saying ‘excuse me’. This has now made me the very genuine and personable individual I am today and in my opinion, it has furthermore been the reason for why I have many friends and have received many job opportunities and being liked by my superiors.

Therefore in my future teaching experiences I want to be the one who repeatedly reminds my students about using these polite terms and being respectful to one another. Even though they may get frustrated with me reminding them to do these small things all the time; gaining these positive habits to be nicer to your peers and to your elder can only lead to positive responses from these people. I am hoping that students after being in my class realize that when they’re older that fostering these positive attributes will be beneficial to being successful and respected during their lifespan and my intentions were always to guide them on   the right path in life.


I focused a lot on the aspect of politeness as I feel the main thing my father taught me and one of my strength qualities is my ability to be conscious and polite to those around me in any setting but hidden curriculum can go way beyond this. Hidden curriculum will also be used in my classroom to foster positive studying habits, organization habits and even selfless acts such as helping others around you. All these habits or acts can lead to a more cooperative, inclusive and enjoyable positive environment for the students and the teacher.

Thank you for listening and I hope you enjoy because this topic and blog was fun and very personal to write about it for me!

References

Boutelier, S. (2016). Hidden curriculum in education. Retrieved from: http://study.com/academy/lesson/hidden-curriculum-in-education-definition-examples-quiz.html