Goodbye!

This class has come and gone so fast! I feel like I have learned so much in these past fews. In this course I learned a lot about education and how it is not only about the subject you will teach. That educators are not there just to instill the lesson but also to create character. Students learn about relationships, humanity and heartbreak in the classroom. Students come in contact with people who are wildly different from them in the classroom and it is because of this that teachers must be aware that they are not only teaching a lesson in arithmatic or history, they are teaching lessons in life. From reading my other classmates blogs, I have learned that people can read the same material as me yet see it in a completely different light. This was interesting because this course described how students will all learn differently, but when I was able to read my classmates work I saw that they really did see it differently from me, and that didn't mean that one was better than the other, it was just that they were different.
This course has inspired my career in education and I hope to continue to learn how to learn.

Bell Hooks

American feminist, Gloria Jean Watkins was born September 25, 1952 her pen name was Bell Hooks under which she wrote a number of books about oppression and domination focusing on the relationship between race, class and gender. She claims that she can perpetuate systems of abuse. Bell Hooks has published thirty books, many scholarly articles, documentary films and various public lectures. Bell Hooks believes that by emulating oppression students can have an idea what it’s like to go through it and have more empathy for what goes on in the real world. She began teaching in 1976 as an English professor and senior lecturer in Ethnic Studies at the University of Southern California.

I really liked what Watkins has to say and I would like to apply her philosophy, someday in my own classroom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_hooks
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/hooks.htm

Don't laugh at me

Growing up in public school I have seen countless acts of bullying, I have even been a part of some of it firsthand. It often times doesn’t matter what the difference is, if someone is too ugly, too pretty, too fat or too thin they are immediately a target. School administration did not realize how damaging this could be to students until recently. There is a number of bullying related suicides that have plagued school districts which fueled the zero tolerance legislation. Bullying is legally a crime. Since this legislation has been enacted and this has been brought to the attention of teachers and administration there has been a decrease in suicides. It is of the utmost importance to have students learn in a comfortable environment and that healthy relationships are facilitated within the classroom. So it becomes the teacher’s responsibility to not only educate the students on the designated subjects, but on how to be a good person; how to have an upstanding character.

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/TheLaw/reformed-bullies-tolerance-stop/story?id=11873884

Multiculture, Anti-Racism & Projustice

Throughout this entire course I have learned that the classroom must facilitate two types of learning: academic education and social education. It is just as important to produce well educated students as it is to produce well rounded students who have a good understanding of the world they live in. Being a teacher is about facilitating healthy relationships, and its important that as teachers we promote justice in the classroom. Not ignore our differences but celebrate them everyday or at least as often as possible. Having a multicultural classroom is a priveledge, it would give the class the opportunity to learn about other cultures first hand rather than learning about them out of a text book. Our future should be more united, not segregated.

Philosophy in the classroom

One of the philosphies that caught my eye was Humanism a system of thought placing importance to humans rather than divine or supernatural matters. I thought this philosophy belonged in the classroom! I was never a religious person growing up, I was raised in a strong atheist family and I appreciated a school that allowed me to feel that way and did not place religious imput in any of there lessons. As there is a respectable seperation between the schools and religion already in schools and Humanism continues to honor that. Another wonderful feature of Humanism is the reliance of one another. It teaches kindness and to be good to your common man. This is something that is extremely important for children to learn. And honestly it's something that a great deal of adults could still stand to learn from.

Should IEP's be state governed or nationwide?

An Individualized Education Plan is something every student who is considered disabled by the state is entitled to, here in Massachusetts these individuals are entitled to it from age 3 to age 22. However these age restraints are different for each state. Some states the plans start at age five, and other states they end as soon as the student is 18 years old. Families who have a student who has a disability have found that Massachusetts realized that while MA has a high test scores, they also have an amazing IEP programs and they are eager to move their entire family, sometimes across the country. While there has been amazing progress in the American with Disabilities Act, there is still room to grow. This legislation only ensures that people who have disabilities are entitled to a free education that helps them reach their full potential, however it does not say how long the state must provide them with such services. 

So the question remains, should these time lines be determined by the state or determined by the entire nation? If a family who has a child with a disability is forced to move across the country to ensure that their child will receive the best education, for the fairest amount of time, it is going to put an additional strain on a family that has already faced their fare share of challenge.

Age 3 to 22 gives the child roughly six extra years to complete their education. Anything longer than that is saying that that individual no longer has room to grow in such an environment, which is untrue, if you do not present the child with a mountain, how will they ever be able to challenge it? It is extremely important for students to be able to reach their full potential.

If the rules reguarding Individualized Education Plans were nationwide, the students would be able to reach their full potential, reguardless of where they were born.

http://www.doe.mass.edu/sped/iep/

http://texasprojectfirst.org/ARDIEP.html

Is Druge Abuse Resistance Education Effective?

"Our strongest numbers are the ones that don't show up"

There are several arguements against the affectiveness of Drug Abuse Resistance Education. There is little evidence to support that it actually works, with that being said there is little evidence to support that it does not work. The program is taught by certified police officers to students when they are in about the fourth grade; educating them on the dangers of substace abuse. Most parents appreciate this lesson and believe that is is a great tool for children of that age group and they believe that through education their child will be better equipt to handle peer pressure type situations.

On the complete other end of the spectrum there are parents who hate this program. These parents are often critizised for it would seem as though any parent opposing Drug Resistance education would be in support of drug abuse, but actually these parents believe that by having these students at such a young age endure tedious lessons about drugs, it is implanting a seed in their mind about drugs.

As a student of D.A.R.E I can say that I knew nothing about drugs before I went through that program. Honestly a that I didn't know what half the drugs I learned in that class even excisted and to this day, after that class I did not hear of several of those things I learned in the fourth grade ever again. Personally, I do not believe that this is an affective method of teaching students.

http://alcoholfacts.org/DARE.html

Uniforms

Growing up, I can remember spending hours trying to decide what I was going to wear the next day. The pressure to have this seasons Abercrombie & Fitch was at an all time high. Looking back at my earlier years in education, I believe that I could have sincerely benifited from a uniform policy. I believe that a lot of the social impacts were made not because of the type of person you were but because of what shoes you had.

Dr. Alan Hilfer, senior psychologist in the Children's and Adolescent Unit at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn says, "Uniforms do eliminate competition, pressure, and assaults perpetrated by older kids on younger kids for their sneakers and other possessions. They also allow some kids to focus better, especially in the lower grades."
While there is no proof to support that uniforms lower crime or increase test scores, however there are several schools who claim that since they inacted a uniform rule crime has decreased and attendance has risen to an all time high.

There are several people who argue uniforms hinder a students expression, that it takes away their sense of individuality and self. However, I believe that a uniform would force a student to not pride themselves on their appereance or clothes but instead use art, music or sports as an outlet for their expression. Let students spend time focusing on their extracurriculars as a source of self idenitification instead of the brand on the inside of their tshirts.

Read more on FamilyEducation: http://school.familyeducation.com/educational-philosophy/individuality/38676.html#ixzz1aXOOQA17

Reason's to Teach

I used to hate the idea of ever becoming a teacher, I thought, I’ve been in school my entire life – I have to get out of here but recently after working in an educational environment I realized that there is nothing else I’d rather do. Personally, I want to teach because I want to work with people who have disabilities on an educational level as opposed to on a personal care level which I have done in the past. When I dove into research I came up with a lot of different reasons, the desire to educate others, to go home one day and know that you helped a child learn something new, to inteeract with children every day, to give other children the enjoyable experience of school and the most common one is wanting to be a role model for young people. I have found several people who want thought that they were the best role model for children and wanted to be in the classroom so they could make an impression on the students.

“Teachers are strong role models — What career are you most familiar with when you graduate high school? Probably teaching since you’ve been exposed to that profession on a daily basis. Teachers command a lot of respect due to the authority and trust placed in them by parents (and ultimately by students in adult education). Wanting to feel respected and admired is a strong motivation for teaching.” (http://www.prenhall.com/phitcareers/chap8/why.html)

“But, at the end of the day, the bell rings, the sun sets, and you end up with the promise of a brand new day ahead of you.  You go back to the classroom, your kids come in, and somewhere along the way you realize that your purpose is so much more than just to teaching reading and math.    You’re there to inspire kids.   You are there to understand them, reach them, and help them be the best they can possibly be.”  (http://teachfactory.com/?p=463)

“I have been teaching for 10+ years now, and truth be told the reason I’ve stayed with it is not the same reason I started. I started teaching because I wanted to educate individuals, I wanted to assist in learning but I have realized that my biggest reward is not in having students pass or fail, it’s the impact I make on their lives, the day to day things that I don’t pay attention to, that eventually a student comes back to tell me my lesson on international affairs encouraged them to study abroad, and things like that. Maybe that’s selfish, but it gets me through the day”

(Elizabeth Rusco, Teacher at Bacon Academy)

When I read these things, I thought at first that maybe this is a little selfish of teachers, that the point of education is to not make impressions of one’s self on other people, then I heard what Elizabeth Rusco had to say about how one thing she says has a reaction she did not intend. Students are so impressionable! It’s such a responsibility to make sure you’re teaching them good habits and good life skills, and if you do have those good skills and habits than it is selfless to assist in helping others gain that.