What does it mean to remember??

I can't even count the number of times I've been told to "remember" something in school. I've had teachers tell me, "Remember this, it is on the SOL!" Or, "Remember that, because it's on the final exam!" Suddenly, the word "remember" has seemingly become a synonym for "memorize-and-spit-back-out-when-commanded." As a future educator, having this realization was frustrating to me!

Last night I had a 20 page research paper due in my Hispanic Studies senior seminar. It was a synthesis paper on any aspect of the course, which was entitled Local and Global Issues. The course related poetry with resistance, activism, voice, and identity. We read poems by Martín Espada, Pablo Neruda, Julia Alvarez, Marcus Villatoro, and many more. We read essays by John Berger, Ariel Dorfman, and Octavio Paz. The course culminated with a study of the XVI Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín. I decided to focus my essay on memory, and how people "remember." Don't worry...I'm getting to my point :)

In Spanish, the word for remember is recordar. It comes from the Latin word, re-cordis, which means "to pass back through one's heart." I learned this from Eduard Galeano's The Book of Embraces, something I read in my History of Human Rights and Repression class. This was the basis for my research paper. It also got me thinking about my role as a teacher, as well...

In addition to the goals I listed in my previous blog, I think this one may take first place. I want to go beyond memorizing in my classroom, beyond simply information, facts, data, and names. I want these things to be remembered, in the true sense of the word. I never want to be that teacher that tells my students to remember something for the SOLs or the upcoming test. I want children to remember what I teach because not only will I make it memorable, but I will teach it in a way that is meaningful to my students. Knowledge should be useful to them and applicable to their life experiences. I want them to be able to apply things from the classroom to situations outside of school. I want the knowledge they gain in my class to be more than numbers and letters to regurgitate. I want these things to pass back through their hearts...

Challenge: As a teacher, return the significance of remember back to its true definition.