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.

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.

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.

classroom management

there were some aspects of the classroom management presentation that i really liked. I thought it was refreshing for Katie and Megan to discuss the importance of communicating with parents. Also, i liked the on-line program that they showed us as a way to communicate grades to both students and parents. I also liked that they spent some time talking about the physical setup of a classroom. This is an aspect of the classroom environment that i have taken quite a bit of interest in over the past few years. One reason for this is that when i was doing practicum i realized that proximity to the students makes a huge difference. based on this, i was glad that Katie and Megan presented the class with a task that will get the class starting to think of how they are going to lay out their classroom. I did wish that they looked a little more into classroom aesthetics. In the past i have run into some interesting articles about elements to the classrooms physical composition such as the role that the color of the walls can play and also about the importance of natural lighting in the classroom. That being said, i know that the time to present was limited and the information in the presentation was all valuable and engaging.