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.