another class reading Burbles

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.

phil

 This article touched on the many ways a teacher can present material to students based on their own individual philosophies. It goes through all the famous philosophers and their contribution to the differing theories. The article talked about the importance and implication of each one and how they affect the teacher material and overall assessment of the classroom environment. Out of this entire over analytical talk, never once did this article mention how your students affect or change your own personal philosophies.
Over the duration of this semester we have learned how much the student’s affect how we teach. From motivation, to curriculum, to testing, it is the students who ultimately determine the classroom environment. We see every week how much our mentor teachers have to cater to the types of students they have. If you are stuck into classifying your teaching style how are we, as educators, going to learn from our students. It is so important to be taking cues from the students or suffer loosing their attention.  Last week we talked about defensive teaching, even though I did not agree with it, this is the most productive form of teaching in an environment you can’t always control.

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.

what

I really found Erica’s article about increasing math and reading to be horrific. As a social science major I see the importance of learning beyound standarized tests. Almost completly doing away with history, geography, music, and art leaves the child cultureless and ignorant to the world around them. How does this make a better more educated student? I really likes Erica’s idea about increasing math and reading in elementary school. Many of subjects outside of these two subjects are reiderated again and middle and high school and can be talked about in greater depth. It would be more benifical to start early if this is what a school district is worried about. I sincerely hope that this shift does not become nation wide because not only are we depriving kids of an adequate education but I am out of a job.

How many of you college students changed your major over the course of being at the university. I changed mine 3 times, graduated and had to go back to school because at 22 I finally decided what kind of career field I wanted to be in. Imagine you first day of high school; you are nervous, excited, and anxious about what awaits you. A counselor calls you down to the office and explains that you must now pick a major and a minor to focus on during you four years in high school. I could barley pick out an outfit without my friends approval let alone a huge decision like a major to study. This idea may not be too far away from Michigan schools, Gov. Jeb Bush proposed a bill that education experts say would make Florida the first state to require incoming high school freshmen to declare a major, just like college students. The Florida House passed the Republican-sponsored bill Thursday 85-35 on a straight party-line vote. Under this new bill students can pick from a variety of majors including humanities, communications, math arts, foreign languages and vocational skills. In the article they use an example of a 17 year old high school student who is interested in becoming an engineer. “For example, to prepare for her career, Lila would have to earn four credits in major courses like engineering, space technology and physics, 15 core credits in courses like math, science and English and 5 minor credits in elective courses like drama, zoology and Spanish.” 

This plan to me will not be successful. Students are too interested in what their friends want, then what is best for their education. I feel that given the choice many of the students will only be interested in something if all of their friends are interested in it too. Very few 15 year old girls are going to go against the grain in the better interest of their education. Although this plan may benefit some students, I feel it will hurt a larger population overall. 

Today I witnessed the great division between being “cool” and school work. During this time in a child’s life being cool is of the utmost importance. It determines how you feel about yourself as a person. Life during your early teens is shaped by how others view you. My eighth grade class is in exception; being both cool and an active student is simply not an option.
As discussed in earlier tutoring reflections Mr. Jones starts off each day with of a question of the day. If the students are struggling with the question he opens the it up for discussion. During this time he asks questions similar to the topic in order to get the students moving in the right direction. For the four weeks that I have been inside of the classroom I have only seen the same four students answer the questions. At first I thought this was due to the fact that many of the students simply didn’t know the answers. What I found was that they just simply didn’t want any of their peers to know they knew the answer.

 The majority of the time Mr. Jones avoids giving me the students with behavioral problems, most of the students I tutor are just too far behind to complete the assignment on their own. Today the students had the entire class hour to work on their review sheet for the test on Friday and he felt that it would be better if I took some of the more disruptive students so the rest of the class would not be distracted. What I found were these students that I had previously written off as poor students became really motivated when separated from the rest of their peers. What took that rest of the class the entire hour only took my two students twenty minutes. Their attitude about school and the assignment totally changed once no one was their to watch and judge their actions. As educators we need to be thinking of ways to make school “cool.” (The concept sounds cheesy, but I have seen the results when you take away the judgmental part of being successful.) Ideas that I have been thinking about are: Taking thirty minutes a week to show how school and being successful can be glamorous and that many” popular” people are smart. Bring in articles of famous people historical and recent. You can show individuals like famous actresses and people of power and what it took for them to get where they are. Kids need that reassurance that they are not going to be social outcasts for being smart. If this concept of”cool” was taken away I know that many of my students would be immensely more successful. 

iPod nation

Last week’s lecture we began talking about podcasts and the usefulness for not only this class but as future educator. My article for this week comes from the campus of Georgia College and State University. This rural university has adapted many new ways that the students can stay on top and engaged with everyday school activities using iPod technology.  
Some of the ideas they have tried over the school year are as follows: iDreamers, this is a team of students who are constantly inventing new ways to use ipod technology. Recently they have found a way to use ipods as video yearbooks and pamphlets advertising for the school. History professor Deborah Vess asks students to download 39 films to their video-capable iPods so she doesn’t have to spend class time screening the movies. Psychology professor Noland White has found a new-age answer to office hours: a podcast of the week’s most asked questions. Hank Edmondson, a government professor known around campus as “The Podfather,” was among the first to use iPods to supplement his course lectures. Edmondson now makes lectures, language study programs, indigenous music and thumbnail art sketches available for download to the iPods of students in a three-week study-abroad program he leads. He used this technology overseas during trips to many of Madrid museums. He would prerecord whatever information he uses during that time. Now the students had more individual time to walk around and enjoy the sites while listening to the lecture over headphones.
There are some skeptics to this technology, many of them with this same idea of students not actively engaging with the material. “Learning is through interaction, discussion, critical questioning and challenging of assumptions,” said Donna Qualters, director of the Center for Effective Teaching at Northeastern University in Boston. Many teacher feel that if we cut out face to face interaction and group discussion students are missing out on a great deal of valuable learning.
In the college level I think this technology is absolutely useful, already students don’t get the required one on one time so the shift is not that great. In high school I agree with the arguments from the opposing side.  Students at this level should be focusing more on group interaction and the importance of critical thinking. However new ideas are always forming and I feel this technology will benefit all levels of education some day.

McNeil

The first section of this article jumped out at me, due to the fact that it strongly correlated with the article I read for last week’s class. For the second week of March my mother found an article about a young teacher who was temporarily fired for speaking out against the president. In this week’s assigned article, teachers were asked why they did not present all of the knowledge they had on economic and political information. Many teachers avoided speaking out about what’s going on in the government for fear that the class would become out of control if they knew about the injustices that occurred. “Their patterns of knowledge control were, according to their own statements in taped interviews, rooted in their desire for classroom control.” This in turn took away from not only the students but the teachers as well.

 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.

tutoring reflection #3

Tutoring reflection #3

Week three and I am beginning to get excited about going to class and seeing the students. I still find myself a little intimidated by them and their lack of seeing me as an authority figure.  I haven’t found a way to assert my authority inside the classroom. My position as a tutor does not give me the opportunities that I feel is necessary for the students to think I am someone they need to respect. I would be happy if they saw me as someone they can ask for help from.

 This week I found myself getting more comfortable in front of the students. Unfortunately Mr. Jones is given a stack of movies that he must watch throughout the year. He, as do I feel like students who are already far behind should not be wasting valuable class time watching movies that frankly they are not watching. This day however, was very helpful to me. The students were instructed to work on an acrostic poem during the movie. I used this opportunity to interact with the students. During the movie I walked around the classroom helping kids find sentences for their poems. I know that for the students this assignment was fairly easy, the hard part was staying motivated to finish it. I came into class early today so I saw how far the other class got on their poems; many of them did not finish them. It was my goal for every student to finish the assignment today; I felt that 40 minutes was ample time to finish the assignment. Finally a goal that I set for myself was reached. It felt really great to have each students finish all of the assignment. Motivation to do an assignment while watching a movie seems almost useless. The movie was roots, this is a movie about slavery, which was the root word for the poem, but it didn’t help get the assignment done any easier. Because of these forced movies the children lose their focus on learning. This idea was made very apparent when they were trying to do their poems. It has to be frustrating as an educator to have barriers and restrictions put in place by the state. With all of the reading we have been doing about time management against the readings on state board regulations and requirements I haven’t figured out a way to solve this ever present problem.

This week was about trying to find an affective place in the classroom. I don’t see me being an effective tutor in the eyes of my teacher; therefore it is up to me to get something out of this experience. Every week I hear yet another student complaining about how they are not getting the experience they had envisioned, all they are doing is cheating themselves. All experiences are what you make of them, and if you go into every situation with high expectations, chances are you will find yourself constantly disappointed.

Tutoring Reflection #2

This week I started off motivated to connect better with the students. Last week my teacher gave me opportunity to jump in and I hestitated, because I was nervous. I was not going to let that happen again. Before walking into class I thought about all of the things that I had done wrong the week before, and decided focus on one of them to work on today. This week I was going to shake out my nerves and speak up.

At the begining of every class period Mr. Jones* has a question of the day, the kids write all of their responses in their journals. This method of teaching was discussed in the Weinstien reading as a way to increase actual learning time. It is a vary valuable tool in my class because it forces the kids to be in their seats working. Many times kids are confused and ask for help. Today I walked around the room guiding kids towards a correct answer. Due to absenses the kids I tutored last week weren’t present on this day. For this reason I really need to focus on interacting with the class as a whole.

I really like that my teacher allows me to interact with the entire class, many times my hour there is spent idlely standing around. When Mr. Jones is in front of the class all I am doing is finding a way to blend in without anyone noticing me. Next week I really want to find a way to use this time to my benefit. If I waste time focusing on the time being wasted it benefits no one.

Response to transgendered article

I really liked reading what Katie felt about this article and her input on how she would handle this situation if she was part of that school. After reading this article and Katie’s response to it I realized the need for these situtations to be part of the educational system. It’s great for kids to experience this different types of people at a young age. The more diversity that a child is exposed to the more tolerant they are.

As a principal at that school I would push how valuable a teacher like this is to their kids. These children are going to get more positve things out of this teacher than negative. It has never been proven that gay parents or gay teachers turn out gay kids, the same findings also apply to transgendered individuals. Much of the population has its preconcieved notions about homosexuals and of course religion plays a huge role in acceptance. None of these reasons should ever prevent someone from being an educator. Articles like this one are extremly exciting to me because they are proof that society is moving forward and that discrimination and homophobia are no longer preventing individuals from pursuing their dreams, what ever they may be.