Final Blog!

Wow. Already at the end. I know it's kinda corny to say it, but this semester really did FLY by! Looking back, I definitely learned more in this course than I did in any of my other semi-pointless classes (history, english... the basics) Throughout this class I learned more about education than I ever thought I could learn in such a small amount of time. I learned most of the basics of what education is all about. I discovered my own thoughts and theories on education, along with a lot of other peoples. I feel that I got to interact with my classmates thoughts and opinions a lot more than in a regular classroom because here, we were all required to post all the time and read and respond to eachothers thoughts. I really liked this aspect because I feel like I actually had some educational conversations throughout this semester, while in most of my in-class classes, there's only a few students who voice their opinions, and I'm ususally not one of them. I had a hard time accepting 3 online courses. Looking at the work load for this course almost scared me away... yet after taking a week to realize how organized it was, it really wasn't bad at all! So enough about my enjoyment of the course, onto my thoughts on education now, four months later---

I have studied lots of different philosophies in education, and, as I'm guessing most of you now know, I am in love with Rudolph Steiners methods of education and his Waldorf education system. It is all about celebrating the developmental stages of a childs life, and freeing them from fear of adults. It pressures them less on academic achievment at such a young age, and focuses more on celebrating their creative minds. I think this is super important because I feel that kids are pressured at too young of an age to read and write and excel and progress. If they are given time to develop on their own, there will be less stress about "learning disabiliities" and low test scores. They will be able to develop creative minds which will make them unique and happy kids for the rest of their lives!

I feel like learning is like a tree, the roots are super important because they give the tree its strength and ability to grow nice and strong. If the roots of education, AKA the early years and beginnging in getting one interested in learning in general, if these roots are weak, the tree is bound to fail or achieve less than it's full potential. I also enjoyed the metaphors like building a bridge. The teacher is the support beams and helps the students to get over all sorts of obstacles throughout lessons and years in school.

Overall, this course has inspired me more and more to teach. As I said in the beginning, I have changed my career goals atleast a dozen times since my senior year of highschool. Even getting into this course I was really skeptical of teaching because of the economy and the low salary that teachers are said to make. I was so worried about a life ahead of me with financial struggles and perhaps not being happy. But after all of the things this course has taught me, I finally feel comfortable with where my life is going. I am so excited to teach, I think everyone close to me can feel it and are finally happy for me. It's good to know that I'll actually be happy doing what I'm doing. I learned a lot of this acceptance and happiness through getting to know the teachers that I observed for throughout the semester. She gave me a lot of insight into how comfortable her life is, how happy and stress free her job is, and the plus of an amazing schedule every year!


I've also been nannying throughout this semester. This experience has also taught me of how much I'd rather be a teacher than a babysitter. When your a teacher, your students know that you're the boss. They look up to you for guidance and directions and listen to you constatnly. You have the power to send them to the office if they're being bratty and out of control. I recently had to quit my nannying job because it was just too much to handle. The kids would not listen to me because "I'm not in their family" and the fact that they were spoiled rotten did not help the situation! Anyhow, everytime I was there I thought, "Wow, when I'm a teacher, I won't have to deal with this severity!" I mean, kids will be kids, and I love kids, just not having to act like a second mom to them!

The link I used was our classes WebCT. I couldn't really think of anything more logical than that. Within this link holds all of our discussions, all of our blogs, papers, topics, and ideas. It contains everything I've learned. I've enjoyed this semester thoroughly and I can't wait to make a difference in education when I graduate (and hopefully get a job) about a million years from now thanks to Salem State's endless required classes! :)

EDU 101 WebCT

Teaching Metaphor

When first asked about this assignment, I have to admit I was pretty confused! I had no idea what it meant to form a metaphor for teaching and learning. But after looking at a few of the examples, I got the idea. I hate to sound tacky, but I really didn't just choose a tree because it was the first example given! I looked at all of it and I thought about all of the things that grow. That is essential in learning; the process of growing. Children grow into adults, and they are learning throughout the entire metamorphosis from baby to grown up. 

I chose to look at teaching and education on the whole broad spectrum instead of only focusing on elementary years, even though that is what I want to concentrate one. When I think of a metaphor for education, I'd like to include myself into it because I am still learning at age 20. If we think about it, we spend a whole lot of our lives in school and learning so it is super important! We don't want our trees to simply halt in growth mid-height! We want to keep learning and being nourished and thriving and growing until we can reach our maximum potential of learning growth. 

The roots of our tree lie in our educational foundations, as the picture depicts. This is an extremely important part of our tree. It holds the whole thing together. This deciphers exactly how essential our first years of education are. In the first few years, I'd say, preschool or kindergarten to third or fourth grade, we learn so much more than solely academics. This is where we learn most of our social skills, which I feel are probably just as important as academics. The roots become strong with social skills, the first and most "fundational" skills such as reading and writing, along with the first lessons on thinking and analyzing and pondering questions. Having the children inquire into situations and questions is a great way to get them to open up their minds academically, socially, and logically.

 The child should be free to develop and explore and celebrate their creativity and potential freely; as the roots of a tree grow freely through the ground. They should not have to fear adult figures, or authority (AKA the teacher). Without this fear, there is nothing prohibiting them from growing strong roots in development and education. 

The stump of the tree which grows to the top and has lots of branches sprout out from it is the next most important part. This is the part on the tree that reads "students actively involved". This is the classroom. All of the hands on activities provided in elementary schools is the backbone to everything the child will learn. They need to be fully involved in school, interacting with other children along with the adult figures of the school. 

Off of this main branch or stump, four different mini branches are off shoots that are the other five fundamental concepts of education. Communication, Thinking, Opportunities, Community, and Motivation. If you think about it, these are some of the most important parts of life, not just education. Any part of education, whether it is the early elementary years, into high school, and further into college, require all of these components. We need to constantly communicate with others in order to get advice and opinions and feedback on our work. We need to think and analyze all kinds of situations and questions, both in life and at school. We need the opportunities to learn. This is where teachers come in with such an important role. We give children the opportunity to learn in a positive environment. The community plays a huge role in our education. Public schooling results in our classmates, and other parents involved in PTA meetings. The community helps to fund all of the things that schools are able to do. Without community, schools could not exist. Children would all have to go to private schools, and many families could not afford it, therefore resulting in children neglecting education. Finally, motivation is key. We need to be motivated in order to learn!!

Social Justice in Lower Class Education

Well, I have to admit, I felt like I already touched on this subject once this semester, but I liked it and decided it wasn't bad to have to blog about it again. I was going to take my first approach in which I discussed how the community can work together for social justice in their schools. But then, as I was researching, I found a girl student teachers' final paper for her education course. I found her story really inspiring.

Sara Falls was a student teacher in Detroit. Now, Detroit is probably not the most likely spot to find a young white middle class student teacher. The school that she taught in was 99% black, and for the most part, in poverty. Sara had been taught, like us, to stand up for social justice within the education system. Yet, the school that she was teaching in gave her the exact opposite feeling and emotion. Her master teacher would constantly shut down her high ambitions for the Detroit students. A common phrase she would use was "In five years you'll be voting Republican and checking the stock pages". I just think her whole situation was disgusting. The teacher not having any faith in both her students OR her student teacher. If I had a student teacher in my classroom, and they were trying to make a difference and make learning for my students better, then I would sure as hell let her do her thing. But poor Sara Hills had to realize, as the students told her "Ms. Falls, this is Detroit!"

It's really sad that lower class people most often usually get lower class everything: schools, housing, jobs, and even education! No one wants to put in any effort because they figure, eh, what's the use?! The teacher and student's attitude isn't even the worst part of Ms. Falls story. She was observing in an HONORS senior English classroom. The kids in the class never wrote anything. They didn't learn how to. They didn't write short answers, long essays, 5 paragraphs, heck they couldn't even write 1 paragraph responses. In my AP English class in highschool, we were expected to write 2-3 page papers every week, not to mention a 12 page research paper along with a 10-14 page memoir. But I went to school in a suburban predominantly white middle class area. It's crazy the differences there are. I never expected that just because another area of the country or city was less fortunate in funds, that they were not expected to learn as much or do as well in school. That Detroit high school in which Sara Falls student taught had a 25% graduation rate!

After her disappointing student teaching experience, Sara Falls is still dedicated to social justice in education. She now works at a wonderful school in San Fransisco high school with students who are gifted and eager to learn, even if they are not upper middle class. Sara Falls story was both inspiring and got me more excited to face issues as a teacher. Her paper also gave research questions, research, answers, and tools she used to incorporate social justice into her teaching methods. So I not only found an outstanding story to blog about, I also found a great source to use for my final papers in this class!


Sara Falls Final Paper

Vocational-Technical Schools

For this weeks blog, we had to pick a type of school that interested us. Well, I would have written about the Waldorf school system, but since I wrote about Rudolf Steiner and Waldorf schools last week, I decided to take a different approach and look into vocational and technical schools.

Vocational-technical schools are often known as alternative high schools, for those students who don't usually perform excellently in academics. But many vocational-technical schools are trying to alter that image of alternative high school. Many schools are trying to make admissions and course requirements more stringent. Some believe that making the admissions and classes a little bit harder will recruit more students, while others believe its important to keep the trade-oriented school identity in order to differentiate them from normal schools. The purpose of vocational-technical schools is to train and specialize students in particular fields of labor.

There is a technical school that was an option for us after middle school in my home town. We got to tour it and decide if it was the place for us. It had many different trades including carpentry, auto body work, cosmetics, hair dressing, computer design, graphic design, and I believe it even had some electrician and plumbing courses.

There are many children in the world who often feel that school is just "not for them". It's not that they are ignorant and unable to learn, some people are just more classroom oriented learners while others prefer to use their hands. These types of learners often do much better in vocational schools. After they graduate they can go straight into their field, instead of going onto college to obtain a college degree. Some people may argue that the best way to succeed in life is to go onto college and obtain a degree and move onto graduate school to get a master's degree.

But, if I've learned anything super important about teaching in this course, I'd have to say that is is the range of differences in all children learning abilities. Every child is different. Everyone learns differently, and feels differently about school. It is important to match every student with an appropriate learning environment.



If you're interested in vocational school... click here!

Waldorf Education

Waldorf education is a style of instructing, or pedagogy, created by a man named Rudolf Steiner. He created it in 1919 and since then there are thousands of schools world wide that operate under the Waldorf education methods. I found these methods to be quite different than all the other education methods. It seemed to best suit my personality. According to one of the websites I used, "Why Waldorf Works", Waldorf education can be defined as, "Waldorf Education is based on a profound understanding of human development that addresses the needs of the growing child. Waldorf teachers strive to transform education into an art that educates the whole child—the heart and the hands, as well as the head."

I related this education very closely to the Summerhill school in England which I was very interested in. Waldorf education focuses on freedom of the child to develop creatively without the fear of adults. The children expand and grow intellectually through art and drama and music and oral education. Unlike most mainstream public schools, Waldorf education does not introduce reading and writing into their systems until age 7.

I liked learning about Waldorf education so much because it kept touching upon the fact that something you notice about the teachers is how engaged they are in their students as people. They get to know each student personally. This is the kind of education that involves PLPs, like at the Met school.

Steiner believed that children develop in three stages- from birth to age 6 or 7, from age 7 to age 14 and from age 14 to 18. This is the same way that the Summerhill school was separated. Henry Barnes, a long time Waldorf teacher said that, "When children relate what they learn to their own experience, they are interested and alive, and what they learn becomes their own. Waldorf schools are designed to foster this kind of learning." I like this mentality. I hope to one day teach at a Waldorf school. The children express themselves through art and drama instead of constantly writing essays. I'm not going to lie, some aspects of this education seem a little to hippy-esque and free-spirited for me. I would need to experience the classroom hands on. I grew up in a public school environment and I also love aspects of the normal, popular, public school. But giving something else a shot sounds like a good chance to make a difference in a students life.


I just learned that there is a Waldorf school in Beverly Farms, so hopefully in my future education classes I will be able to spend some time their and see if it is really as appealing to me as it sounds!


Websites used:

Wikipedia Information
Why Waldorf Works Website

Social Justice Education

I have to admit, when first reading this article, I was a little bit confused. I mean really, how much can you relate social justice to teaching? I thought what the author of the article had to say was smart and sounds like some good advice to both live by and teach by. Still; I guess you can call me ignorant or lacking of common sense (which I actually get a lot!) but I decided to Google "social justice definition" to see if something a little bit more explainable would come up. I got this definition from Wikipedia, not the most trustworthy source, but I liked the way it explained the term to me.

"Social justice, sometimes called civil justice, refers to the concept of a society in which justice is achieved in every aspect of society, rather than merely the administration of law. It is generally thought of as a world which affords individuals and groups fair treatment and an impartial share of the benefits of society."

So now that I have a decent understanding of what the point of social justice in education is, I want to know of something that is being done about it around the country. I guess I ask this just to prove to myself that it is possible. In Kohl's article, it kind of seems like the idea of it is super stressful, and that as a teacher promoting this you are going to have to face a lot of opposition which may even threaten your job status. In this economy, though making social justice relevant in education is important to me, keeping my job would most likely be first priority, even if it meant taking the back seat on the communal good and following the rules. Obviously, if I were teaching in a school where the policies were just completely unethical and expected me to take away from the students learning abilities, I would stand up for the rights of the students. It is really important for students to believe in social justice. The world as a whole should want to fight for it, instead of just accepting that their surroundings are not just.

So when it came to my question of what exactly has been done for social justice in education, I found an articlet that really brightened my day. In Chicago, in a little neighborhood of mostly hispanic low income families, all of the children had to travel between 4 different cities to attend highschool. The parents got together and fought for the right to open up a high school basically in their own backyards. Initially the city approved the plans for the school but they kept holding off on construction because they claimed the funds were needed for other reasons. Eventually, fed up, the citizens performed an impressive nineteen day hunger-strike at the site where the school would be opened. Their strong efforts over SIX YEARS finally worked and the Little Village Lawndale High School was opened in 2005. The school focused it's teachings on peace and struggle, which was an easy base considering what they had to do in order to have the building created. The students are engaged in real life issues of race, gender, and economic equity. They are taught about self- awareness and encouraged to self- discovery. The students are actually excited to go to school and learn about what they can do to become aware of their community and how they can help to improve it.

The LVLHS is an inspiring story that made me think alot about social justice education. The ideas of social justice in education are spreading throughout the country, but unfortunately they have not made it into the mainstream problems and concerns of the overall education system. Hopefully by the time that I become a teacher, it will be acceptable to use a socially just way of teaching and I won't have to fight so much for the right to have a just and fair classroom.


I liked how Kohl gave a list of things to do to take steps toward social justice in education. Making a blend of a bunch of different teaching methods that you come across to create your own stew of teaching seems logical and very unique. I hope to do this when I'm a teacher. The final paragraph was not only something that teachers should live by, but I feel that everyone should live by. He is telling the reader to enjoy life the way it is. It is useless to get completely stressed over the issues of social justice. If that is the case, it will become more of a obligatory duty than a charity. You need to have fun in order to work, and work in order to have fun. This has always been one of my main motto's in life. Work hard, Play Harder. I see so many of my friends who either do really well in school but really have no social life. Or those who base their life socially, and really struggle with academics and their futures. The key is to balance the two so that in the long run, you are happy and well off. I hope that social justice education really takes a kick start over the next four years so that I can join the efforts to have it be a necessity instead of just a dream.

Kohl Article
LVLHS Article
Wikipedia Definition
Google

Inclusion and the Deaf

After reading this chapter about inclusion, I got to thinking... How far is too far when it comes to including kids with disabilities into general education classrooms? Should all children of all possibly disabilities be allowed in with the normal kids? Should blind children, deaf, and dumb children be expected to learn within the same class as both normal kids and those with learning problems like downs syndrome and autism? How much is too much? When I was in high school, for some reason I was always in the home room with all of the deaf children and their aid, who spoke to them and translated everything the teacher said in sign language. Now, it wasn't too much of a distraction, since it was homeroom. It was actually pretty interesting and I learned a few things. Yet, if those children had been in my other classes, I have to say that I probably would be distracted and have trouble concentrating.

In the article that I read on this subject the author stated "Inclusion entails, students receiving all support services within the classroom". Now to me, this isn't totally appropriate for deaf children. They need to have their own room and time with their aids where they can totally concentrate on learning in sign language. This way, the deaf children get a quality lesson, while the normal and other disabled children also are not totally distracted by all the sign language going on. Parents may argue that it is not fair that some disabled students are allowed to learn solely in the classroom while their deaf or even blind child is not allowed. Yet, I don't really have sympathy for these parents. They need to realize that some students with disabilities are already easily distracted, and to place a deaf child with an aid constantly translating in sign language in the same environment, they are both going to have difficulties learning. The percentage of deaf children is exceptionally lower than that of other learning disabilities.

So to answer my primary question- I would say that placing deaf children solely in the general education classroom would be pushing inclusion too far. It would be fine and acceptable for these children to be involved in some aspects of the general education classroom, for certain parts of the day- but certainly not all day every day. This question is one of many that are brought up when learning about and discussing the issue of inclusion. I think inclusion is a great idea that should be implemented throughout the school system, but only to certain limits.

Article!!

Salaries Not Keeping Pace with Student Debt

This week, I ran into my long lost friend Mike, who just graduated in December from Savannah College of Art and Design. He crawled back to get a part time position at Beverly Hospital in the Food Service Department. Everyone seems to crawl back to our work nowadays. The college kids thing they're doing bigger and better things by getting a degree, and then to their surprise, there's no jobs available!! So Mike has a degree in animation (something like that?), yet he's back to his high school job of washing dishes and making patient meal trays.

That's not the worst part. Mike is over $100,000 in debt. So for this post I decided to research the fact that so many kids get out of college with enormous amounts of debt, yet they are making salaries no where NEAR close enough to begin to pay off these loans. And so if they are missing monthly payments, the interest is just going to go up and the debts are going to become bigger and bigger. It's overwhelming. It's really scary to know that all is definitely not solved in life once you graduate from college. When we're in high school all we hear is how a degree is going to get you so far in life. Yet now, the scary reality with our economy is that we may be paying off our college dues for the rest of our lives!! I don't want to have to struggle, drinking Natty Ice and eating Ramen Noodles until I'm 30!

The article that I read about this subject gave this statistic: "Between 2005 and 2006, average student loan debt increased 8 percent. In comparison, staring salaries increased by only 4 percent." This leaves constant worry that the graduates are not going to be able to successfully pay back these loans in a timely fashion. I also read that tuition prices are still increasing, another 6% or so this year. This means that by the time I graduate, my tuition will have been raised a total of 30%! That's insane! Loans are a scary reality for everybody, yet it is something we are all going to have to go through and manage on our own. I just hope that by the time we graduate we are all successful enough and find jobs rather fast, so we don't have to crawl back into the arms of our part time high school jobs, like my friend Mike did.


Article

Beauty School Drop Outs... or High School?!

I guess this weeks' readings got me thinking about drop- outs. I then preceded to find a very shocking article that was titled "12 Percent of U.S High Schools Could Be Labeled a Dropout Factory". I mean, I knew that there were always going to be kids that dropped out of high school, but I didn't know it was getting to be outrageous. The most drop outs occur in the southern states like Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina.

A "drop out factory" school is defined by a school that has less than 60% of it's freshman make to senior year. That, to me, is INSANE! I think maybe 5 to 10 of the kids in my senior class of around 300 dropped out! The most likely drop out areas are large cities that have a ton of students or poverty ridden rural areas. What I found more shocking was that 1,700, or TWELVE PERCENT of the high schools in the United States are considered drop out factories! That's one in ten! Utah is the only state in the U.S without a drop out factory school. Probably because not enough people live there! It bothered me a little bit to read the fact that

"Nationally, the high school graduation rate is 70 percent, but for black and Hispanic students, the rate is only 50 percent. Of the 70 percent of U.S. who do graduate high school, only 32 percent will be college ready."

It's sad to know that even still in today's society, blacks and Hispanics are struggling. But these people also make up the lower classes and much of the poverty in the U.S., so it sort of goes hand in hand with not doing well educationally.

This whole article and reading really got me thinking on what can be done about all of these drop outs. As a teacher, you can't really get too involved in a students life. That's not ethical or accepted in your duties. Even if the parents are brought in for meetings, chances are, many times they won't care enough to force their children to graduate from high school. I just hope that all of these kids who are not walking around with diplomas will not spend their lives working at Burger King or McDonald's! And hopefully, a team of intelligent and enlightened people will come up with some sort of plan to help these kids actually want to graduate.

This is the Article!!
The Education Portal of Hot Topics!

Are Class Sizes Getting to Be Too Big?

My question, though I wanted to steer towards the financial issues of teaching, I figured I'd save that for later in the semester. What I want to know is, are class sizes getting to be too big? Are the high numbers of students in each class affecting learning abilities? After observing 2nd grade today, the teacher told me that after 2nd grade, class sizes jump from 20 student max to a 30 student max. I think this is WAY too many kids to have in one elementary school class! That's not even bringing up the middle school or high school class sizes! I know that in my town alone, we used to have 2 equal sized middle schools yet 2 years ago they tore one down and now the 7 or more elementary school kids all attend ONE middle school. It must be a madhouse!

My theory is that these large class sizes must decrease learning abilities. With less time for one-on-one interactions between the students and the teacher, there are probably a lot of kids left with questions and unsolved issues at the end of the day. Having a ton of kids in one class is bound to have more behavioral issues, more chit-chatting, playing, and overall, less learning. No matter how strict a teacher may be, there is going to be some level of difficulty ruling over 30 or more kids who just won't listen!

I read an article about this issue in California, and I felt that it would also pertain to here as it had the following information: they had spent a lot of their educational funds on making sure that the lower grades (K-3) had only 20 students to one teacher. Plus, most of these classrooms has an aid or some sort of parent volunteers. The point that they were making was that if they reduced it to 26 students per 1 teacher, plus aides, without adding any more costs they could reduce the class size all the way up to grade six! I think it is unfair that the only classes that are guaranteed to be small are kindergarten, first, second, and third grade. These are important years but all kids in elementary school should be given the same opportunities to learn.

Overall, everything I've read leads to the fact that students suffer if class sizes are too large. But what can be done about this? Public education funding is already at an all time low. Budgets are always being cut, and teachers are constantly getting laid off. The way to fix the solution would be to have more teachers to teach more classes with less students. But in order to do this, they would have to lower the salaries of all of the other teachers. This isn't fair because teachers are already getting paid poorly as it is, and as much as they want to help the students, they need to provide a living for themselves and their families, too. This is a question and concern that I'm sure will exist far into my own teaching career. Unless kids are enrolled in private schools that can afford small class sizes because of the outrageous fees and tuition paid by the parents, we are going to have to deal with large class sizes and do the best we can with what we are offered.

These are the websites I use:
California Article
Research Points
College Perspective