Each teacher must decide what he or she is teaching for and teaching against.

Rather than an explicit list of dos and donts, teaching for and against something is an implicit way of teaching. I truly believe that a teachers actions in the classroom will foster differences in the students. In my own career, I intend to teach for the humanization of students, equality in ideas, and higher rapport between teacher and students. A humanizing education means that students are viewed and treated as people rather than tiny dolls to bend and conform to my every whim. Such a view of education embraces as principle and overarching purpose the aspiration of people to become more fully human (Ayers, 2004, p. 1). When students are reduced to a number, a desk or a thorn in my side, their visions of schools are skewed, as they feel trapped and unheard. As they continue in this harsh regime, administrators become adjuncts to the police, and schools become narrower, narrower, narrower, until they are nothing more than little training prisons (Ayers, p. 25). Treating my students as individual people who are able to articulate arguments about important societal issues and overarching themes in history will help them become better citizens they will become a contributor to the classroom/society rather than a passive citizen. Equality in ideas means that all students thinking is appreciated and welcomed in class. Students have much to bring from their own lives to the classroom that can enhance the classroom experience, but few actually contribute. Teaching for equality in ideas can be a bit more challenging, yet so crucially important for social studies. Although the social studies teach students that all men are created equal, teachers have rarely paid homage to that in the classroom. I believe that a class with many open discussions about ideas or events would be an incredible way to teach for equality in ideas. I want my students to believe and experience first-hand that all ideas are equal in insight and value to a classroom discussion.

As I have seen over the course of fieldwork with students, mutual respect and understanding is the basis for higher rapport between student and teacher. While I am not in a students life to be his friend, I am there to teach. However, I believe that students respond much more positively to someone with whom they have good rapport. In my practice, I have seen the rapport between students to teacher become strengthened by open conversations and a feeling of humanization. Teaching against certain formalities of education could perhaps be even more difficult. By the time students make their way through the system to my classroom, the majority of them will be in their mid-teens, well refined and conformed to the traditional format of school. This becomes a problem when students who refuse to conform feel marginalized by the school. In order to break from the traditional format, I intend to teach against one segregated curriculum and the victors history. When curricula segregate the social studies without any overlap in design (for example, an economics class that does not reflect historical events), students fail to truly understand the bigger picture in the social studies. Because the students cannot connect material from one class to another, we are constantly re-teaching facts necessary to one subjects curriculum. If this were to be remedied, I strongly believe that a students semester in social studies would be a more eye-opening and pleasant experience. Traditionally, teachers use the collective memory approach, a technique in which teachers give a version of history that boasts the triumphs of the victorious without explaining what happens to the defeated. To teach against the victors history, a shift needs to occur in the way we approach teaching. Social studies teachers must start teaching from all angles of history, offering multiple perspectives of a key event. While there are multiple ways to do this (primary

sources, role play, video analysis), I believe there is but one overarching goal: producing students who consider all aspects of an event, rather than only accepting one side of a story. Teaching social studies should be an opportunity for students to explore their understanding of the world; it should be an open environment in which students know their ideas are heard and elaborated. If this were to become the norm, I believe that students will participate in class and the school environment more, and the adults that they become will be more active citizens in their communities.