Philosophy of Education

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Education at Home

Yesterday we had a panel of people who either taught their children in home schooling or were home schooled themselves. I found this lecture eye-opening and interesting from the perspective of a future educator. Although home schooling for some is a perfect combination, for many others it is highly unrealistic. However, I think there were many ideas we can take from the structure of home schooling and use it in public schools.
Some of the ideas that stuck out in my mind were

1. Tailor the education to the student. When a child is home schooled he or she is the only student in the class, his or her entire education is tailored to fit his or her needs. Although one on one in public schools is impossible, we can use this to have smaller class sizes with a smaller teacher to student ratio.

2. Not sticking to the curriculum or the book. Home schooled children develop the skills that they want to learn. There is motivation, interest, effort, and more learning being done when the children explore ideas. Basic skills such as math, reading, observation, etc. come along with this structure.

3. Using resouces, experts, and hands on activities to learn and discover. Home schooled children might not have very many resources, however, they are being taught how to find what they want to know. Going out into the community is an important part of one's education. This can be modeled in public school more, as well.

4. Learning because they want to. Home school children do not have required grades. They have the motivation to learn for the right reasons, not for their GPA or grades.

5. One of the most interesting to me was the children would learn to read when they were ready. This could be nine years old. This could be easily changed in public schools. There is not a real need for a five year old to be able to read unless they are wanting to and wishing to do so. Children develop at different stages. A child should not fail first grade because he or she cannot read yet. Studies show that there isn't a real advantage to reading early. Eventually the students who took longer, catch up and do not feel like failures because they didn't read as a five year old.

Prayer in Schools

There are many instances of prayer being in public schools. From the Pledge of Allegiance to Friday night football pre-game rituals. Or if you grew up in mostly conservative, Northwest Iowa like me, as you ran to get in line for lunch at a public school, the teacher would ask the person in the front what prayer the class would like to recite today. My teacher taught us many, my personal favorite was Johnny Appleseed. Being in second grade I had no idea this was against the law. Looking back on my education, do I feel like praying before lunch or saying the Pledge of Allegiance hindered my learning? Not at all. But what if I practiced a religion other than Christianity?

I think I would have been confused and have an internal battle between what my teacher (the person I think knows all at that time in my life) teaches and my family teaches me.

The United States of America was founded on freedom of religion. Saying the Lord's Prayer before high school football games or Johnny Appleseed before school lunch is not representing freedom. Instead the time could be used for a moment of silence. One could pray, one could reflect, or in second grade, a child could think about how fast they were going to eat in order to get out for recess. It leaves the freedom up to the child without placing one's own religious beliefs upon the students.

Chocolate Milk contest

After hearing about the chocolate milk contest that happened at the community school I attended, at first I was proud that my school had won! When looking at all the details, it appeared to be a bad idea...

The school system had entered into a chocolate milk drinking contest against other schools in order to win $15,000 from the Midwest Dairy Association. This was a fun way to have the students participate in helping the school. The students were trying to see how many cartons of chocolate milk they could drink in about a month's time frame. Hearing about this contest, a couple of questions came to mind...

How does this become a bad idea? When I found out chocolate milk has just as much sugar as pop! Looking at the different figures including chocolate milk having 3 teaspoons of sugar per carton and each student averaging a little over 3 cartons per day is promoting unhealthy habits.

Since our society likes to blame somebody for effects, who is to blame for all this sugar in the schools?

If you look at the Dairy Association, they want to make money like everyone else. If it had been white milk, there would be some extreme milk drinkers that would get really into it and try a gallon challenge, but I don't think there would be 62,289 cartons drank at one school alone. Students like chocolate milk. The Dairy Association's role in this contest is to promote milk drinking so they can make money. In this sense, I don't blame them for the "unhealthy" use of chocolate milk. They are a business trying to make a profit and this was a very creative and successful way to do it.

So then does it come to the schools?

When reading the article about the chocolate milk promotion throughout the schools, I think the teachers did a good job of incorporating it into their curriculum through speech presentations, research about chocolate milk, and having the whole school participate. It also seemed that the school was unaware of the sugar or unhealthy milk they were promoting. They probably looked at the chocolate milk contest as a healthy alternative to pop or sugar juices. I am not a chocolate milk drinker, so I was not aware how much sugar was in chocolate milk. This could be the same for the administrators, lunch personal, or whoever agreed to the contest.

I think the problem lies in a bigger issue. We all stick up our noses at the school food because it doesn't taste good and it is not as nutritious as we would like. However, I think the schools are doing the best they can. They have a tight budget, as well. If the school is going to provide lunch/breakfast/snacks/etc., they have the responsibility to keep the meals healthy and nutritous. I believe it would be beneficial to have a nutritionist as part of the school staff. This person would be able to spend their time examining the menu, finding sources for nutritous food that can be prepared by the lunch/breakfast cooks, and could educate the school and students on what is healthy. This person could possibly serve as a health teacher as well. Then, maybe next time there will be a white milk drinking contest for the schools?

Traditional vs. Choice

I thought that the international student panel was very interesting and enlightening in class. We talked about topics such as a typical school day, homework, expectations, and assimulating. To me, the experience both of these students are having is amazing.

One student from Ghana is able to see two ways of schooling, choice and traditional structure. I enjoy the freedom of choice I have in the United States even though some people think our schools are failing, maybe because of this reason. When I heard about the structure the student had at the boarding school, I felt two emotions. I was so happy I did not have to go to school like that to get to Luther College. On the other hand, I was a little jealous. This student seemed very bright and intelligent. He seems to have a great work ethic and values (this coming from only a half hour of talking to him). Then I wondered if I would have been through that type of schooling, would I be as knowing as him?

After pondering about the idea, I decided I probably would know what "real work" is and probably be even more thankful for my air-conditioned job in the summer. However, whether being in a traditional boarding school or an U.S. "choice" school, I think it comes down to work ethic. People in the United States have great work ethics when they make the choice to. People in the United States are very intelligent if they want to. In the U.S, it seems we put emphasis on you will get out of it what you put in it and that is your choice. In Ghana it seems you have no choice, you will do the work! I think teachers, administrators, parents, etc. should try and help students choose to have a good work ethic because they know and want the benefits.

Although, other countries seem to be "beating us" through education, they seem to have very strict ways to do this. I don't think the United States should change to these ways, however I do believe in general a different attitude/expectation should be utilized in society.

ECE

About a week ago my discussion group got on a topic about early childhood education. Many different viewpoints were brought into the converstation which made for a great discussion. We hit issues on different areas of Early Childhood Education but the hot topic was if preschool should be mandated for all children. Most recently in my education at Luther I've learned a great deal about the benefits to Early Childhood education. The intellectual development before the age of 5 is extrodinary. The group seemed to agree, or at least somewhat, on how the development during this time is crucial. The children should be educated during this time period. Should this be left up the parents? Should preschools be offered but not mandated? Should all children be required to attend preschool?

In a perfect world, it would be great to have all parents able to stay home with their children and teach them values, social concepts (like sharing, interacting with others), etc. However, now and especially with the economy, both parents are needing to work to provide for the family. This indicates that children are kept with other caregivers during many of their waking hours. Are these caregivers giving the necessary help and guidance to the children? How should we ensure that this is possible?

Also, how are preschools to be funded? An interesting comment was made that the funding for early childhood should go to grades K-12 to better that education through resources or other areas. During the discussion I thought this was a response that many people in the United States could argue and it appears valid when many schools are "failing" at those levels.

So....I decided to turn to my early childhood education professor for a quick answer. She stated, "The K-12 schools aren't funded by the government; they are funded by the state property taxes. If the federal government were to divert this money to the states, how would it be done equitably--poor states get more, everybody gets the same?" She also mentioned the thought that we need to compare the budgets of early childhood programs that are government funded (only one is Head Start) and compare it to other government funds. Where is the money (the attention) going to? Where does education come on this scale?

NCLB and children with disabilities

NCLB, what a popular topic! If I started talking about NCLB, the entire blog would be filled so I decided to focus on one aspect that I knew a little about which is special education students. I was placed in a 3rd and 4th grade special ed. classroom for my freshmen observation. I was there a month and was able to observe a lot about the students in my class.

Reading about NCLB "Distracting Schools from Productive Reforms" in the article Evaluating "No Child Left Behind" by Linda Darling-Hammond I completely agree with some of the statements. One statement was the thought, "It is impossible for the subgroups (English language-learners and special-needs students) ever to be 100 percent proficient. Schools serving a significant share of these learners will inevitably be labeled failing, even if all their students consistently make strong learning gains." This statement was true in the school district I was placed in. The school had a good special education program so parents from other school districts were open-enrolling their students and sending them to this specific school district. My cooperating teacher notified me her school district is close to being labeled "failing" and it could be due to the large population of special need students in the school.

Reading another article on NCLB entitled Ten Big Effects of the No Child Left Behind Act on Public Schools by Jack Jennings and Diane Stark Rentner made the point about the frustration of actually giving the test to the special needs students. They state the tests are "inappropriate and serve no instructional purpose." I witnessed this first hand. My cooperating teacher was required to test her students. Like all teachers, she read the directions to the student who was a fourth grader functioning at a 1st/2nd grade level. After the directions, she couldn't say much more. The student looked scared and confused, like the teacher had just talked in a foreign language. He did not even know how to begin. Finally, the student began clicking answers like it was a game because it was a computerized test. Comprehension or learning were not present. The student could not read the question or answers. He could simply pick a letter, since he did know his alphabet.

I felt it was a waste of money (for the test itself) and time for the instructor and student. If the government expects to assess special needs students, the tests need to be appropriate for the student. I know NCLB has flaws and good ideas, some much more complicated than others. I feel like test appropriateness is such a basic concept, it amazes me this has to be an issue.

Reflecting on article - "A How-to Plan for Widening the Gap" By Kim Marshall

"Academically needy students have expanded learning time during and after schools, go to summer school, and have the materials and incentives needed to maximize learning outside school." After reading this passage, I immediately pictured this...

A struggling first grader who wakes up in the morning crying to his or her parents, who did not graduate from high school, not to make him or her go to school. After the struggle of jumping on the bus to go to school, the student walks into the classroom sits down for morning meeting but half way through is told it's Tuesday and he or she needs to go to the speech teacher for 25 minutes. This now takes away the time works on daily work (math problems, figuring out the day/time/etc.). After the student returns, it is time for recess but the student had missed daily work, so the teacher said the student will have to stay in and finish. Now the student starts to panic and rushes through their work just to get out for recess. He or she does not care about the work being done or the learning presented. As the day continues, the student misses his or her favorite music class for time with the Title 1 teacher and later stays after school to receive help with a volunteer math tutor. When the student comes home he or she has to practice spelling words, eats, and heads to bed. Now although this may be extreme and drastic, no wonder some children who struggle academically hate coming to school.

Being reading and early childhood endorsements with a special interest in speech and language pathology, my career seems to be heading towards educating the students whose schooling is extended past the traditional 5-18 age range or who will be pulled out of classes for extra work on certain academic areas. Even though I fully believe in the effectiveness of intervention programs and extra help, especially in the early academic years, there may be an argument that needy students are pushed harder and harder to meet standards and benchmarks, which may end up actually hurting them.

Going back to Marshall's article, I do agree with most of the "15 effective practices" that could be implemented and it seems there is support to show growth, but is this as easy as it sounds? Are these ways always best for the students? And how can the parents, community members, etc. help resolve the issue?

Trading Schools....Is it the teachers, money, or expectations?

Watching this video about students from an inner city school and students from a suburb school switch schools for a day, a million questions run through one's mind. How can public schools be this different one half hour away? Are the teachers inadequate in inner city schools? Should we be pouring more money into inner schools and less into well established schools? Trying to answer these questions is near impossible but watching the video, all I could think about was the expectations of the society, the parents, community, teachers, administrators, and of the students. With a graduation rate of 40 percent at the inner city school and a ninety some percent rate at the suburb schools expectations are different. It would seem that society puts an expectation for the students in the suburbs that it isn't a questions whether they graduate. For students in the inner city it may be that students skip school and do not try because education isn't emphasized to be a top priority. Also the teachers may have different expectations for students. In inner cities, goals and expectations may be to get students to come to class or to not misbehave during a lesson. So how do we go about changing society's, parent's, and teaching expectations in our schools?

YouTube Video

My group and I read the book Letter to a Young Teacher by Jonathan Kozol. In order to demonstrate key concepts in the book and to an Educational Psychology book, we made a YouTube video modeling 60 Minutes. To check it out you can click under my Video bar.

Career Meeting

I attended a lecture concerning the majors at Luther College and careers with these majors. This lecture applied to education majors because it showed all kinds of directions we can go. When we think of education majors, especially elementary education, we think that person is going to be a teacher for the rest of their lives. For some people, this is exactly what they want to do. For other people, the lecture encouraged that even though you are an education major, there are many different areas you can end up in. I think that this is important for education majors to know, especially myself, because I cannot see myself in a general classroom setting for the next how many years. I think I am going to need some variety!

Chalk

I thought this movie was alright. I think it was good for future teachers to see because although these situations were made up and exaggerated, we could come across a colleague like one of these teachers. In my education history, I had a teacher who was a mix between Mr. Lowrey because he acted like he had no idea what he was doing and Mr. Stoope because he still tried to make the students believe he was the best teacher. I didn't receive anything out of that class. A friend who I was watching the movie with commented that these teachers were making her frustrated and mad. I think it is beneficial for teachers and others to watch this movie because it makes them think about what they would want in the teachers for their own children. It may give them a new appreciation for good teaching and how much work goes into it.

Parent Lecture

The parent lecture was really surprising for me because of some responses the parents made. I went into this lecture a little naive about parent and teacher relationships. They say the biggest fear for young teachers is the parents. I had never thought about this being an issue until the lecture. I was brought up with parents like the father who was at the lecture. My parents were interested in my school work, my effort, and making sure I was learning, but if I had problems or issues, especially in middle school and high school, they wanted me to confront the teachers about them. This lecture was a good way to introduce me to parents with different thoughts and it brought me to understand these views and ideas.

A couple things that were mentioned that I found would be helpful to me as a teacher were the communication topics. I think that teachers will be able to develop a good relationship with the parents if they keep a solid communication line open at all times. I think giving parents hours and a phone number or e-mail address in order for them to contact you is a great idea. A teacher wants to keep that relationship open with each other and the hours give the teacher his or her personal time, as well. Although a teacher may be dedicated to their students, they should not be expected to be at the parents call 24/7. I think most parents would find this professional, as well.

Another thing I took from the lecture was to be personable with the parents by being aware and sensitive to parents' feelings at conferences and IEP meetings. I think many young teachers may be unsure of how to present themselves in an IEP meeting if they have not had much experience before. One of the parent's statements that was most helpful was to state the positives first at the meeting. I think this not only sets a good tone, I think the parents will have a better feeling that you are setting a goal that their child will be successful and you want to carry through with that goal. This also applies to conferences, if you state something positive about their child, they will want to hear more and in turn, be more willing to cooperate and help with the topics the student needs to work on in any ways they can. Because, like one parent said, teachers and parents are a team working together, not against each other.

Teaching with Students' Interests in Mind

In our last lecture, the teachers mentioned how they try to stay in tune with what is happening and what are the influences in their students' lives. I saw this video and thought this was a good way of incorporating the students' interests and learning into one project.


I liked how in the song, the students displayed that they learned about both parties, each party's platforms, and also the election in general.



Here is the song...
YouTube - You Can Vote However You Like

Here is a full interview and part of the song...

YouTube - Full Interview with Ron Clark Kids - You can Vote However You Like

New Teachers

I've really enjoyed hearing from guest speakers who come from "the outside" or "real world". This week was another addition to the informative lectures that I have attended. It was nice to hear from people that are in the spot we will be in a couple years down the road. I know that I am going to feel the same way most of them did their first year. I am going to be extremely excited and want to do all these great things with my new ideas, but I will have to remember that there will be teachers, probably on some teaching "team" that I'm on who will not want to hear about them. I thought the one teacher made a great point where when this happens you just need to be true to yourself and try things for yourself. I think new teachers need to make mistakes just as the experienced teachers had. This is how they learn, as well.

There were a couple of things that I was apprehensive about. I didn't like the idea of working two jobs. They mentioned that a lot of teachers work another job at a store or somewhere else. I really want to be a teacher, but only a teacher, not a cashier too. I understand that these are young teachers coming out of college which they need to pay for, but the comment turned me off from teaching a little bit. Another thing was that these teachers all knew they wanted to be teachers from the start. Since I am not completely positive about teaching yet, I wanted to hear that they tried all these different majors and came to see that they really loved to teach. If I'm not 100 percent sure I want to do this for the rest of my life, is that a sign?

School Board Members

I found this lecture to be informative in ways I wasn't expecting. I thought that they would talk more about the "good teaching" questions we had put forth, but I found the most informative part of the lecture to be realizing what the school board actually does. It was interesting to hear about how they deal with issues and compare them to how the administrators deal with the same issues. These issues were anything from NCLB to budgets. I was informed on the way Iowa has decided to budget or use funds. They seem to put money in categories and that money can only be used in those categories. At first I thought this makes sense so that a lot of money isn't spent in one area and other areas are neglected. However, I think that this system leaves areas where someone could find many loopholes to get around certain "rules" about the budget and funds. I don't know a lot about how other states budget their educational funds but it doesn't sound like the best way to handle educational money.

I also liked the ideas talked about regarding foreign language. I am starting my sixth year on a foreign language and I still don't feel fluent. I had an encounter in one of my classes where I was forced to use my Spanish with a three year old child. I could communicate certain commands and small talk with the child, but it made me think about how he is only 3 years old and has been talking for a little Spanish for a year and a half or so and I have been speaking for 6 years and he knows more than I do. I think it makes sense to start children in elementary school with a second language. We could at least expose them to another language so when they reach high school it isn't something that is entirely foreign.

Guest Administrators Lecture

I thought that the lecture with the two administrators from the Decorah School District was a little taste of reality. I liked hearing their sides and views of NCLB. In class I feel like we discuss how NCLB has so many flaws and how it isn't good for education all the time. In Ed. Psychology I think it is okay to talk about or challenge NCLB and different laws, but the administrators gave the reality side of things, which I really enjoyed hearing. They talked about how you deal with NCLB and how it can be beneficial to students and teachers. Not knowing a lot about NCLB before I started my education classes, I was finally relieved to be able to hear a different perspective. I thought the comment by the middle school principal about comparing a surgery that is research based to a classroom that is research based made a lot of sense. As a teacher, I want to know that what I am teaching and how I am teaching it in the classroom is adequate and works. I would also feel much better and more confident about what I am doing if I have data to back it up. I also think the data will then help me to see where I can improve. Overall, I thought it was great lecture, and I learned a lot by attending.

Article in class about Multiple Intelligences

In class, I read the article titled, "It's No Fad: Fifteen Years of Implementing Multiple Intelligences" by Thomas R. Hoerr. I found this article to be really interesting because it kind of compares "old school" teaching with "modern" teaching, or that's the way I took it. It was the article that listed the intelligences and had famous people who were evidence of the intelligence listed.
The Multiple Intelligences schools (MI schools) have the theory that "the job of an educator...becomes identifying the ways in which children exhibit intelligence and using their particular strengths to help them learn." The article also talked about a school that included Intrapersonal Intelligence and Interpersonal Intelligence on the report card. These two intelligences "addressed areas such as motivation, confidence, problem solving, responsibility, effort, work habits...appreciation for diversity, and teamwork."

I think that MI seems to be a good thing to keep in your mind while teaching. I still think that children need to learn the reading, writing, math, etc. concepts, but there are many ways you can teach these ideas. All students are different in how they learning and this is where MI could come in, but I don't think it should show up on report cards. The two intelligences that I talked about above seem like they could possibly fit into personality categories and I don't think they should be graded on areas such as these. I think these areas are really important to work on but not be graded on. Talking about these areas with the student and parents is a good idea, but putting it on the report card seems too official.

High Stakes Lecture

Not being able to attend class on Friday, I was very confused about what was going to happen at the lecture. Talking to my group members they informed me that there was going to be role playing going on within a fictional school district meeting with a fictional school board. I really liked the idea behind this lecture. I thought it was a different way of learning about NCLB and its aspects. I liked how we had people from each side bringing different ideas to share with the group for each one of us to take into consideration and learn more about NCLB. I also thought the roles were designed well in the sense that many of them could be found in a real life setting.

What I found frustrating with the lecture was the debating itself. I think it was a great way to voice people's opinions about NCLB within their role but it seemed to get a little out of hand at times. Some people would say things which others contradicted. Right away they would blurt out their opinion and while that person was finishing another person would be screaming theirs without listening. Also, if someone would ask a question, some people seemed to get a little snotty about it. I know its a debate and the people were arguing their sides, but can't you argue respectively of other people and keep an open mind? I felt like we would have a good 10 minute discussion and then the next 10 minutes were out of control craziness, which then seemed like a waste of time. We needed a judge in the room keeping order. This part of the lecture was hard because we weren't able to hear everyone's ideas or even listen to all of the roles that should have been presented. In a real life situation, I don't think a lot would have been accomplished in this meeting.

Library Lecture

I thought that the lecture was helpful because all of us are probably going to have to use those things on the library website in our future. Since the website is a different set up since last year, it was nice to see how to use anything and other helpful tools she gave us. I also thought this lecture was helpful because it's nice to know of the people out there that can help you with different things.

I think I will probably be a little confused when I use this by myself for the first time because it was a lot of information to pay attention to at one time. I also think the handout was really nice because if someone, like myself, can't remember everything I can look back on this.