Making a Difference

The book may be down, my pen may be capped, but I will carry this book with me, if not in my hand, then in my heart. I planned to be a teacher for many years now and I will continue with this plan. I want to put into effect the solutions to the major problems I see in the educational system today. First off, I have a knack for understanding children. I have been a camp counselor for many years as well as a babysitter, and each year I walk into camp and within the first day I know which children are not social, which children have ADD, which children have learning disabilities and which children are slow to mature. I know all of this because I care. If teachers paid more attention to individual students rather than the class as a whole they would be able to better assess these students. Children also are not as dumb as one may think, they pick up on things, they know when people don't like them or think they are stupid or incompetent. My job as an educator would be to motivate each one of my students and believe in their ability to suceed. I am a believer, and many may disagree, that any child can overcome their disadvantages with enough advantages. These students need the resources to allow them to learn, and the person who is the mediator, the middle man in all of this, is the teacher. If a teacher trys their best to get the parents involved and creates a trusting and open relationship in the classroom, and if a teacher can understand the way a child processes information and uses it to their advantage in assessment, maybe more would succeed. Standardized testing does not leave much time for creativity and alternate learning styles, but that will have to be one of my obstacles I try to overcome as a teacher. I will make it my job and my goal for each student to succeed in his or her own way. I will not allow these standardized tests and these limited resources to put my students down in any way. Sometimes all a child needs is someone to believe in them, it worked for me and I am determined to find out if it can work for others. Some may say that trial and error is not the way to go concerning a child's education, but some may also say that it can't get much worse than this. The No Child Left Behind has failed the youth, what can a little more attention and motivation do, help? You can call me an optimist, you can call me hopeless, but this, right now, is my plan. England is right with her solutions, it's just about time for someone to put them into action.

mistake

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiJ3kpZxIvU


for some reason my video didn't post on my blog. So here it is, I found this video very funny, it basically made fun of the fact that we keep the same people in the same families in power and there is no diversity in the government. If we are such a democracy, why do we have the same people in the same families with the same ideals running our country in every aspect they can??

Democracy

After reading both West and Chomsky's views on democracy in America, I realized the difference between an idealistic mindset on what democracy is versus the actual reality we face in our society today. West discusses democracy in very idealistic terms, saying what it should be and should mean to us in Americans. West says that democracy is "about individuals being empowered and englightened (and suspicious of authorities) in orer to help create and sustain a genuine democratic community. However, this does not seem to be what is happening in our society. West even says it himself, "to many, our democractic system seems so broken that they have simply lost faith that their participation could really matter" and according to Rukeyeser "we are people tending toward democracy at the level of hope". Democracy was put in place for each person to have a voice, to feel empowered. However, this is not what has been going on. Most Americans do not believe their voices will count so they choose not to say anything at all. As I said in class, I believe that we need to tell children as young as three or four years old that they have a voice in the government. It should just be one of those things kids know all of their lives, like their religion, their race, etc. Instead of this, we silence talk about the government until kids are in high school and by then it just becomes a subject to them in school. They memorize the amendments and their rights as a US citizen not as a personal right or a personal goal, but as a subject they will be tested on in school and later forget. There needs to be a new way of embracing democracy in our government. If we start of small as children grow up we can relate democracy to them on a more sophisticated level instead of impeding them. By the time they are able to vote, people tend to agree with Chomsky, that "the term democracy refers to a system of government in which elite elements based in the business community control the state by virtue of their dominance of the private society, while the population observes quietly". Why bother if our voices don't matterr any way? I know that has been my mentality all my life and it hasn't been able to change yet. I was brought up believing this and I will probably continue to believe this. I do not fully agree with John Locke but I think there is some truth to his tabula rasa theory. Children are not a complete blank slate, there are genetic factors which contribute to a person's life, but I do believe that children are easily molded. If we start ingraining opinions in them at a young age that democracy gives you a voice, and you should use your right, then maybe people would be more inclined to vote when they turned eighteen. Instead, our generation, believes our votes don't count and if we want to counteract this belief and embrace, as West says, our individual power and our individual thoughts, then we need to start implementing those thoughts into our young children.

censorship

censorship was a topic I never considered when developing a curriculum. Reichman says that "ambiguity and confusion are far less likely to result if a school's policies are set down clearly and concisely for all to see". But how is this possile? It is very hard to separate fact from opinion in a classroom. We all feel a range of emotions and compassion for the past. If a teacher is discussing the holocaust, can they do that without making the Germans seem like the bad guys? And what would happen if this belief went against the strict policies set down? And if a strict policy is set that means that these policy makers are strictly deciding what a student or should or should not learn. They can choose to take out parts of our history that they do not want children to learn in order to mold them. This topics came up in class and I thought more about it when I came home. The first genocide that ever occured came from thoughts and opinions within those people. Learning about genocides, slavery and the holocaust, teach us the negative outcomes of all of these events and they help to prevent history from repeating itself. If these events are just removed from textbooks and the curriculum people will not know what has happened in the past and it could potentially happen all over again and if it does, then who is to blame? http://www.ncac.org/education/schools/ This is the National Coalition Against Censorship site. It lists the reasons against censorship, including our first amendment right to free speech. I thought this would interest the class, I hope you all read it.

Povery as a Disability

When I came home I began thinking whether or not I believed poverty to be a disability. I looked at this website: http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:oQMtoBKhUJsJ:hcdg.org/definition.htm+poverty,+a+handicap+in+education&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=12&gl=us which included the World Health Organization's definition of a disability to be: “any restriction or lack (resulting from any impairment) of ability to perform an activity in the manner or within the range considered normal for a human being”. Naturally, we think of an impairment as a handicap, a physical abnormality. However, after reading England's take on it I began to think differently. According to England, "to label poverty as a handicap is to bring it up against the American dream where it cannot peaceably exist" (England 36). We don't want to label poverty as a handicap because, like England says, there are too many fairytales where people have pulled themselves out of poverty. But, disabled people are considered to have a disability if they are intellecually or learning disabled, or if they have long term illnesses, mental or psychological injuries (as stated on the website). Someone without money, someone who is living in extreme poverty can not possibly be expected to be on the same page intellectually as students who are middle class. They simply do not have the resources in education. Additionally, their diets are probably not as nutritional as others, which impairs their brain activity. People who are poor also can't afford proper health care, long term illnesses are considered to be a disability. Why as a society do we place poor and disabled into two separate categories? Being poor clearly has negative effects which are put in the disability category so why don't we just combine the two factors? As England says, a child who is disabled on the outside has all of these accomodations in the classroom for them, but the child who is poor, can't eat right, doesn't have parents to help them with their work, and doesn't have proper health care because they can't afford it, that child is left behind. Just because they don't look disabled does not mean they aren't. Poor students should have an opportunity for extra help, extra attention and extra consideration. Disabilities should be labeled as set backs. The World Health Organization even says a disability is a restriction from an activity so why isn't poverty in that category?

I highly support the idea that a student's experiences in high school shape their choices and experiences in college. Throughout middle school and the beginning of high school I was an average student. I figured I would go away to college but which college did not matter to me. I felt I would just go to whatever school I was able to get into. That all changed when my teachers and guidance counselor had a talk with me at the beginning of tenth grade. They thought I could do better, they knew my potential and realized I just wasn't applying it. I had always been a lazy student, I have the capacity to learn information and do very well but it takes me a lot of time and effort to be able to study and remember information for exams. I have always exceled naturally in English, a place where I can write and express my thoughts and opinions freely without restrictions of an A or B answer. So when my teachers and guidance counselor gave me that push I immediately saw a dramatic difference. I began getting A's in all of my classes and eventually was encouraged by my teachers to move into honors and then APs. My guidance counselor knew when I was pushing my limits but not taking on too much, she worked with me on my course choices and then on my college applications. I was pushed to apply to schools which would be target schools for me. I could have accepted my admittance to one of my many safety schools but after careful consideration and support from my educators I decided to push myself once again and attend a more acadmecially challenging school. If I never had those pushes and those educators on my side I probably would have settled for a different SUNY school that required less credentials for admittance. This website offers the DO's and Don'ts of college admissions and I knew all this while applying but it makes me wonder if everyone knew all of this while applying. http://www.quintcareers.com/college_admissions-dos-donts.html
Like it has been said before, this all comes back to unequal resources. The state should mandate that all schools release the same accurate and maximum amount of information to ALL students regarding college admissions and SAT prep. I always just assumed that all students understood college admissions as well as I did until just a few days ago. A family friend asked me to review her daughter's college entrance essay and it was completely out of context. Her writing was choppy and her topic came out of left field. She had no idea what colleges were looking for or where to begin. I could not understand how her guidance counselor did not help point her in the right direction. There needs to be strict guidelines concerning something as important as college. Getting an education is the reason why we all go to school, so why not educate the students on getting the most out of schooling they could possibly get?

No Child Left Behind

I think the No Child Left Behind Act proves what I said in my last blog. The No Child Left Behind Act was mandated to try and create a higher level of equality in the educational system. This act increases the amount of standardized exams students take. The government thinks the only way to evaluate a student's level of understanding is by these multiple choice exams. These tests only leave room for one answer, there is no understanding for the thought process behind the answers. A student can guess and get an answer right or really think about a question and have good reasoning and yet get a question wrong. I can not even recall how many times I took multiple choice tests and believed more than one answer can be right. Sometimes more than one answer was right but we only received credit for the one which seemed "more right". How can something be more right in a society where we were led to believe things are "right or wrong", "black or white"?

http://nochildleft.com/2006/sept06killing.html


This article discusses why No Child Left Behind must go. The biggest one I think is the narrowing of the curriculum. This act takes away freedom and creativity in the classroom. It takes away focus on the individual and places emphasis on the whole class. Students who learn in different ways won't have the chance to. All students will have to focus on the same things and work in the same way, maybe this appears equal but in reality the children who can learn by taking exams and who exel in math and science have the upper hand. The visual and spatial learners are in reality left behind because they can not learn in this one general way.

Either/Or 10/03/07

There were several things in class today I did not have time to address in our presentation. There seems to be an "either/or" mentality which runs through the educational system today. We can either create equality in the educational system OR give freedom in the classroom. Giving equality to all schools and all students tends to mean mandating more exams. The only way we view equality is by giving structure. If each teacher is given what to teach and if we make more tests evaluating what is taught, then all students will be on an even playing field right? However, this creates more rigidness in the classroom and less of a passion to learn. Students who need that push and who need that drive will not get it. Kids will not want to go to school, they will find it boring and useless. Kids also won't feel the need to pay attention in class. Why even go to school if we can read up on the things being taught later, in our own home and at our own leisure? With more structure comes less passion. Students may all be taking the same test but who is to say they can all learn the same? Additionally, these students will be learning what policymakers tell them to learn. Going back to Gardener's theory, what about the kid who learns visually or spatially? If more tests are mandated and more structure is given there will be even less emphasis placed on the individual. Also, are all these tests good for young kids? I was in an Eagle Program at an elementary school in Brooklyn, NY. This program was supposed to be for "gifted" students. We did not have play time, we did not paint or fool around with toys, we worked. I learned spanish, math, english and science in Kindergarden. We had a limited time during the day and not even every day to go into other children's classrooms to play with their toys. We were not given that social opportunity, we were not given time to be five years old. This program made me hate school and I do not think it helped at all. My next year in school, I moved to Long Island and was placed with students who didn't know how to do math or read, I was only ahead for one year. Eventually, all the kids caught up and we were all on the same level, I just had to sit through things twice. Having those tests at such a young age placed a lot of stress on me, it did not make me appreciate the educational system. http://www.standardizedtesting.net/ This article talks about how unnecessary standardized testing is. It talks about how other countries do not administer these tests to children of such young ages, so why do we? These tests aren't even used to create equality and help children progress, they are used to evaluate school districts. There is no impact on the children, the focus is not even on the children, it is on the school and the people high up who want to keep their jobs and look good doing it.

09/26/7, educational degrees

After class today I began to think about what education is. I think it is dlirectly correlated to the quality of life. People go to school and gain an education to improve their quality. It is presumed that the more schooling one gets and the more degrees one obtains, the higher the quality of life they will have. I do believe this is true in most cases. There are exceptions to every rule. There are people who get these degrees and go nowhere with it, there are also those who don't even go to college and make millions of dollars a year. Education does provide a step towards a better life. Teachers are necessities in these steps. Without them, there would be no education. Teachers go through all this schooling, obtaining these degrees, and are still looked down upon for not holding prestigious positions and for getting low pay. Additionally, it has been said that education is unequal because teachers qualifications are unequal. http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-04-26-teachers-poor_x.htm This article discusses how teachers in wealthier school districts are more qualified than teachers in poorer districts. However, is it really the teachers background? Personality and persistance are two qualities in a teacher which are often overlooked. The teaching fellowship program sends adults straight out of college to teach in inner city schools, but these teachers are young and they have passion. They may not know every detail which is in the textbook, but they know how to encourage kids to want an education, to strive for an education. In the end, does that one degree, that one piece of paper, really make a difference?

Education-09/19/07

After class today I went back to my room and thought about what education meant to me. For me it has always been about a goal. A goal to learn, to aquire knowledge and turn that into a career one day to make money for myself and for my family. Since I was three years old I knew I had to go to school in order to succeed, I never even questioned it. I came from Plainview high school, which Kozol mentions in his book. He says "black and hispanic students make up only 1% of enrollment while 97% of students at the school are white" (Kozol 33). Througout high school I was always aware I was lucky, I knew I had opportunities and I knew I had choices. I was in all AP classes my senior and I took it for granted. Learning and reading about all these other impoverished schools seem so foreign to me. I can not believe children don't have playgrounds or gyms. I do not see how children can learn if they can't play with one another. Play softens children, it makes them understand the world and it helps them gain knowledge of people. Knowing how people interact is such a useful life tool. People and situations become predictible and then you learn how to advance. If these kids don't play or interact they will not be able to perform tasks or jobs which involve interactions with people because they don't know how. Not giving children play seems to limit their opportunities for the future. I really liked the idea of charter schools because I think all children should have something to look forward to at school each week. I decided rather than looking for an article, to look into charter schools more. I thought it would be more beneficial for the class, for those who came to my blog, to be able to learn more about Charter schools since they were only briefly discussed in class. http://www.uscharterschools.org/pub/uscs_docs/index.htm. I really learned a lot about what these schools have to offer and the history behind them. I find it really interesting and hopeful that there are people out there who acknowledge the problem we have with our educational system and who are attempting to fix it.

Kozol Intro

After our class discussion today which was based on minorities within the classroom and differences in race concerning education, I watched several videos on CNN.com to try and get a perspective right from the source, from the people who are facing these problems today. http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2007/road.to.equality/ One woman said "it is the best time to be black in America and yet the worst". People are gaining independence, they have role models to look up to and yet they still feel they are unfortunate. They see people within their race who have accomplished but yet they can not do the same. They feel the brunt of American concerns today. Every culture, every race faces money problems and poverty problems, however African Americans feel like they are more directly impacted by it, according to this woman's video. According to Kozol, minorities face these inequalities in the classroom and some of them don't even realize or are angered by their situation. They simply accept the rotten floors, the dirty rooms and the old textbooks. They do not fight, they became angry with the teachers or principles but it seems to be misdirected anger, they should be angry at the educational system. These children grow up thinking this is how life is. Kozol goes on to discuss the one child who knew what was being done to her. She was resitant and cold, she just sat there, knowing but not saying anything. Rather than fighting she remained stagnant. I went to an all white, Jewish high school on Long Island. I knew there were poverty stricken schools out there in the US and I knew there were richer, more elite schools, however I never understood to what extent there was poverty in the educational system. I wonder if these kids know they are not being taught in the norm, do they understand they can do better? I was taught to fight for what I believed in, but these kids are clearly taught to accept their conditions as a part of their lives. If there is supposed to be equality in the educational system, how come there is no equality when it comes to a dream? Economically there is a struggle within the school systems, but does that have to impede learning? Shouldn't we all have the same ambitions, the same dreams, the same goals in life? Shouldn't we all want to succeed? Just because a classroom does not have windows or books doesn't mean these kids can't get a good education on life. I wonder if these teachers came from the same circumstance, and if so wouldn't they want better for the next generation?

Poverty Video

After watching the video in class I was shocked to see the way classrooms are conducted in these poverty stricken areas. It made me reevaluate the educational system in the US. I had a very positive educational experience, I took whatever AP's I wanted, going to college was never an option, I knew I was going. I was always told I could do it even if I felt otherwise. These kids think dropping out of school at 16 with a GED is considered an accomplishment, they do not think they can do better and teachers do nothing to support them. Because these kids are so poor, the educational system makes it so they stay that way. They don't push them to do better. These teachers see their jobs as getting kids through the day, rather than educating them. I wanted to research an article to find out what the state is doing to try and make this situation better. I found this link: http://www.cbpp.org/11-7-02sfp.htm. I am curious to know if these programs are working and where they are working. Even if these programs help poor states with their educational tools, it is impossible to reach all schools with these problems. Money also does not equal motivation. Just because these schools are getting funding does not mean they are influencing students to do better. I am curious to know if the number of high school graduates and the number of students who attend college has increased since this funding was given. It is extremely sad that poor students grow up feeling inadequate about their education, they see school as something they have to get through the minimal amount of before they can drop out, rather than a stepping stone to the goals in life they should have.

Kozol Introduction

After reading Kozol's introduction in "The Shame of the Nation" as well as watching the video in class. I was shocked to see the way classrooms are conducted in these poverty stricken areas. It made me reevaluate the educational system in the US. I had a very positive educational experience, I took whatever AP's I wanted, going to college was never an option, I knew I was going. I was always told I could do it even if I felt otherwise. These kids think dropping out of school at 16 with a GED is considered an accomplishment, they don't think they can do better and teachers do nothing to support them. Because these kids are so poor, the educational system makes it so they stay that way. They don't push them to do better. I wanted to research an article to find out what the state is doing to try and make this situation better. I found this link: http://www.cbpp.org/11-7-02sfp.htm I am curious to know if these programs are working and where they are working. Even if these programs to help poor states with their education are in session, it is impossible to reach all schools with these problems. Money also does not equal motivation. Just because these schools are getting funding does not mean they are influencing students to do better. I am curious to know if the number of high school graduates and the number of students who attend college has increased since this funding was given. It is extremely sad that poor students grow up feeling inadequate about their education, they see school as something they have to get through the minimal amount of before they can drop out, rather than a stepping stone to the goals in life they should have.