Class Update

4/12: Today we watched The Finland Phenomenon. We were asked to think of three of the biggest differences in the way that teachers are prepared in Finland versus the United States.

• In Finland, student teachers are allowed into any classroom, at any time, to observe a teacher's lesson. After observing, they are able to ask questions and discuss the lesson. Along with this, the teacher's do the same. Student teachers and the teacher they are working with interact through email prior to a lesson. This allows the student teacher to change and update their lesson, as well as allowing a teacher to help prepare for what will be taught. When a student teacher is teaching, the main teacher critiques the lesson while the student teacher is teaching the lesson. This allows them to give exact examples and such in their critiques.
•  In Finland, a teaching degree is not just a four year degree. They have a five year program, consisting of a three year bachelor's degree, along with a two year master's degree. Having the master's degree be part of the general teaching program, I think, helps ensure the best teachers are working in their schools. 
• In Finland, the school system's are based on trust. They believe that their teachers are well trained professionals. They do not believe in having an inspection/inventory time for their teachers. By doing this, the teachers are allowed to think outside the box and work with their students to ensure the best results for each student. There are better results when there is trust. If a teacher's being inspected, they are preparing for inspection day, not preparing their students for success. By knowing that you can do it, versus having to prove yourself, a teacher is able to do their absolute best!

Here are points that I thought were really key points from the video:

• Everyone gets the same education, no matter their background.
• Students have the same teacher for several years, allowing them to learn easier.
• School is casual; teachers are called by their first name.
• Teacher's are knowledge workers, and need to make sure that all students succeed.
• Less is more!
• Lessons are/should be 60% student, 40% teacher.
• Students have the choice between vocational track or academic track for high school.
• Moodle is used, which is much like our D2L system.
• Students take responsibility for themselves in their classrooms, allowing teachers to have more time for individual help.
• There is little testing, allowing students to develop their own learning style.
• There is a core curriculum as well each school's own curriculum. 

4/14: Group Seven, Chapter Ten: School Law

• Legal System:
• Constitutional Amendments- 1, 4, 14
• State- passes laws, legal rights
• Local
• Overlapping Legal System
• Ethics:
• Facebook Policy 
• NEA (National Education Association)- gives teachers a code of ethics
• Rights & Responsibilities:
• Licensure- credential evaluation, background check, competency test
• Contracts- legally binding between school board & teacher
• Collective Bargaining- protests, budget cuts in education
• Tenure & Dismissal- legal safeguard, job security by preventing teacher dismissal without cause
• Liability

4/19: Today, group seven finished their project and we discussed district policies, as well as what is going on in the St. Cloud school district. In the school district, there will be a $3 million budget cut, $500,00 of it going towards special education. Every teacher that was not tenure received a pink slip, cutting many of the districts newest and greatest teachers. We also discussed the advantages and disadvantages of tenure. An advantage is job security, for the teachers who are good at what they do, as well as pay protection. A disadvantage is that is keeps the bad teachers in our schools. Along these lines, we also discussed school policies, such as religion and corporal punishment. Interested in where my school, STMA, stood with these issues, I decided I was going to look into all their policies, and become informed. 

4/21: Group Eight, Chapter Twelve: The School Curriculum

• Positive Learning Environment
• Respect & Responsibility
• Classroom Set-up/Efficiency
• Time Management
• The Daily Cafe
• The Daily 5 Program
• People Plus+ Activity
• Gold Learner
• Organized, values family traditions, dependable, values order
• Generally needs extra time adjusting to change
• Orange (Red) Learner
• Quick, energetic, risk taker, high need for mobility, competitive
• Generally will be the chatty, social butterfly
• Blue Learner
• Sensitive, imaginative, strong sense of spirituality
• Generally will be the 'motherly' student 
• Green Learner
• Analytical, thorough, calm/cool/collective
• Generally will be the leader in a group
• Parent Involvement
• Communication
• Parent-Teacher, Parent-Student, Teacher-Student
• Expectations
• Consistency in classroom
• Praise
• Phone call/Voicemail, Mail/Letter, Email/Text Message
• Open House
• Teacher Introduction, Teacher guidelines/expectations
• Progress Reports
• Report Cards, Conferences
• Misbehavior Intervention
• Awareness
• Having eyes in the back of your head
• Dignity
• Don't embarrass the student in front of his/her peers
• Consistency
• Having same expectations, yet respect for differences (IEP students)
• Communication
• Tone of voice, eye contact
• 'Solution Tree'

Class Update

3/31-4/5: Today we watched Waiting for Superman, a public school documentary. The documentary focused on four children--Anthony, Daisy, Francisco, and Bianca.

• Washington D.C. has the worst education system, with only a 12% reading proficiency.
• 'Dropout Factories' are found across the nation. They are the schools with a 50% dropout rate between freshman year and sophomore year of high school. 
• In Pennsylvania, which I am sure is common among many states, $33,000 a year is spent on inmates. 
• The difference between a high performing and low performing teacher affects each child by the loss of one academic year.
• The 'lemon dance' is the passing on the bad teachers between schools. One schools passes their bad teachers onto another school, but take in another schools bad teachers also.
• The United States is ranked 25th in Math and 21st in Science.
• Families are moving into homes with high mortgages, thinking that will be a high expectation in the local schools.
• KIPP schools are charter schools. With that, they have a lottery system like all other charter schools. The difference is, KIPP schools believe in not letting their children fail.
• Our school system is broken. We need great teachers and great leaders to fix our system.

4/7: Group Six, Chapter Nine: School Governance, Finance, and Choices

• Large cities are choosing to authorize the Mayor to take over the running of their school districts.
• Reasons for this include fiscal management and low academic achievement
• The formula for funds = money, times the number of children in the district
• Compensatory Aid- percent of children in poverty in the district.
• School Choices:
• Public schools
• Private schools
• Charter schools
• KIPP school
• Homeschooling
• Vouchers

Education Article Update

Bullying of Teachers 'Increasing in Northern Ireland' -(Global)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-13005767

Though this was a short article, it really made me think. In Northern Ireland, teachers are facing serious cyber-bullying from students and parents. We forget that anything posted on Facebook or YouTube is accessible to thousands of other views. Parents are writing their frustrations and comments to others, visible to teachers, administration, family members, etc. It makes you think about the kinds of ideas, words, materials that you(I) are posting on the internet, not thinking about how long it will be out there, and who will view it. 

The New Gatekeepers of Media -(Local)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/09/us/09iht-currents09.html?_r=1&ref=internationaleducation

The article explains New Gatekeepers as our virtual cousins and neighbors. By this, the author means that these are the people that we are depending on for information and truths. A quote I really like was this: "When I spoke the other day to Jon Gosier, the director of SwiftRiver, he said something peculiar: that digital technology is, in a way, bringing us back to the days before the printing press." I had to really put some thought into this idea. Do you agree? I think I do. If you think about it, we find ourselves finding information on Facebook or Twitter, and passing it on as truth, without really knowing whether it is true or not, much like passing on what you may have heard from your neighbor, way back when. Though the article does not see this as a problem, I do. I grew up doing research from books or reference books before Internet was depended on. Now I worry about the children growing up where Internet is the main source for research. Where Wikipedia is a source that pops up with almost any search. Just this afternoon I was talking to my brother about where he got some idea he was telling me about, and his answer was Internet. Was it something I believe was true? NO! Do students know the difference between legitimate sources and sites like Wiki? That to me, is a problem. 

The New Barriers to a Foreign Degree -(Global/Local)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/education/04iht-educside.html?ref=internationaleducation

Three nations, Australia, Britain, and Sweden, have made it much more difficult to get into their universities for foreign students. Britain will be cutting up to 80,000 students visas a year, effective April 2012. Sweden will stop subsidizing education for non-European Union foreign students. And Australia's foreign student enrollment has dropped nearly ten percent since government policy changes. Not only is this affecting the nations themselves, but foreign students who had hopes of being able to become globally educated. For students, such as myself, it is discouraging to see the limits being put on foreign higher-education programs. In today's world, studying abroad provides great opportunities for all careers fields, as well as personal development. With the limits being put on the education programs, it is going to be much more difficult for students to get in. The only positive that I can see out of this, is that this will help limit the students who are not in it for the right reasons. It will be seen as a way of finding the students who want the high quality of education, versus the free education that may be provided previously. 

Teachers Strike Over Pupils' Discipline -(Global)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/teachers-strike-over-pupils-discipline-2264503.html

The one thing worse than bad teachers is bad administration. Teachers at a Darwen, Lancashire high school are feeling the burden of bad administration. They picketed the school gates over the lack of support needed by the head of the school. The teachers made clear that they were not 'striking' over the children's behavior, but the lack of support from administration to help with the behavior. Teachers facing issues with their students need the back-up support from their administration and without that support, the school will end up down the drain. How can the students take their teachers seriously if the administration does not take them seriously and respect them? As a future teacher, this is really discouraging to see the lack of good administration in schools. 

Cathleen Black Is Out as City Schools Chancellors -(Local)

 http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/cathie-black-is-out-as-chancellor/?emc=na

Right now, I am not sure how to respond. I am shocked at the lack of respect she showed for the parents in the community. Comments such as--“I have a three-year term, and I am willing and excited to fulfill it to the absolute end,” which to me is a 'I have three-years to be here, to do what I want, so get used to it"; making jokes about birth control; and making a mock of parents at a local school closing-- all seem very disrespectful, as well as childish. 

I do however, like that the mayor did as he felt needed in finding a new chancellor for the school district. As education is his main focus, finding a new chancellor is at the top of his list I am sure. 

Class Update

3/17: We were asked to think about three possible requirements for an ideal teacher prep program. These are my ideas:

• I believe it should be required for all teachers to take special education courses in order to get their license. And I believe that they should be required to keep updated on special education, through continuous courses, seminars, workshops, etc. With this, I believe that it should be required that if a main stream teacher has a student with special needs in their classroom, that the teacher be informed on their specific needs. Ex: My brother has many disabilities, among them are Asperger Syndrome and Cystic Fibrosis. Not only do his teachers believe that Asperger's is the 'new thing,' and don't think he has a problem, but not one of them is truly aware of what CF is, and what it entails. My mother has tried to send the teachers information packets for them to better understand the disease, but it means nothing to the teachers. This to me is a problem, not only personally, but for any child who faces school districts and teachers with the same attitude. 
• I believe it should be required for all teachers to take multicultural courses in order to get their license. Yes, at St. Cloud State, we are required to take a certain number of courses, but I believe it is important to be informed beyond the simple understanding that these courses provide. Like the special education courses, I believe that teachers need to be informed on the backgrounds of the children in their classroom. To better help the students and their families, you need to understand where one might be coming from with their beliefs and cultures. 
• I believe it should be required for all teachers to have studies abroad in order to get their license. Whether it is just studying abroad or doing the student teaching abroad, I believe that it is important to have an understanding of the global education system. The experience, from what I can imagine, of studying abroad, would not only give you a better understanding of education across other cultures, but a better understand of the other cultures themselves. This would give us the one-up to other teachers applying for the job, but also a new viewpoint on how we may run our classrooms. New experiences can never hurt!

3/22: Today my group did our presentation on chapter seven, philosophies of education.

3/25: Today we watched a video, Two Million Minutes. This video focused on six students across the globe, and how their two million minutes were spent. In the United States, we had Neil and Brittney. In India, we had Rohit and Apoorva. And in China, we had Jin and another student who's name I did not catch. Three main difference that I noticed between these countries, were that U.S. students go to college to find out what they want to do in life, where they want to go; India students go to college already knowing what they want, and where they are going, usually by the age of seventeen; and China students focus solely on their grades throughout high school with the intent of getting into the best colleges with the highest grades. Some other facts that I found interesting were:

• U.S. ranks number 24 in math, globally
• In. focuses on math and science to get into engineering, which will get them out of poverty
• Ch. with their one child policy, all the focus goes towards that child's education
• In. dedicate 12 hours per week to studying
• Ch. studying is the top priority in high school
• U.S. dedicate 20+ hours per week to sports and extra curricular activities

3/29: Group Five, Chapter Eight: The Organization of American Schools

• Goals of a School
• Academic
• Social and Civic
• Vocational
• Personal
• Characteristics of an Effective School
• Optimal school and class size: 600-900, 20
• Clear academic focus and strong leadership
• Interactive instruction
• Frequent monitoring of student progress
• Parental involvement

We were asked to think about the organization of our schools and what the pros and cons were in terms of the number of days per week, the scheduling, the format of the school building, etc. The school that I attended was your traditional high school. We went to school five days a week, 8:30 to 3:15, September to June. 

When I was in high school, we used what was called a 'block' schedule, which was about an 90 minute class, five days a week. Instead of having this class all year-round though, we would only have it for either have it for a quarter or a semester, depending on the class. For me, I really liked this. Not only did it give the teacher enough time to get the lesson done, but there was almost always time to work on homework before the period was over. With the shorter classes, there was just barely enough time to get the lesson done, let alone assign homework and have time for questions. 

The layout of my high school was some what confusing. We had the freshman pod, which was at the center of the school. Then from there, the school was split to seniors to the left of the pod, juniors to the right, and sophomores at the back of the school. Having the pod for the freshman was nice because it gave you a sense of knowing where to start from if you got lost, and was an area dedicated to the newcomers of the school. The other grades were kind of messed up, in terms of how they were divided up. The lockers for the rest of the grades were up and down hallways that made no sense, but space was limited. I do like, however, how the classes were divided. Our school was divided by subjects, where all the geography/history/economics/government courses were in one area, foreign language, arts, sciences, all grouped together. This I like because after freshman year, when you knew where your classes were, it was easy to think back to where a certain subject was, instead of thinking about the room number and trying to find a class that way. 

My class, class of 2009, was the last class to graduate from this school. Our district built a new high school, turning this school into a middle school, with fifth through eighth grade in the building I just described. This building was not built to be a middle school, and it not divided at all the same. Though there is much more signs, directing the students where to go, the school is way too big for the young ones. I was overwhelmed as a freshman, I cannot imagine being in fifth grade in that school!

Class Update

3/15: Today we watched a video about unequal education, called Listening to America. The video focused on two schools in NYC; Riverdale and South Fordham. These schools were in the same city, but two completely different worlds. South Fordham's teachers were unqualified to be teaching the subjects that they were teaching, and some of them had not even taken educational credits. Riverdale's teachers were qualified for the specific course that they were teaching. The qualification of the teachers was not the only major difference between these schools. The attitudes of the teachers was also a huge difference. The attitude of a teacher makes a world of difference in the success of a student, in school and out of school. Some of the students were being talked down right to their face by their teachers. In high school, my sister had a teacher that believed she would never graduate, let alone go onto college. This teacher made a huge impact on my sister's self-esteem. She believed that she would go nowhere and for a good majority of high school, put no effort into school because of this. Not thanks to this teacher, she is almost finished with her two year degree, and getting better grades than myself!

3/17: Group Three, Chapter Six: Education in the United States

• Colonial Period (1607-1775)
• Religion was huge in schools
• Education was for wealthy, white males
• Early National Period (1775-1820)
• Constitution (1787) states there is no official religion
• Common School Movement (1820-1865)
• An attempt at an education for all children
• Standardized curriculum 
• Education of Cultural Minorities
• Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans
• Taught to be white
• Forbidden to speak native language

The Global Achievement Gap

Chapter 2:  The Old World of School

Key Points:

• G.A.P. is between what the academically able students are being taught v.s. what is needed to succeed in today's world.
• We are not teaching our students the skills needed for them to succeed in today's world. Even the AP courses are not preparing our students, though these courses are supposed to be college-like courses. The students are coming out with good test scores but no hands-on skills. 
• "... in the majority of the classes that we observed, teachers has a common purpose -a 'core curriculum,' if you will- ... It's often referred to as 'test prep,' and a growing number of people believe -and studies suggest- that teaching for the sake of succeeding on the state and national standardized tests is quickly becoming an epidemic in our nation's schools -one that is profoundly infecting our students and their ability to become critical thinkers..."(59)
• The No Child Left Behind act may be one of the leading causes of the 'test prep' teaching style that is becoming so common in today's classrooms. With testing being done in reading and math basics every two years, schools are focusing on these subjects in order to account for the success of all their students. 
• The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), designer of another standardized test, assesses the skills needed in life on a regular basis, through problem-solving and other assessments. 

Chapter 3: Testing, 1 2 3

Key Points:

• The No Child Left Behind act has it's up's and down's. It is good for it's accountability, but the goals set for the act are unrealistic, making schools fall below the 'adequate yearly progress' maker, which leads back to the focus of the curriculum staying on 'test prep.'
• Employers are finding that though their interviewees have taken and passes general math and science courses, they are not able to apply the problem-solving skills they supposed to have gained, yet we continue to teach our students the same courses with the same curriculum. 
• Motivation among our students and adults entering the work force, has dropped significantly. The motivation to do well in school has dropped as well as the motivation to succeed in the work force. 

Chapter 4: Reinventing the Education Profession

Key Points:

• To improve student learning, improving teaching and the coaching of teachers needs to be done.
• Teacher prep programs are not focusing on what is needed to becoming an effective teacher. The student teaching programs are not giving students effective experiences before entering the work force. 
• Without a strong administration or faculty, our schools and their teachers will not reach their potential. Passing courses and exams does not measure their capabilities and skills that really matter. 
• With a possible new certification process, teachers would have to show their competence and critical skills in order to get and keep their license. 

Field Experience: Day 03

Monday, March 7, 2011

Today I worked again with individual students on increasing their reading speeds. I also brought in a book to read to my class. It was a very mellow morning that flew by way too fast. As I am slowly getting to know the children, there are definitely a few that I know I am going to love working with. One of the students I worked with today gave me 'knuckles' and I wanted to just jump up and dance, it was the cutest thing! I cannot wait for what the rest of the semester holds for me!