Voices

i found myself agreeing with very few of the philosophies presented by this reading. The two that i found myself agreeing with the most closely were the philosophies of Pesalozzi and Piaget.

I like the philosophies of Piaget because they were results based. Philosophies are great but honestly i want to know what works in education. Piaget's insistance on scaffolding was inspiring and insightful. I don't see how someone could believe in classroom that did not include scaffolding and co-operation. All human beings are social creatures and so it just makes sense that interpersonal learning benefits children.

Pesalozzi appealed to me because of his belief in teaching the whole student. I do not think teachers can afford to overlook the importance of the loving, caring relationship that pesalozzi stresses between teachers and students. Also, i think students need to be engaged in a range of topics to create well rounded students.

Educational issue- NCLB

I really thought this presentation was going to be a complete waste of my time since i have looked over some of the details of NCLB in quite a few of my education classes. This did not turn out to be the case. In most of my classes, the level of depth with which NCLB is investigated remains shallow. I have talked various times about how the system does not work because it restricts funding from the schools that need it the most, and i have talked about the impossiblity of having 100 percent of students reaching the standards set in reading and math. That being said, i had not gone over the results in the detail that the group presented to the class. For example, i was not aware of the goals in aqequate yearly progress. It put me somewhat at odds to see the dispairity between the levels of students who did reach the benchmarks compared to the projected number of students. I did not know that NCLB set requirements for schools to have highly trained teachers but i was glad to see that the standards are being set.

Perhaps the most important part of the presentation was the short video of the president elect Barack Obama speaking about his views on NCLB. I have to admit, i was a little discouraged by the fact that he was refering to AYP as ANNUAL yearly progress, but overall, he did seem to understand the nature of NCLB and see the flaws in its constructs. The other video of people (senators maybe?) talking about NCLB was valuable also. It was good to see that Joe Biden was one of the people that talked about his view of the bill because it is important to me to see what is going to happen with NCLB. Also, i was glad to see that he was not in favor of the bill. On a side note, i liked the guy who said to completely scrap the bill and mandate a minimum salary of $40,000 for teachers. haha.

After watching the presentation, i feel like i have a knowledge of NCLB that allows me talk about it with enough knowledge to earnestly discuss the ways to fix the problem at hand. Personally, i think that NCLB should be scrapped. Even though some of the principals in NCLB are admirable, i think the system created by this expansive act is too flawed to justify spending time repairing it. The interesting thing to me though is that the question over to fix it or abandon it is really as big of a question as it is. Whether the act is kicked aside or heavily revised matters little when you realize that either way is little more than an interchangable method that will be used to try to create a new standard for our nations education. instead, the questions should be: what values do we want to see put into our nations education? Who should be present to help create a new act or revise the old one? and how can we avoid a failure such as been seen with NCLB.

abstract philosophy thing

Classroom organization- I will want to have a classroom setup that allows me to be near my students most of the time. Other elements that are needed are that the setup is good for discussion and easy to get into groups from. i like the setup our class has where the table groups form a horseshoe. i think it works well. also, i need to have plants in my room as well as a pleasing color for my walls.

Motivation: I like the motivation in a classroom to come from having the subject matter be relevant and engaging. I hope i can make english come to life by making personal connections with the material and students

Discipline: first of all, there need to be clear rules about the classroom. Also, i hope to be able to avoid discipline when possible; however, when needed, i will use discipline as a way to create a time when i can talk to the student earnestly. i believe showing students caring and involvement is the only way to truely reach students.

Assesment: I want to try to assess my students more frequently so as to avoid infrequent, high stakes assignments. also, i feel this shows me a more accurate representation of the students. another important element to me is to assess more than just the written material in classes.

classroom climate: I hope to have an open classroom. I also hope to have an energetic classroom at times. a classroom without some energy just bores me.

Learning focus: I'm not sure what this is getting at. I want to have a student centered classroom if that is what i am supposed to get at.

Teaching/leadership style : I believe in being part of the class. That is to say, i don't want to remove myself from the work of the students but at the same time i realize that i am the teacher, not another of the students. I think the teacher is in the classroom to help steer the students.

non-traditional schools

I found the presentation on non-traditional schools to be a very useful presentation. Since time remaining at UMF is depleting quickly, i've been spending more time lately thinking about where i might want to teach and i really appreciate anything that looks into the nature of schools that are out there. I was especially interested in the part of the presentation that focused on charter schools. As we discussed in class, there seems to be a high portion of our state that is not even aware of what charter schools are due to our states policies which don't allow the charter schools in our state. unfortunetly, I was one of these people until coming to UMF and i'm still learning about charter schools. From what i have seen, i would consider teaching at a charter school. I still want to look more into and figure out things like what the pay looks like for a teacher in charter schools as opposed to a traditional school. Also, i would be interested to see how well charter schools tend to do in terms of longevity. I know that i could never teach at a catholic school or any other religion based school for that matter. I just am personally not a religious person and i don't A. Feel that i would be comfortable in that school environment and B. think students in a school where religion is part of the schools focus should suffer the disservice of having a teacher who is not on page with the rest of the school. I thought the school that katie rose presented on was interesting but i don't quite know if i would want to teach at a school such as that. I feel like i would be willing to give it a try but i'm not sure that i would enjoy the school.

promising futures synthesis

The class's view of the promising futures proposal had a few consistencies among the members of our class. For example, all of the students in the class see the need for changing our classes and agree that many of the practices proposed by promising futures are practices that would be beneficial for our classrooms. The main point that students found important about the promising futures model is that all students are given more of a voice within the school and we agree that students need to have their voices present. Some of the other elements of promising futures that our class liked were requirement for sufficient time and resources for teachers and the reduction of student loads. Megan pointed out that reducing the average number of students that a teacher has from 120 to 80 will greatly help the teachers produce more in depth relationship with their students. Some of the members of the class were skeptical about the proposal. That is not to say that they disliked the principals which promising futures attempts to create but rather that some members of the class fail to see how Promising Futures will change the state of schools in our state. I found the feeling of unease about promising futures was best summed up by Samantha when she said "I didn’t read this as the ground breaking movement it seems like it was meant to be, but as a booklet stating the obvious of what we need to do for our students to succeed. Obviously teachers need to respect and understand their student, obviously students need to be engaged on several levels and be an integral part of determining their own educations. What this booklet lacks however, is how they intend on carrying out these goals. I don’t think administrators and teachers start the day wondering how they cannot respect their students at this moment." My belief was that the principals were left open so that schools could have some flexibility to create their own ways to create this environment. The problem, however, is that I, like Samantha, feel that schools are trying to do all the things described in promising futures even before the proposal was created. So what is the difference that is going to be made by this little booklet?

http://www.ccsso.org/content/pdfs/DukeAlbanese_FridayPlenary_handout1.pdf

Discipline

Discipline is an aspect of education that i honestly have not spent a great deal of time focusing on in my academic career. I come from the perspective that if handled correctly, most behavior problems can be avoided in schools. simple techniques like creating proximity to students by adjusting the seating arrangement and moving around the room can help eliminate many small problems in classrooms. This can also be accomplished via techniques called classroom aesthetics. I found that link to be very interesting. In the event of larger problems, i do think there are times when it is needed to deliver detentions to students. That being said, i don't think detentions in the sense of simply having students come into your room and do homework for an hour after class really makes a difference to most students. I think the detention should to be used as a way to get the student into your room so you can talk to the student about things such as why they acted out, why you are disappointed in their action, and what both the student and teacher can do to remove this problem from the classroom. Basically, i don't see the effectiveness in punishing students in ways that may or may not teach them a lesson. I feel it is in the best interest of the student and the classroom environment to try to have both the teacher and the student understand the problem and resolve it.

promising futures

For the most part, i feel like the core concepts in the promising futures booklet are concepts so central to the nature of education that needing to type them out as a focus for schools seems almost silly. For example, that every student is respected by both students and teachers is a must for schools, but for some reason even this most basic concept needs to be expressed in print and evaluated. I think that concepts 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, and 14 are the types of fundamentals that seem like they should be unspoken. For example, practice 11 is "Every teacher has sufficient time and resources to learn, to plan, and to confer with individual students, colleagues, and families." How could a teacher be expected to do their job without the resources and time that are required for the job? that practice seems to be just common sense that functions to call attention to the fact that teachers don't always have the time and resources though all schools should be trying to provide them. The core practices that I really pay attention to are the practices that help make connections through education. I think that too often high school feels like fragmented classes that have nothing to do with each other or with life and that should not be the outcome of education. I especially take notice of practices 3 and 6. I think that goal six is important because having an education plan will make students more engaged and responsible for their education. I strongly believe in the power of having self-directed students and think having students putting thought into what they want to get from their education will help produce students that are more personally engaged in their education. The possible downside would be students who don't know how they want to focus their education, but for those students obtaining a general knowledge of different subject matters to inform their decisions for later in life could be an education plan. Practice number 3 seems so important to me because i think students need to understand how the subjects work together to create each other. I especially notice the importance in linking history with English. I think about this more because English is my concentration but still making connections across all subject matters is essential to education.