First is the idea of citizenship training, this is the idea that “a high level of shared education is essential to a free, democratic society and to the fostering of a common culture.” However this idea of higher education is useless when half of the students in your class are unable to read the “higher education” material presented to them. How can school promote democratic unity if they are lacking essential resources like computers or even up to date textbooks while a school district 5 miles away just received wireless internet. If students don’t see themselves equal with outside schools they can’t see themselves working equally with them as adults.

Second political goal is the pursuit of equal treatment. The government has worked very hard to ensure legislatively that all students get an equal opportunity to public education. The equal opportunity to go to school is not the same as having equal education. Many of the teachers that I came into contact with at Kiley were new teachers or teachers that couldn’t find a job in their specific area of study. These teachers were forced here economically because they could not find a job anywhere else. They are frustrated and unhappy with the situation their in. That idea alone proves that not all schools are equal. Unhappy teachers make for an unhappy classroom, ultimately hurting the students and their education. There is no passion or drive to motivate these students, especially when these teachers are just trying to survive the year and get out.

The last political goal is equal access. This is the idea that all children should be given access to a higher education. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that meant high school. If we it were 1950 Kiley would have met this political goal. However with the changing times and the increase competitiveness, high school is not going to cut it for these kids. If they expect to be at an even playing field with their peers they are going to have to be educated for a college bound life. Yet I do not see any motivation by the school to push towards high education, this mainly has to do with the ses of the school. Education in Labree’s terms should not be affected by ses. These political goals were not put in place with a disclaimer that said unless your district is poor.

Nothing can be equal without the equal distribution of money. Until the government can figure out a way to do that there will always be inconstancies in education. 

The last two articles that we have read in this class not only confused me as to how this applies to my teaching education now, but for the most part lost me somewhere in the middle. This article dragged out the concept of critical thinking and ways we can look at critical thinking, until I forgot what I had originally thought about critical thinking and it’s affects inside the classroom. Looking through my bloglines I read that many of you had a hard time with this article, so I took comfort in that I was not alone.

Once again I felt like this was another article that should be used latter in out teaching development. I don’t know how I’m going to get everyone in my classroom quite enough to listen to me let alone think critically about what I am teaching them. Burbles states that “critical education can increase freedom and enlarge the scope of human possibilities.” However, if we as educators aren’t allotted that freedom ourselves with standardized tests and state approved curriculum how are we going to not only convey this idea but have time to incorporate critical thinking into our classrooms. The bottom line is no matter what material we read or how many authors think its important for people to think critically, if the state and our district does not think it’s important than we have no choice but to teach the same regurgitated stuff over and over again. It is nice to read articles that challenge our thinking and how we look at teaching but it is just not practical for the majority of school districts that we will be hired into our first years out there.

For new teachers these philosophies seem useless to learn. Many of us will not know what style best fits the environment that we’re teaching in.  Overtime once we get our feet wet then, we can asses what type of philosophy best correlates with our lives and our teaching style. To me this article was a pointless one to read and I got nothing from it.

 McNeil labels it as “negotiations of efficiencies”. This is the idea where teachers look at the knowledge they have and then from there, they decide what to put at risk in the classroom. The information they are teaching then is not a reflection of the teachers knowledge rather their skill on classroom control. When knowledge is presented as a control factor I do not see how learning can have much of an effect on either side. As the article continues McNeil mentions that students did not buy their teachers lack of knowledge on a subject, this lead to a decrease in the classes motivation to learn.
After reading this article I was very upset at McNeil’s findings and it made me extremely discouraged as a future educator. Was I going to be a teacher that taught in terms of how I could control my students? Was I going to avoid the hot button topics because I would be too tired to deal with the effect? It seems very easy to fall into this defensive teaching mode. Everyone seems to be happy when the classroom is under control, so happy that they are not questioning whether or not the student is actually learning anything challenging or valuable. I feel that defensive teaching in some avenues is a necessary evil, many times you have to teach safe to avoid failure; in your students, you, and  the school. This is why my personal article was so important to me. Mr. Bennish stepped outside of defensive teaching and taught what he felt his students needed to know. Educators should not avoid talking about topics for fear that our students will become cynical, at least they are learning. How can we expect our students to think critically in college if we don’t challenge them in high school.

The reason this section stuck out in my mind was due to my first experience inside a classroom this week as a tutor. From the start of class my teacher wrote up a timeline of the class schedule for that hour. They had two learning objectives they had to get through before they could watch a movie. Every time the class got out of hand he reminded them that they were taking away from their own movie time and that every interruption just took off more time. He illustrated this by deducting time on the board from the movie when things began to get out of control. This method really seemed to work with the kids and soon everyone was cooperating and working together to get through the objectives. However a teacher can not always revert to an extrinsic reward to regulate student’s behaviors. That being said I think that the timeline is something I will use later as a teacher because the kids really see exactly how much time they are wasting by being disruptive. 

One of Weinstein’s suggestions for increasing ALT was to increase the hours of learning. This can be done through block scheduling. I was never part of a school system that had block scheduling; however I had friends and sibling that participated in this type of scheduling. When classes are blocked for a longer period of time the teacher has time to do the tedious tasks like attendance without taking away from actual learning time. The flip side to this is that if the teacher is having a hard time keeping his/her students engaged for an hour what’s to say that adding an hour will increase the amount of learning.   

A great strategy that Weinstein suggests and that I observed during tutoring is to increase hours of learning by monitoring the student’s progress. As mentioned above my teacher started the hour with goals in mind and time limits to complete those goals. He also monitored progress by constantly engaging students in the assignments they were working on. Asking questions like how does this relate to what we learned yesterday and what did you get for number 4. By including every kid into the assignments they were working on the kids needed to be paying attention in order to keep up with the other students. He did not simply give an assignment and give a time limit to complete it. He kept the students engaged by having the entire class work together to get the answers.   

After reading this section I realize how important time management can be to a class. How much actual learning is lost when a teacher is constantly being distracted and has to stop. Time is something that as a teacher I am going to really work on. The line then becomes how much time do you spend on each student and what benefits the class the most. Is it stopping the disruption, or ignoring it and continuing on with the lesson? 

Brophy gave several outside causes that attribute to a child developing failure syndrome. The one that found most enlightening was that children develop failure syndrome from an overdependancy-related desires for attention from their teacher. On the other side of the spectrum children may develop failure syndrome from parents inability to reward children when they did well while encouarging their children when they failed. This concept seemed like a catch twenty-two. However as educators it’s important to note that we need to find the medium between these two ideas in order to avoid failure syndrome and encouarge strong motivational skills in our students.

In order to motivate students and move them away from failure syndrome we need to show the student that they can be and are successful. This can be done in several ways

1. showing appreciation for their progess

2. allow students to set their own goals; while using self-evaluation as a motivator

3. allow students to work in groups; this may allow students to be a leader while recieving positive feedback from their peers

4. talk with students to find what areas they feel comfortable in and which are anxiety provoking.

By allowing the students some atonomy towards changing their attitude towards school may give the students added confidence and while decreasing the notion that they can’t succeed.

The parts i did agree on were ones that invloved forcing the child to make the connections along with your guidence. i think it is important for the child to deside why learning and education is important to them. Making connections with the childs outside intrests and what you are doing in the classroom is a great way to indirectly get the child excited about learing. as mentioned in an earlier article learning is not always about fun, while learning is not always about fun it is a good way to get the child excited. Once you get them in the mode of working actual unfun school work will seem more routine and now they have the motivation to learn regardless if this one task is exciting or not.

Throughout the article Brophy comes back to the idea of connecting “learning experiences with their self-concepts.” He claims that in doing this students will then see themselves as active open-minded learners. This idea is extremely important in preparing students for higher education. College bond studnets need to have this ingrained so that its involunary by the time they go off to college or they will crash and burn. I saw a lot of my friends their first year at college fall off the deep end when any of their classes required even the slightest anaylisis because they didn’t have the motiavtion and determination to suceed, school was just a way to get a job, there was no emtion or connection to it.

The part that i had a hard time connecting to myself was comparing what he labled closed minded learners to active or openminded learners. Here he used the example of individuals of talk shows to explain the what may happen to you if you dont take an active role in you learning. Putting others and their lifestyles down in order to motivate your students not to be that person seems like a very hypocritical view at looking at how to be openminded. You shouldn’t scare your students into thinking they might become “white trash” if they don’t straighten up. Mentioned above motivation needs to come from within, it needs to be self actuaized not scared into. Once you start labeling others students will see you as closedminded.

The main idea from this article that i felt was the most important in teacings kids self-actualization and making the shift from alienated to active learner is the idea that school is not about learning fact it is about realizing their human potential. It’s about finding how to balance, work with others, fail, and succeed.

From reviewing Michigan merit proposal, one main theme runs through my head. How do these changes affect every single student in the state of Michigan. To me this program serves to benefit students who are college bound. While it is nice to want all kids working towards a college career it is extremely ignorant to think that every student in Michigan is college bound. Not everyone will have a professional career, and they should not be punished for this. At the high school I attended we had two options for students. You could take the college bound curriculum, or you could spend half the day at a vocational school. This school included hair stylist, mechanic, and electrician, and computers. All of these vocational classes went towards high school graduating credits. This system worked great because it avoided implementing the track system.

To me the track system is just another way in keep the rich richer and the poor, poor. Statically students in lower tracks tend to be from minority low income homes. Many times schools give you the impression that it is the parents choice, however many times these parents are pushed by the educators to put students in tracks where they can not exceed. Tracks are put into place because of low funding. In the school I attended we had aides inside the classrooms for students that needed a little extra guidance in their studies. Surprisingly enough the amount of students really needing the extra help decreases the amount of students deemed unreachable. Placing children at a young age in a designated track prevents them from better themselves. The track system furthers the self-fulfilling prophecy. If you are telling a child from a young age you are not college bound than they never have the opportunity to work towards that goal. As mentioned earlier not everyone is going to go to college, but that choice should be left to the student and their parents not the schools. Ultimately is always comes down to money and unless the government is willing to dish out more cash and take education more serious, these inequalities in education will continue.