My Philosophy in One Image

Waiting For Superman Blog Post by Wes Fryer

This blog pot only made me want to see the film more. I think that he made some interesting points but the only way for me to know if I feel the same way about the film would be to see it. I would love to see it. I think that I agree with a lot of his educational philosophy so I think I would probably agree with his assessment of the movie.

For example, I agree that we need to be able to easily get rid of bad teachers. That is one thing that the lack of funding in our schools should force us to do. It should force us to, instead of getting rid of newly hired teachers get rid of teachers who are clearly ineffective or unprofessional. Those teachers should go first. Unfortunately, that isn't how it always works. I also think that a greater teacher turnover would be good for young teachers like me with new ideas. It would mean that teachers would have to keep up the newest educational ideas not because they need to for their certification but because they need to stay current and useful and effective as educators. Then it becomes necessary to keep one's job and not just one's profession.

It also ensures that students will have a good teacher every year because we will be getting rid of the bad teachers and getting new, better ones.

I hope I have a chance to see the movie because I want to see the scene where they talk about filling kids up with knowledge as if they are a bucket. His description wasn't totally clear and I think I would understand better if I saw the film.

Overall, it was well written and made me intrigued by the film.

My Philosophy at Work in the Classroom

1) Classroom Organization:
I think that classroom organization will probably change a lot in my classroom depending on what we are doing each day. I like to put the desks in a circle if we are having a large up discussion, in small tab groups if we are doing a lot of group work, in rows if the students are doing presentations, or up against the wall if we are doing a lot of moving around. I also see my classroom being filled with a lot of stuff. I like to have books around. I will probably have a shelf somewhere in the room with books for students to borrow or look at in free time as well as a cupboard with art supplies and maybe props for when we do skits in class.
2) Motivation:
Students are the most motivated when they are interested in what they are doing. I see myself doing a lot of free choice assignments where students get to pick what they will work on. This is especially true about writing. I will probably do a lot of assignments where students will be required to write about themselves or about what they are interested in. There will also be a few rewards. Parties are fun and a great way to celebrate the success of the class. They are also an opportunity to bring in outside community members to broaden the view points in the classroom and bring the outside world in. Field trips and movies are both educational and rewarding. They give the students the illusion of a break from school but they are actually having a learning experience. But I think the most important thing in motivating students is having fun. I want to try to make every class fun. I know that is difficult but I think it is necessary in keeping students interested.
3) Discipline:
I hate detentions. Yes, lets punish students by making them sit quietly in a room after school doing their homework and not talking. That sounds like a great plan. Making doing homework a punishment is a bad idea. Not to mention, sitting in a room after school, doing nothing, not so bad. And many kids get detentions on purpose so they don’t have to go home or because their friends have them. I hate embarrassing students. I don’t think that teachers should demean a student ever. It is cruel and heartless. It also ruins classroom environment forever. I think that students punish themselves enough when they know we expected more from them and they didn’t meet those expectations. I think that if a student really needs to be disciplined the best way to do it is by telling them the truth, that they disappointed us. And if as a teacher I feel they still need to be disciplined I think manual labor is a good way to enforce a lesson. No one really likes chopping wood, cleaning desks, sweeping, washing floors and windows or helping the kitchen staff with their dishes.
4) Assessment:
I believe assessing students learning all the time. I think that formative assessment is the best way to find out how students are doing in the classroom and adjust the lesson as needed. It is fairly easy too. As for summative assessments, I think that these should be creative projects or papers that address real world issues or problems. These help students see why they are learning the things I am teaching them because they have real world applications and not just importance in school. I don’t believe in standardized tests or doing five paragraph essays over and over again. Yes, I want my students to be able to take a test because that is often important in order to get into college or get a job. And Yes, I want my students to be able to write essays because that is one important way that we communicate our ideas about books to others. However, I don’t think that standardized testing or five paragraph essays are the only ways to assess learning. And I certainly don’t think that they always show what a student knows. There are other ways of assessing that are more effective.
5) Technology Integration:
Technology is great. I have no problem using technology in the classroom but only when it is the best way to teach something. I think that some teachers try to use technology in their classroom because they have been told that they need to. I think that there are appropriate times to use it. I think technology is all around us and it is important for students to be exposed to it because it will be important in college and in the work place. People who can use technology often succeed above people who can’t because it has become such an important part of our everyday lives. Therefore it is important for teachers to know how to use it and to find appropriate uses for it in their classrooms.
6) Learning Focus:
Learning should be about the student. It is a teacher’s job to inspire students to want to learn about themselves and the world around them. Then it is the teacher’s job to guide the students in asking questions and finding resources that give them answers to those questions. Learning should be about critical thinking skills, students’ interests and self discovery. This is what will make lifelong learners out of my students.
7) Teacher and Leadership Style:
A teacher should be a role model and a guide in the learning process. I am here to help students ask questions and get the answers. I am not here to lecture or impose my own ideas onto them. I am here to help them create their own ideas. I am not a dictator in the classroom. I am someone who wants to help them do well and learn what they want to learn. There might be some extra underlying stuff that I teach them about English without them realizing I am doing it but for the most part it is about their own learning.

Technology

I liked the stations they did. I thought that they represented pretty well the types of things we might encounter in the schools. We will definitely have to deal with sharing limited amounts of technology in schools where there isn't a lot of money. I think that maybe there could have been a little bit more prompting over there but it was really good. The second station was a little bit more unrealistic cause I doubt that we will be allowed to go crazy and get whatever technologies we want. However, I think that it was a good exercise in getting us thinking about what kinds of technologies we could really use in our classrooms, how and why. It got me wishing I had all the money in the world because if I did I could do so much in my English classroom. The station with Mr. Peabody who hates technology was really fun. It was worthwhile to see how we would react to someone who hates technology. It was interesting to see that we would basically say, that's too bad and keep using the technology in our classroom.

Overall, I thought that the presentation was good. I liked that the focus wasn't on new technologies but rather on things that we will encounter in our classroom and how we might use them.

The only thing I might change would be to do the question and answer session at the end. I don't think that that activity really hooked us into the lesson. I was more interested once we started the stations. Other than that though, I thought the presentation was really good.

Bright Futures

This article is about changes the author thinks should be made to middle schools in order to improve education. It asks for these changes to be made in middle schools because the author feels that middle school is a time when students are at a very unique stage in their development and that it is important to address that accordingly. This article gives credit to middle schools saying that they have implemented many changes that have made our students safer and saying that Maine as a whole is way ahead of where the country as a whole is because of the technology initiative. However, the article feels that students are not doing as well on the MEAS as they should be. Therefore the article is arguing for more changes in curriculum, instruction and assessment to be made.

As I was reading the article I was having a major, "well, duh" moment. The 12 core principles that the article is arguing we need to implement seem A) a little too broad and B) to be things we should already be doing. I liked that the article stated the list of principles and then went back and described each one. This meant that there was a much clearer picture in the end about what they were talking about than the vague statement gave. But I feel like overall, the 12 core principles of an effective middle school are things that as teachers we should be doing in all of our classrooms anyway. Yes, all of our teaching should be linked to the modern world, yes all of the curriculum and instruction should be multicultural and involve multiple areas of study, yes we should have projects that require students to seek and ask questions outside of the classroom, yes students should have a hand in deciding the curriculum and yes we need to always be looking at the new research and using what works and throwing out what doesn't. Maybe this is just me because of the program of study I have had here at UMF but I feel like every teacher should be doing these things and that many of them are common sense.

Voices of Educational Pioneers

Socrates, Augustine, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Jefferson, Gallaudet, Dewey, and Piaget. I think that all students come to school with some preexisting knowledge. Therefore Socrates made sense to my philosophy. Socrates believed " the teacher's role was to draw the knowledge out of the student. He believed that knowledge could not be transmitted from a teacher to the students, but that the students had to discover the knowledge that was within them." In other words, students need to learn about themselves and the knowledge they have already obtained. Augustine built off this idea too. Augustine believed that "the teacher should take into consideration what his students already know and build on that, teaching using a dialogue format Augustine termed as 'soliloquia'; two voices talking instead of one, interaction of teacher and student seeking the truth." The truth being referenced here is one that the student believes in. Therefore it is the teachers job to illuminate the beliefs of the student, not impart their own beliefs. I think that teaching should be very student centered. Rousseau agrees. Rousseau believed that "instead of education being centered on what is taught (the subject matter), it should be centered on who is taught (the child)." Education should be about self learning. I also think that students should have a hand in deciding on what should be taught this helps motivate them to learn. In this way Pestalozzi makes sense to me. Pestalozzi believed that "learning had to be stimulated by the interests and motivation of the child, not by punishment and fear." Punishment and fear only increase a child's hatred of school. I also think that education has the ability to empower us and make us more than what we start out as. Jefferson thought the same. Jefferson believed "in the ability of higher education to bring the lower class up to a higher class. Education was the only hope to teach not only useful skills but to change attitudes, to improve morality, and to spread civilization." He also thought that education could open our eyes and make us think about what is wrong with our current way of think and how it can be improved. I also think that all children should be educated. This includes all ethnicities, religions, races, genders and abilities. Gallaudet felt this way about deaf children. Gallaudet believed "that deaf children could and should be educated." This idea though should apply to everyone. I think that there are connections to be made between my content area, English and all other aspects of life. I feel it important to show this to students so that their interest in reading and writing will be increased and because connections help us to understand more deeply. Dewey agreed that all studies should be linked. Dewey believed "students should be helped to see the relations of studies to one another and to the intellectual whole to which all belong." The second half of this statement is also important because it infers that there is a community in which the intellectual interact and that learning opens doors to that community to all people who learn. I think it is important for students to be able to interact with that community. But I think that learning can only happen when you are ready for it to happen. Piaget also stressed this. Piaget believed in the "need to individualize instruction in order to accommodate each child's readiness at different stages of development." We are all at different stages in our lives and teachers must know how to accommodate for this.

Motivation

I really liked this presentation. They did a good job motivating the class to do what they wanted us to, which was a really great way to model what they were talking about. I also liked the idea of stations. It meant that each presenter could talk about what they looked at more specifically, the lass could do more activities and think in different ways. The scenarios were really well thought out. They involved things that we will encounter in a real classroom. It helped to think through ways to make things better as a group. I loved all the websites in the toolbox too. They are very fun and creative and great resources for different things I can do in the classroom. I thought that the rationale the rationale the presenters wrote about all of their stations was well written. I agreed with a lot of what they said.

I learned a lot from this presentation. I didn't realize until after the true false questionnaire how important movement was to keeping students involved and motivated. I began to suggest a lot more movement related activities in the scenarios. I liked that it was modeled in the presentation. The cards were also a really great motivator. It created excitement in the classroom because we got to check out our favorite characters. It would be an excellent way to break up students, get them excited or creatively think about a story or character.

I can't think of one thing that would have made the presentation better. It was fun, creative, and interactive as well as informative. The presenters did an amazing job coming up with resources and making us excited to participate.

The Eight Theories: Perennialism, Essentialism, Behaviorism, Positivism, Progressivism, Reconstructionism, Humanism and Constructivism

Perennialists believe that one should teach the things that one deems to be of everlasting importance to all people everywhere. They believe that the most important topics develop a person. Since details of fact change constantly, these cannot be the most important. Therefore, one should teach principles, not facts. Since people are human, one should teach first about humans, not machines or techniques. Since people are people first, and workers second if at all, one should teach liberal topics first, not vocational topics. Reconstructionists believe that education has two roles. The first is to transmit culture. The second is to modify culture. Essentialists believe that an educated person in a given culture must have a common core of information and skills. It is the job of the schools to transmit the core of essential material as effectively as possible. Behaviorists believe that by carefully controlling the stimuli in the classroom, the teacher can control student behavior. They believe that the environment should be highly organized and the curriculum based on developed behaviorial objectives. Positivists believe that truth and knowledge is observable and measurable. All knowledge is clear and precise and all students are required to learn the same knowledge. Progressivists believe that ideas should be tested by experimentation and that learning is rooted in questions developed by the learner. It emphasizes the the process of education in the classroom. Humanists believe that humans are innately good. Humans are born free but become enslaved by institutions. Humanists believe in the students as a completely autonomous person and therefore education should be without coercion or prescription. Constructivists emphasize hands-on, activity-based teaching and learning during which students develop their own frames of thought. The idea is to give students real life, contemporary problems to tackle.

I think that as a teacher I completely don't believe in Perennialism, Essentialism, Behaviorism, Positivism, and Humanism. I fall more in the Constructivist and Progressivist camp. I like the idea of having students asking questions and going to find the answers. It means that they have a hand in deciding what to learn. I also means that students can focus on what is important to them and what interests. I also like the Constructivist theory because it involves real life problems. I think that schools often try to keep the real world on the other side of the entrance way but they forget that learning, culture and student's past experience walk in with students every day. Those things help to shape what it is that students are interested in. And it is hard to teach someone anything they are not at least a little bit curious about. As adults we pick and choose what things to do based on our preferences all the time. Why shouldn't students get to at least part of the time? Progessivism and Constructivism focus the most on free choice and student value. Both things I think are important to learning.

Discipline

I thought that Ryan and Sarah did a very good job with this issue. I liked that they had us do skits. It was good to see what things we thought worked and what things we didn't think worked. I liked that we did a good way and a bad way. I think many of the behaviors they picked though are things that we won't see in our school. They were a little to specific. Such as the gambling and the PDA in class. I think the PDA is more likely to happen in the halls and I think the gambling is a little less prevalent. I would have liked to see them give us out some alternative discipline strategies and try them out on common situations. For example it would have been interesting to see how the threat of detention works in comparison to the threat of in school labor when dealing with students who are disruptive. We didn't really get to see common behaviors such as talking when they are supposed to be listening or passing notes or cheating or not turning in homework or skipping school. I would have liked to see some alternative ways of addressing these issues because detention certainly does not work. I think that knowing the history of discipline and where we stand as individuals is important but also would have liked some information on other ways of thinking. They really only incorporated that into the end of the lesson.

The books were also good. That was a good way to show some resources that can give a starting point as to how to handle some sticky situations. And it was enjoyable to mock the out of date ways of thinking.

Empowerment

I really liked this section. I think it was my favorite section. It did a really good job covering the most important part of teaching, empowering our youth to change the world. That is what teachers are supposed to do. We are supposed to show them that they have the ability to affect the world around them, to change things. We are here to show them they can do anything.

I think my favorite entry in the entire section was the last one. It did a good job summing up the end of the school year and the book as a whole. Plus I liked the message it sent. The author of this entry describes it as giving their students angel wings. It is certainly something similar to that. Education id supposed to lift us up and give us freedom, like flying.

I also really liked the one about Mike, the kid who wanted to drop out of school because he failed his final portfolio. I loved the image of the whole class and all the teachers outside the building trying to coax that one kid inside. I was amazed by the community that had been created there. And I loved that the teacher never gave up on him. It was clear that the kid had struggled and failing the portfolio had brought up a lot of issues for him. I am glad that the teacher was still hopefully he would work through that and return.

4 Philosophies

Abstract:
Idealism believes that ideas and concepts are the essence of all that is worth knowing. To them being educated means being engaged in a discussion that stretches back through time. They like to ask questions that spark thought and artful bring students to realize that the student knows the answer. Realists believe in observation and experimentation. They believe that knowledge, reality and value exist independent of the human mind. They want to teach methods of obtaining knowledge. They would teach logical, clear content and clarify how things differ from one another by classifying them. Pragmatists believe that everything changes. They believe that experience changes both the knower and the world. To them there are no unchanging ideas and no universal laws. They focus on solving problems through interacting with the environment in an intelligent and reflective manner. Existentialists on the other hand believe that reality is nothing more than lived experience and the final reality resides within each individual. They believe in education as helping students create meaning out of their choice because we are our choices.

Reflection:
I think that my educational philosophy is most like Idealism and Pragmatism. I do believe that teaching ideas and concepts are more important than teaching material. Ideas and concepts can be applied to any material. Not all material can be applied to all concepts and ideas. I think too that is important to be engaged in a conversation and that being educated does open up those conversations to you. On the other hand I think the pragmatist have something with the idea of change. Everything does change. Most often in a cycle kind of way but that is still change. I also agree that values change. The values that they held to be true 100 years ago do not hold to be true today. They don't work for the society we live in now. The Idealists are interesting to me because it seems like there are some archetypes and metaphors that many cultures agree on. Such as the story of Cinderella. Almost every culture around the world has a Cinderella story. But I still think it is important to be culturally diverse, like the Pragmatists argue, because we differ in other ways. Those differences are as important as our similarities are. That to me seems to be where they intersect. In knowing what things we are similar and in what ways we are different and in constant flux.

Multicultural Education

I think the group presenting this topic did a very nice job. I liked that they linked it to literature. Literature is already fairly multicultural in that it tells stories and every story is of someone different. I liked the idea they set up to basically have a debate going on in class over the hottest topics in schools right now. Are gender and sexuality important enough to deserve discussion in school? Is important to learn about religions that are different from our own? Should we be learning about them inside of schools? Is it important to have a multicultural education. I believe the answer to them all is yes.

I think that is the only area in which the debate idea may have failed. I think many people believe that these are important issues because they are aspects of who we are as individuals, one of the most important things we learn in school, but I think that people are touchy on them. I think that is why more people gravitated towards neutral and pro rather than con. We all believe these topics are important but we are not sure they are worth risking our jobs over. At least not at first anyway. I think that this is a sad fact.

Students should be learning about the world around them, and the world around them isn't all white, middle class suburbia. Or for that matter it most certainly isn't the white straight male front that men of the Skakespeare's time and after displayed. This is a world that is diverse and open to all walks of life. Our students should understand all of them. So they understand themselves, and others they will interact with. I wish there was a way to do it without getting someone upset but there probably isn't. Lets face it. Despite how much open our world is now than it use to be, there are still many who are close minded and care nothing about people who are different for them. We are going to have to fight them eventually.

the Story of School: Episode 1980-Present

It seems like the biggest trend in this span of time was the idea of reform spurred on by the Nation at Risk essay that came out during Reagan's administration. There was a big push for measurable results. This meant that all students were tested and the results compared with previous results. It was a lot like how the economy functions. There is a budget you have to reach and if you go over that you make a profit. They wanted schools to be profitable.

This brought with it another movement of reform particularly in Harlem. One based on competition and choose. They made some schools smaller and more specialized. Students could choose which schools to go to. These schools did very well and often out performed the traditional public schools. Unfortunately many students weren't able to go to these schools due to distance and not enough of them for all the students who want to go, to go. These schools eventually became magnet schools but they didn't completely fix the problem. This idea seems really good to me. I think that students should be able to decide what they want to do. They should be able to take courses they enjoy and courses that will help them get where it is they want to go in life. And these schools should be open to all kids. That way all of these kids have the opportunity to get a good education in something they like. After all isn't that half the battle with teaching? How do we get students to sit up, listen and believe that our class is important to their life? If all schools were formed around some kind of choice it might help with that.

The next idea that came to the front as a movement was to give vouchers to students who could not normally afford a private school so that they can go. I think this is a decent idea because it means that more students have the opportunities that rich students have. Unfortunately, I don't think this is a solution because not all students can get a voucher and it isn't doing anything to help the public schools. It is harming more students in the long run than it is helping. I am not sure why the government would think this could a solution for schools as a whole.

Another movement sprang up in Baltimore. It was to privatize the schools by allowing the businesses to come in and fund the schools. It was an interesting idea. It brought in more technology and better school supplies but it didn't help the students do better. It also cut out many art and music programs. I feel like this is a mix of good and bad. I think it is good that they were able to get better materials and I think it would be great if the government could take ideas from this in order to get their schools the same things. However, I don't think that cutting out music and art is a good idea. I believe those are equally important in enriching our lives. Plus many students only go to class because if they don't they can't go to their rehearsals that night. There were many days I went to school only because if I didn't I couldn't be at theater that night. And I was one of the good students.

Rejuvenation

I think my favorite entry by far was number 134. I connected with it in a number of different ways. First, I liked the connection the teacher made to himself and his own classroom once he was put around other teachers who were also doing incredible things. It really showed that even though he thought he was doing well, he realized there was room for growth after all. He is in many ways an example of a good teacher because he was able to reflect on himself and learn from his feelings of inadequacy. I think that a lot of teachers aren't able to realize that they are of equal fault when students aren't succeeding in their classes.

Second, I really liked his realization. I agree that it is a teacher's job to make sure that all of their students have a voice in their classroom. That is part of what teaching is about. Yes, we want them to learn English, Math, Science and History. But we also want them to learn how those things connect to themselves and in that way learn who they really are. Teaching and learning is supposed to involve some soul searching.

Third, I was one of those kids. I moved from the town I had spent 11 years in to a place where I new no one. I had no friends and for a long time I didn't speak up in class. I had learned in my previous school that doing so labeled you as a "walking talking history book" and that many kids would only be interested in being your friend so they could get you to help them with their homework which left you with no time to do your own while at school and a ton to do when you got home. There were many classes in school that I remained silent in either because I didn't want to appear too smart or because I didn't want to have to help my friends with their work or simply because I thought that if I did speak up I would spend the rest of the class doing all the talking. Other kids hated that.

Fourth, I think it would be really easy to become this teacher. It is really easy to feel you are doing everything right for your students even thought your not. It is very easy to believe that because one or two students speak every class, or because you are moving through the material so quickly, that you are doing everything that is needed to provide your students with what they need to learn. There will always be the kids in the class who are not afraid to speak up. It is the number of kids in the back who are not voicing themselves that you should be concerned with.

The Story of School: Episode 1 1800-1900

Abstract:
The beginning of public education began during this time period. The two biggest figured to push for public education were Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann. Jefferson believed that all of America's citizens needed to be educated or else we would never be able to maintain our freedom. Mann believed that schools should be open to the public and be free so that even the poorest children may attend. Neither of these men liked the idea that up until this point your family's status determined where you would end up in life. They dreamed of a world where men could be anything they wanted. During this time period schools were improved on to make them a more suitable teaching environment, women began to receive more education as the teaching profession became available to them as a means to support themselves until they got married, slavery ended and thus African Americans were allowed to receive an education for the first time, the first attempts at desegregation took place and failed, and then later schools began to respond to the growing necessity of teaching a growing population of immigrants.

Reflection:
I agree with Thomas Jefferson that all citizens need to be educated in order to ensure that we will forever keep our freedoms. If people do not understand how dear freedom is then they are less willing to fight to keep it. I was surprised to learn that an attempt at desegregation was made so soon after slavery was ended. I had never known that before. Although, I am a little upset that women were sought after to become teachers because they were considered to be cheaper than men, I do appreciate the attempt to give women some type of work. This movement made it ok for women to seek a higher education. It also gave them a way to take care of themselves. I think they should have been making the same amount as men though. There is no reason for a woman to be making less money and I wonder why they thought it was ok to do so. I was also fairly fascinated to learn that Catholic schools were made in response to school environments that were offensive to Irish Americans and Catholics. I don't understand why schools felt it would be ok to teach any faith. It just seems like a private part of a person's life to me.

Nation at Risk

Abstract:
Nation at Risk was a report giving during President Reagan’s time. The report was one how public schools were doing in educating America’s Youth. Basically, the report said that the educational system here in America was mediocre at best and that if we hoped to ever be at the foreground of technology, business, military or protecting our people than we needed to fix it, and fast. The talks a lot about what the public believes students should be able to do and what they are actually able to do. It list statistics about test scores and students ability to solve math problems and write essays. The second article was how teachers felt Nation at Risk affected education. Many felt it was very helpful. It brought education to the front of everyone’s minds and it also stalled Reagan’s administration from cutting spending on public schools. Others though felt that the report was more harmful. Much of the public blamed the teachers for the downfall of education and hearing complaints was not productive to teachers, nor did the report make teachers look good in the eyes of the American people.

Reflection:
Both articles talk a lot about how our schools are failing but neither offers any advice on how to fix them. If you are going to write an article on America’s public school system, why would you report that it was failing without making any suggestions on how to improve it? Criticism is only constructive if there is some feedback on how it might be improved. In this case it seems that although the report helped to bring to light our failing educational system, it most certainly did not help to improve it. Things have not yet gotten better in the school systems. America is still behind in achievement tests, as well as business, economy, and technology. That report could have been used to get a real move on improving our education going. The resources used to research our schools could have helped us research how to improve.

Disillusionment

Being a teacher is hard. As a teacher your job is to stand up in front of a room of at least 20, more often closer to 30, students and try to get them to all learn what it is you want them to learn. That in itself is impossible. Now imagine that you have to teach these students who all have problems. Some have a crappy home life, some are grieving, some are being picked on at school, some are exhausted from working all day and night to support themselves and some are simply tired of being trapped in a building where no one cares about them and who they are. It is hard enough to teach 20 or 30 teenagers anything but imagine trying to do it when they feel like they are in prison and you are their jailer. To top it all off teachers get no support. Most often schools are underfunded, and many teachers receive no help from administrators or fellow teachers because they are just as tired and frustrated by the whole situation as everyone else is. I know that being a teacher is a struggle. This chapter seems to be about how low we can fall and how sometimes even we, the teachers, break under pressure.

The Story of School : Episode 3 1950-1980

Abstract:
These 30 years seemed to house the most dramatic and tense changes in schools mostly because of Brown Vs The Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act. These laws examined the rights of African American citizens to find that their children had a right to an education equal to that of white children. It was with these laws that other minority groups decided to petition congress for their rights to a fair education. Thus there were changes in education for women, ESL students, students with disabilities and other minority groups. These changes required schools to give equal opportunities to all, thus giving more people the ability to succeed at school and later on in life. However, it also put a strain on communities where integration wasn't so easy.

Reflection:
It seems very common sense to me that all students should be given an equal opportunity to get an education. I suppose that is a part of what the school system wanted children to learn. It seems like a foreign idea to me to even consider keeping someone out of a school or out of a class based on skin color, gender or differences in ability. I am glad that these laws have been passed to protect the rights of people who in the past didn't have those opportunities that I have now. The bus thing that came up at the end of the film did seem a little silly to me though. Those schools weren't keeping students of other races or ethnicities out of their schools, there just didn't happen to be a lot of difference in their region. In that case I think there were many other solutions that should have been attempted. Our schools should be diverse because it helps us all be better, more understanding and respectful people.

Engagement

I loved entry 51, about the teacher who was taking the student across the border and entry 66 about the teacher who spent 200 dollars to make sure her student could go to college. Those things seemed like things I would do as a teacher. I know that I am one of those teachers that cares an awful lot about what happens to her students. Sometimes that idea really scares me. It means that I will be open to a lot of heartbreak and a lot of happiness. Those things don't scare me. I believe that all risks have a chance of failure and my students are always a risk I am willing to take. The part that scares me is that sometime I might go too far. I see myself burying myself in debt or losing sleep and therefore my health worrying or going to jail for illegally taking a student across the border cause they need to get home. I love these entries because the teachers were honest about how far they were willing to go for their kids. But it makes me all the more worried about how far I am willing to go. I am already the person all of my friends and family turn to for help and advice. I am already the person that bears everyone else's burdens. And I do that for those people mostly without having boundaries of how far I will go because I love them and they are family, I know they will never ask me to go too far. Many of my students will have no one else. Where do I draw the line for them? Do I draw a line? Can a person care for someone else too much? And if so, how much is too much?

The Story of School: Episode 2 1900-1950

Abstract:

The video went over the many philosophies and approaches to education that were circulating around the United States during the 1900's and in to the 1950's. The video discussed the differences and the effects these ideas had on students, society and the educational system. Some of these ideas were very detrimental to students while some were not. Much of the school system of this time period was concerned with educating the masses. This education was specifically aimed at making immigrants to our country Americanized. It sought to teach them our language, our culture and about our government. The effects of this were often harmful to students.

Reflection:

Our country has come a long way since 1900 but I don't think we have come far enough. We still use the IQ test to judge someone's intelligence despite knowing it's biases. This is still often the deciding factor in pulling a child out of the classroom, separating them from their peers and forcing them into special education often causing more harm than good to the student. the country still fights over what should be taught in schools. Often there are even fights over who deserves a good education even though the law decided long ago that all children deserve a free appropriate public education. There were even some ideas in the 1900's that were good. Like the school the film described that existed in Gary, Illinois. I agree that there is so much more that school can offer besides reading, writing and math There is science (all the sciences, not just biology, physics, anatomy and chemistry), there is history (not just American, World, Current Events and Government), there is culture, there are skills and there are languages that are not taught in schools. Those things can be equally important. We have lost much of the drive to explore other topics that existed during this time period.

Generations Article

Abstract:
This article discusses the many differences that appear in the different generations. It looks at what these differences are and what happens when individuals from different generations are forced to interact together. Some of the traits compared are family, work ethics, communication styles, rewards, feedback, and leadership styles. The article also makes several suggestions on how to best get people from different generations to work together. Suggestions include things such as being explicit about how teams should communicate, giving rewards more immediately, providing feedback or giving leadership roles. It focuses mostly on getting different generations cooperating together in the work force.

Reflection:
Even though this article is geared towards the work environment I think it is also a good resource for teachers. Teachers often have to deal with parents from different generations than themselves. It makes sense that people growing up during different time periods would hold different values. Thus it also seems to make sense that understanding where others values stem from would make communications between teachers and parents easier. I certainly find it helpful to know that some parents would rather I call them then send an email. It is also helpful to know the parent’s feelings towards education. If they don’t think it is valuable I will certainly have a harder time convincing them of the importance of their child’s homework, where as if they do find it valuable I may not need to do any convincing at all.

Challenges

I related to many of the stories from this section of the book. While I am not a product of gang violence or rape, I have never done any substances or lived with an addict, and I haven’t ever been homeless these things are much a part of my past. They all happened to my mom. My biological grandmother, I call her Donna because she has never been a part of my life, was a pregnant teen who gave my mom up to her mother, the woman I knew as Grammie Johnson. Grammie was a mean drunk. My mom dealt by doing drugs, which eventually caused her to drop out of school and run away from home. My mom has lived on her own since she was 15. My mom eventually got her life together, she got cleaned up, got her GED and went to bartending school. She met my dad and got married. They got divorced. While I did grow up in a home where money was always stretched thin, I was lucky. Unlike many of the kids in these journal entries I had a mom who knew what poverty could do to you and who knew what trying to get lost in something else, even for a little while can make you lose forever. My mom took any help she could get, and always put us first. She made sure we had everything we needed and most of what we wanted. If it wasn’t for her courage though I would not be in college and my brother and I would probably be in the same situation these kids found themselves in. In many ways I am a success story. In that way I connected to entry 36. I hope that someday I can share my mom’s story and even my story with them in order to give them hope. I want them to know that they can take charge of their lives, that they can change their circumstances no matter how bleak it looks and that money is not the obstacle in often seems when you don’t have any. Hard work and determination do pay off.

Anticipation

I really related to the third diary entry in this section because it was about a teacher’s first day ever teaching a class. I understood the feelings of inadequacy. I remember during practicum having the same thoughts and feelings and I often worry that no matter how much I know and no matter how prepared I am for a class, I will never truly know what it is I am doing. It is silly and I know that. 4 years of training for a job should be more than adequate. I should feel more prepared for my first teaching job. I also related to this one because the teacher had a small inner conflict about how much to share with the class. I was worried about that during practicum too but I realized very quickly that the students respected me more when I shared my interests and who I was with them, and even more when I showed interest in their interests. The seventeenth entry was similar to the idea of sharing. The teacher in that one was faced with students who wanted to know about sex and had not been allowed to get that information from other teachers. I think that people often feel uncomfortable talking about sex. And that is really too bad because how else are students supposed to get that information? I hope that if I am ever in a situation similar to this teacher, that I won’t be so embarrassed that I will forget that education is more important than those feelings.

Diversity Article

Abstract:
All students learn differently. Most teachers realize this but for some reason schools have yet to implement enough this information effectively in the classroom. These different learning styles are born both of our nature and our experience. The combination makes all individuals unique while allowing for many similarities especially among individuals who have a similar culture. It is important to remember that different cultures have different values. This helps teacher’s understand why a student may have a slightly different learning style.

Reflection:
This seems to be repeated over and over in all of our education classes. It is important to use multiple strategies to teach students in order to have the best success at reaching them and thus insuring they are grasping the material. So why is it so hard to do it? Are teachers simply not skilled enough? Are schools not tolerant enough of new ideas? I think it is probably more the second one. Sometimes the past is tougher to break than we think. The article’s inclusion of culture was new though and I think it made an interesting point that because different cultures value different skills more highly that those values may affect a person’s multiples intelligences.