Reflect on the course readings thus far. Think about guest speaker presentations, class lectures, and conversations. Make sure you post a quote or two from the readings that you found interesting or that sparked your imagination. Your posts will viewed by all students in the course. Also, do not forget to read your classmates' posts and comment on them.
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
4th Reflection
Reflect on the course readings thus far. Think about guest speaker presentations, class lectures, and conversations. Make sure you post a quote or two from the readings that you found interesting or that sparked your imagination. Your posts will viewed by all students in the course. Also, do not forget to read your classmates' posts and comment on them.
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To begin, a quote that stuck out to me from Darling-Hammond in chapter 7 was: “This is critically important because teaching cannot be learned from books or even from begin mentored periodically. Teachers much see expert practices modeled and must practice them with help” (Darling-Hammond 214). Relating to this video and what we have discussed in class, receiving a degree is not a guarantee for a job anymore and rather a degree is not going to teach you all of the skills you need for that job. Teachers need to be immersed into a classroom of students and learn from experience and models/practices from other teachers to see what works and what doesn’t. I feel the same goes for students. We learn with practice and through models provided by our teachers. We talked in class about the importance of having good teachers, but maybe these teachers aren’t being educated the correct way. Darling-Hammond goes into explaining this and demonstrating the importance of teachers practicing their skills to know what works for students and what doesn’t. In addition, another quote I found interesting that relates to this same topic is: “Perhaps the simplest way to break down professional isolation – but one that rarely occurs in most schools – is for teachers to observe one another’s teaching and to provide constructive feedback” (Darling-Hammond 229). I agree with this and this made me question why schools don’t do more of this. This also made me wonder how we could incorporate more of this practice into school districts. Mentioned in this video was that great learning happens in groups; I agree with that idea. Although constructive criticism can be harsh at times, I think it is very helpful and creates better results in the end. If your critic is someone who is “in your shoes”, instead of someone above you, it would make it easier for you to learn from one another, sparking great ideas. I think this relates to students as well. When we work in groups, our minds come together and different ideas are combined to form a whole. Working together and critiquing one another can only make us better at what we are doing and make a greater change.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your quote! "Teachers need to be immersed into a classroom of students and learn from experience". Teachers need to have experience in order to do well. They need to learn how to teach, which can be very difficult for some people, while for others it may come naturally. People need to focus on the art of teaching and becoming more comfortable in the environment. No one does well being thrown into something completely new. Experience equals excellence!
DeleteI agree with your quote from page 229. In dance we would sit down and watch the person that mirrored us during the piece to watch and see what needed to be corrected, but also things that we needed to work on ourselves. If it's something that can be so simply done in a dance class, I definitely agree that it needs to be done in the classroom. Often times it's hard to see what we're doing wrong since we tend to see ourselves in a better light. I would love to see more schools look into this in the future.
DeleteA quote that really stuck out to me was “that the answer to weak teaching in the United States is to eliminate “barriers” to teaching, such as teacher education and certification requirements, allow anyone into the classroom who wants to teach, and fire those who prove not to be effective.” This seems like a good idea in theory, but there are a lot of holes in this argument for me. Darling-Hammond does focus on the importance of the effectiveness of teachers, which I can agree is very vital to students succeeding in the classroom. However, the best way to make sure teachers do their job in an efficient way is to make sure they are good teachers before you hire them, not after. To allow bad teachers into the educational system can seriously damage some students’ learning abilities. Even one specifically harsh instance can deter a teenager from pursuing a certain career if a teacher puts them down. Besides, this plan is assuming that all the bad educators will be obvious and will be fired. That is often not the case. In my high school, there were multiple teachers who might have been experts in their respective fields, but they had no idea how to convey those concepts and theories onto their students. Often the students (myself included) decided to focus on memorizing word for word what the textbook said just to do well on the tests and make it through the class without damaging our GPAs. Because of this, we learned nothing form those classes, and those teachers are still working in my high school. Administrators see good grades and assume a good teacher is leading the classroom, and that is not always the case.
ReplyDeleteI relate to Brianna and Abigail in discussing the dilemma involved with teachers. I feel very strongly that pedagogical training is necessary to be an effective teacher. We all know professors that are clearly forced to teach and would much rather be working on their research; I think that all levels of education have this problem.
ReplyDeleteOne quote that stood out to me was that “many high achieving nations, such as Singapore and Sweden, fund and require as much as 100 hours of professional development time for each teacher annually” (Darling-Hammond 201). I think this really speaks to my point of how important pedagogical training is. The students in these countries are the best and it appears that there is a relationship between high quality teachers and high quality students.
The video this week really speaks volumes on our education system. Our education system is too much like an assembly line. It needs to be much more personalized. This video did a great job of making the points that Murray did, except in a much less radical and accusatory way. In the book, Darling-Hammond discusses the use of block schedules, less classes and longer blocks of time, which lightens the pupil loads on teachers (249). This allows for better relationships between teachers and students. I think at this point in the semester we have all agreed that high quality teachers are the most important piece of a school, Darling-Hammond really affirms this.
Justin,
DeleteI really like that you pointed out that our education system is totally like an assembly line. Teachers aren’t able to step outside the box when teaching in a classroom, which is limiting children and their learning. Teachers are restricted to what they do in the classroom and I feel some teachers are not adequately trained. Like you said, schools need to be more personalized to meet the needs of each student. In my opinion, teacher-student ratio makes a big difference; if the class size is smaller, teachers are able to recognize the needs of each student and are able to spend more time with each student during the day. You mentioned that other countries require their teachers to have further education/hours; I think teachers in the US should be required to receive certain trainings and observation hours before starting to teach. For instance, I think it is necessary for one to student teach beforehand, have a mentor, and complete observation hours in different environments to gain well-rounded knowledge in the field of education. I think teachers need to have experience to become a good teacher. Although books/courses teaches one the skills of teaching, I think one has to be immersed into a school setting to learn how to be a good teacher and deal with situations that may arise. Abigail mentioned that a bad teacher can seriously damage a school system, and I totally agree with her. Good and bad teachers leave impacts on their students that often encourage how they view school and learning. I think it is important that there be more incentives to become a good teacher, because if we lack students getting a degree in education, schools are going to hire teachers who possibly didn’t even study education; this can then potentially introduce a bad teacher to the system, damaging a child’s opinion of school as well as affect how much they learn.
I'm confronted with conflicted feelings after viewing this video. I, on the one hand agree that people are changing and part of the education system we have in this country is old and out-dated. However, I don't think that everyone learns better in groups. I think that people need to still be taught not to cheat off others because plagiarism is a thing. There is a difference between collaboration and plagiarism and people don't completely understand that. Some people learn and work better in an isolated space or just to themselves vs. always working in a group. Sometimes when you work in groups problems can arise, including people not doing their part of the assignment because they think since it is a group project or collaboration effort that they are allowed to slack off. Instead of eliminating all solo work I think we need to re-emphasize having pride in your work. Having pride and confidence in the things you do makes your work and presentations better. You always perform better if you believe you will and you take the steps to prepare yourself to do so. Sometimes that means working with others, while other times that means focusing in on yourself and what YOU need to do to prepare YOURSELF for whatever you may be doing. I think we should encourage people in school to use their creativity more because I think in the public school system we have lost sight of how people are special, intelligent and creative in their own ways. We all need to realize that being different doesn't mean bad.
ReplyDeleteIn Linda Darling Hammond's book she mentions testing and its affects on students. " The standards and curriculum are designed to support educationally useful assessments. European and Asian nations that have steeply improved student learning have explicitly sought to create curriculum guidance and assessments that outline core knowledge in ways that focus on higher-order skills: the abilities to find and organize information to solve problems, frame and conduct investigations, analyze and synthesize data, apply learning to new situations, self-monitor and improve one's own learning and performance, communicate well in multiple forms, work in teams, and learn independently" "Whereas the United States now tests every child every year on tests that rely primarily on multiple choice items that evaluate recall and recognition, most high-achieving countries use external assessments(286). I agree with this statement because I think that the US does the wrong type of testing for students. I think our tests shouldn't be simply multiple choice tests. I think we need to branch out and find other ways of testing because as someone who suffers from testing anxiety I know that the measurement of my multiple choice test grades are much different from my short answer grades. The bubbles make me cringe and become nervous and second guess myself. I think that devising both a multiple choice test and a new testing system would be beneficial for the US. So many more students would be acknowledged for their intelligence just in a different way.
A quote that stuck out to me from Darling-Hammond's book was on page 214 taking about student teaching and practicum hours, "...in carefully selected placements with expert teachers who model excellent teaching in diverse urban classrooms." Throughout my educational career in elementary, junior high and high school there were a few teachers that had student teachers that I was very confused as to why the school district would place those students in a classroom like that. Don't get me wrong, I had some excellent teachers that were able to educate their practicum and student teachers wonderfully. However, I remember a time in high school when my 9th grade English teacher (who wasn't a good teacher and made fun of children with learning disabilities) had a practicum student. That student didn't teach once, but instead graded all of our papers and entered them into our equivalent of Blackboard. That practicum student, although learning how to perfectly grade a paper, didn't have the opportunity to teach in front of a different group of students than at her pervious practicum. That wasn't helping the future teacher but rather hindering her in multiple ways. I was intrigued by the educational learning programs in different countries and how the United States needs to step up their game. As discussed by Darling-Hammond I think we need more "highly developed professional development school partnerships." (216) so that our future teachers are being as well equipped as possible. I know that if we do that the desire to be an educator and the level of educators that we have will rise.
ReplyDeleteLike Margaret, I'm extremely conflicted after watching this video. I agree with some parts, but vehemently disagree with some others.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I like how this video critiques the current school system. On page 62 of Darling-Hammond, she explains that our school system was "designed at the turn of the last century as highly bureaucratic organizations- divided into grade levels and subject matter departments, separate tracks, programs, and auxiliary services- each managed separately and run by carefully specified procedures engineered to yield standard products." This relates perfectly to how the video explains that our education system was created in the time of the industrial revolution, divided into grade level like a factory line and meant to create factory workers. I wholeheartedly agree, like the video said, that we need to revamp our education system to fit the students and the culture of today. However, it is important to note that, while it is important to alter the school system to work with how children learn, it will be nearly impossible to completely alter the way the schools work. Yes, standardized tests are problematic. But it is also difficult to give grades, measure student growth, or compare countries without them. If there is a better way to do this, I'm sure everyone would be thrilled to hear it. But for now, it seems like our only option. It would be unfair to expect teachers to teach topics 8 different ways to fit all the learning types of each student- there is simply not enough time in the day.
I did have some issues with one issue presented in the video- namely, the way the speaker discussed ADHD. I'm extremely passionate about this, so I'm probably going to rant a bit (sorry!). The speaker in the video made it seem like ADHD was a fake disorder, made up by parents and teachers that didn't want to deal with the natural creativity of children to force them to shut up and learn. I have personal experience with ADHD, and I can absolutely say this is not true. Although it may be overdiagnosed, there is no doubt that such a disorder exists. This video made it seem like Ritalin and other drugs that we are giving those with ADHD are extremely harmful drugs with no useful purpose, given simply to drain those students of their creativity and force them to be quiet and learn math. My 10 year old cousin, who I am extremely close with, was diagnosed with ADHD at age 5. I have seen him without medicine and I have seem him with medicine, and the differences are staggering. Without medicine he is a whirlwind, barely able to sit still even through activities that he enjoys. He is not happy like this, he's constantly frustrated that he can't physically finish a book or movie that he enjoys. With his medication, he is able to play with his friends and be fully engaged in the game they are playing, or finish a movie he wants to see. And yes, it helps him with his school. It's heartbreaking to watch a child you love in tears because he physically cannot focus enough to finish his homework, versus a happy child who can finish his homework quickly and then be able to enjoy the rest of his day. While I agree with much of what the speaker was saying, it was almost hard to watch this video because this part made me so angry.