Education for a democratic and pluralistic society: part 3 of 3

(As part of my Masters of Education, Instruction and Curriculum, I'm required to take a course called Education for a Democratic and Pluralistic Society [EDTE 251, Loeza]. Within this course, I was supposed to write two position papers on a topic of my choice, conduct an interview, and create a presentation using technology on the same topic. Here is part three of three of my technology project.)

The interviews:

The teacher

> J.H. is a sixth year 2nd grade teacher in the Washington D.C. area (urban, public school). She attended school in Abington, PA and College Park, MD. Overall, she was satisfied with her education.
> She believes education is important because well-trained and skilled individuals are needed to contribute to their nation’s growth.
> She would like to see future schools build a solid foundation in abstract concepts and higher level thinking, more technology, and more training on the IEP process for classroom teachers.
> She would like to see less testing.
> She believes the high amounts of worksheets have not changed over the years (negative reaction).
> If she could reform schools, no limits, she would increase teacher pay, hold parents responsible for doing their part in their child’s education, and create a more concrete discipline system with clear consequences and rewards.

The student

> N.M. is a sophomore at a Sacramento area high school. He believes that knowledge is power and that without education, society will become corrupt.
> He would like to see more school supplies, such as laboratory equipment and computers, available for student use. He would also like to see schools remodeled so as to match “East High’s (the high school in High School Musical)” aesthetics.
> He would like to see less education budget cuts and a halt to increasing class sizes.
> He is not satisfied with his current education because “teachers don’t know how to teach anymore.” His elementary and middle school experiences were “hundreds of times better” than his high school experience so far.

The (future) parents

> J.M. and S.C. are married and are in the process of planning for a family. They went to school in Stockton, CA, San Diego, CA, and Berkeley, CA. Overall, they are both satisfied with their educations.
> They believe education is important because society needs a certain level of basic skills to benefit from, and contribute to, their communities.
> They would like to see more homework that is actually corrected and graded, grades based on the student’s work (as opposed to the level of parent involvement in the student’s work), creative writing, and traditional math facts drills.
> They would like to see fewer “useless school projects” that are irrelevant to the subject matter, such as student films on random topics.
> They believe the presence of games at the elementary level has not changed over the years (positive reaction).
> If they could reform schools, no limits, they would like to implement longer school days (with longer breaks, “like French schools”), a wider selection of electives, and emphasize education/career options other than four-year universities and “mass produced” white-collar jobs. They would also include meaningful instruction on world financial systems as well as home economics for the modern student (since “parents are now such workaholics that they no longer have time to teach their children basic life skills”).

Conclusion:

It was not surprising that all of my interviewees had a high interest in education reform, considering their backgrounds. However, I was not prepared for their detailed discussions on items they would like to change. It was obvious that all interviewees had thought about education reform, either on their own or in discussions with other people, prior to the interview.

Putting aside any questions of practical feasibility of their ideas, all interviewees seemed willing to take education into their own hands, shaping it into the way they want it to be. Even the student, who spoke in complaints during the interview (which might be partly contributed to the fact that he is a teenager), showed confidence in his bearing and voice that he could overcome any shortfalls of the public education system. Thus, supporting my second thesis on enabling individuals to contribute to their communities in a grass-roots manner.

It must be noted that all interviewees come from middle- (the adults) to upper-middle class (the teenager) backgrounds, which highly contributes to the way they value their own opinions and the belief that positive changes in education will happen.

Education for a democratic and pluralistic society: part 2 of 3

A good cycle: the circle of life. A bad cycle: the following.
(As part of my Masters of Education, Instruction and Curriculum, I'm required to take a course called Education for a Democratic and Pluralistic Society [EDTE 251, Loeza]. Within this course, I was supposed to write two position papers on a topic of my choice, conduct an interview, and create a presentation using technology on the same topic. Here is part two of three of my technology project.)

In my previous paper, I noticed the long and difficult journey school systems take in their path towards reform. In my second paper, The Unbreakable Cycle of Reform, I analyze the mistakes US education policy leaders continue to make, including some misguided ideas proposed by the Obama Administration.

Many times, public schools cycle through similar education movements without gaining much ground in lasting changes for learning. What makes school reform so difficult and how can educators break this seemingly unbreakable cycle?

Most of the ideas from my second paper can be seen in this previous post, which presents a rebuttal to a CNN Opinion editorial by Ruben Navarrette Jr. I reiterate my points here:

1) Funneling all students into four-year universities is, in itself, a type of low expectation. There are educational opportunities outside classroom walls. For example:

- Peace Corps and other similar service related programs
- internships
- teaching abroad
- work studies (work part-time, study topics related to the work part-time under one or more teachers - which is basically a modified internship)

This is a very small list. Even the powers of Google wasn't able to bring up many options. More ideas are definitely needed.

Also, comparing students from low SES backgrounds with students from high SES backgrounds is unfair. Students from low SES backgrounds CAN learn - they are just not always learning the same things as their wealthier peers.

2) The traditional school setting - including schedule and hierarchy, among other things - is not particularly convenient to both students or staff.

3) Continual, high-stakes testing is only one method of assessing student achievement. Other methods should be used in order to get a complete picture of where students are academically. This information should be used as a launching point for further instructional goals, not solely as an assessment on teacher performance.

I'm suddenly reminded of US Secretary of Eduction Arne Duncan's interview on The Colbert Nation a couple months ago:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Arne Duncan
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor U.S. Speedskating

Notice that Secretary Duncan makes no mention of NCLB, but nearly everything he said is, in essence, NCLB. Also, NCLB highly resembles other movements in US reform history, the results of which are nearly identical to our results now.

Which has good intentions, but will probably not achieve the goals it set out to do.

So how can these goals be met? Should these goals be met at all? Does increasing the high school graduation rate actually mean these same graduates are now independent, well-rounded members of society, ready and willing to contribute to their communities?

I proposed in my paper that lasting societal changes can be - and are being - achieved through small individual choices by educators, students and parents. Teachers should adjust practices within their realm of influence in small, logistically manageable steps. Perhaps they can include one more group project that requires students to create something. Perhaps they can schedule an afternoon of community service at a local park, or even within their own school site. Perhaps schools can bring focus onto current national and world events by bring the news to the students, or, better yet, showing students how to get the news for themselves.

Then, perhaps, students will have both the skills and the mental initiative to become news-makers themselves.

(In a positive way. I don't think the world needs another "Britney is a bad mom" headline.)

Education for a democratic and pluralistic society: part 1 of 3

(As part of my Masters of Education, Instruction and Curriculum, I'm required to take a course called Education for a Democratic and Pluralistic Society [EDTE 251, Loeza]. Within this course, I was supposed to write two position papers on a topic of my choice, conduct an interview, and create a presentation using technology on the same topic. Here is part one of three of my technology project.)

Have you ever felt like a sardine packed in a tin can when seated in bleachers like the above picture? Yet, after awhile, you forget the discomfort - you get used to it.

US education reform often mirrors this "closed bubble" feeling. Why should we care what other students in other countries do in their public schools? All we need to do is focus on improving our own school system.

However, the pan-out picture from the aerial camera is much more spectacular than the tunnel vision available at individual seats. US education reformers should take note of what other countries have done in their reform histories, learning from their mistakes and perhaps adopting their successes to create a more well-educated society.

My first position paper, Education Reform: An International Agenda, was my comparison of various school reform histories in the US, Slovakia, and the Scandinavian countries (namely, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark). The comparison was very narrow and further study would be needed to gain a more complete picture of how various countries' public education systems are similar and different.

I had many sources, but the main ones were:

Hechinger, Fred M. About education; miracle cures seldom work in school reform. The New York Times. September 13, 1983. http://www.nytimes.com/ 1983/09/13/ science/about-education-miracle-cures-seldom-work-in-school-reform.html?&pagewanted=all

Kalin, Jana. Zuljan, Milena Valencic. Teacher perceptions of the goals of effective school reform and their own role in it. Educational Studies. Volume 33. No 2. June 2007. pp. 163-175.

Telhaug, Alfred Oftedal. Medias, Odd Asbjorn. Aasen, Petter. From Collectivism to individualism? Education as nation building in a Scandinavian perspective. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. Volume 48. No 2. April 2004.

I noticed that education in the Scandinavian countries from sixty years ago was very similar to the US school system today. There is value in studying the process, and current results, of school reform in other countries to analyze how US reforms can improve. In the end, most countries' goals for educational reform is to create a more well-rounded, educated public which can produce (and reap) better economic and social benefits.

A time of reflection

Like looking at an old, black and white photo.
I'm currently waiting for my one-on-one conference with the professor about our most recent paper. Not particularly in the best of attitudes, since, in my opinion, she wasted a lot of time doing these one-on-ones in the first 45 minutes of class while everyone else waited around doing nothing.

Anyway. This week has been a week of reflection. And not just because my paper is about blogs and teachers and critical and descriptive reflections. But I would like to say that I'm not critical of myself enough on this blog. Which I will try to change. Maybe. There are some criticisms I'm not particularly willing to share with the entire cyberworld. I wish teenagers (and adults too) would learn a bit more restraint on the internet themselves.

It's been a tiring week, but a good week. My lessons were decent. My CT, who proclaimed to give me miles and miles worth of notes during my teaching hasn't really given me that much feedback this week. Not sure if that is a bad thing or a good thing. Maybe it's just a neutral thing. We have been extremely busy this week.

I'm pretty sure I will be taking a leave of absence from the MA program in January. First, I'll need to find a job. Second, this potential job may or may not be in the Sacramento metro area. Third, I'm pretty sure my job will take up 150% of my time. The things I do in my classroom now are only things on the surface - I've taken on most of the teaching but my CT still handles the logistics, scheduling, parents, and a myriad of other things. I'm surprised any one teacher can handle the teaching job on their own.

Job comes first. MA can wait. This doesn't mean I won't be studying on my own. Even if I don't have online access to the university library and database (but maybe I will if I subscribe to the alumni association...either the UC or CSU one is fine), I can still physically go to a university library on a free Saturday and read, bring photocopies home. There are also tons of articles in my files from these past two years that I haven't had a chance to properly study using my own sweet time yet.

Last word: still lots to learn. But I need to contribute something outside of academia now.

So far so good

All blue skies and palm trees.

Phase 3 take 2 is going well. My teaching can be improved of course, but overall I'm getting decent reviews from all those who are reviewing my performance.

The MA classes are going splendid. The volume of difficult and dense readings can be intimidating upon first glance, but I'm into it by at least the second page. And I'm retaining a lot more information than I thought I would after just the first read. The assignments are fun and challenging and intellectually rewarding. I was so apprehensive about going into the master's for such a long time and now my brain is all, "You worrywart, all that anxiety was for nought!" My brain has also been using more academic, and slightly British, words like "nought" and "astonishment" and "bothered." This is not a bad thing.

After school art has been going well. I cut back on my classes a little, more so because I can't be in Sac at 2:10 PM and magically appear in Manteca fifteen minutes later than because I don't want more classes. But the classes I do have are going well. I have some really fun stories from these students too.

Life has been going well. I'm excited about many personal pet projects and potential social events in the near future. Momiji has made home life go much smoother - having a pet makes you live longer and happier, it's scientifically proven. There are still inconsistencies and things I'm not completely satisfied with. But we all need goals, right?

And now I've probably jinxed it.

Much talk, little meaning

Pretty tunnel vision.
I'm torn in opinion about the president making so many speeches in a relatively short period of time. I'm all for speaking less in order to say more. But I also agree to some extent that people will ignore you unless you are in their face constantly. People get wrapped up in their own world, pushing anything not within their immediate circle out of sight and out of mind. It happens.

The first day of school, the principal decided to show Obama's back-to-school speech in the MP (that's multi-purpose room in teacher lingo) for any class that wanted to see it. My class voted a majority for going. I would too, if I were them, just to get out of the boring lessons involving nothing but the textbook fighting to keep from going on a mind vacation.

So we went. I had read the speech transcript online the night before. Plus, NPR talked incessantly about it during my fifty minute commute that morning. I enjoyed it I suppose, but I couldn't help but take a mind vacation anyway.

Then my parents wanted to watch it online in the middle of the week. And of course I'm their IT person, so I set it up and was made to stick around within ear shot in case the computer exploded or something. Because that's what my dad does to computers. That and allow trojans to infiltrate our system like water goes through a sieve.

THEN I had to sit through another showing of it in EDTE 226. By this time, I was pretty tired of the speech. It was the end of the first week back at teaching and I was pretty tired, period. So I was grumpy. And ended up being rather critical of the speech. Out loud. Teachers, of course, are usually too polite to flame people with anything other than raised eyebrows.

Still. What did he mean by telling students they can achieve anything, then turning right around and telling them it's highly unlikely they will become sports stars or pop icons? What did he mean by implying that success comes only through college and school and higher education? I had just finished reading Tyack, so I saw a lot of bureaucratization going on here. With such a dramatic speech, given in such a dramatic way, I'm suspicious of any underlying intentions that the government has for the education of its people.

Disclaimer: I don't disagree with everything he said. I just have questions about a good portion of it. The stuff about working hard, having a good attitude, and overcoming difficulties were pretty good.

The one best system

It looks the same from here.
There's a lot that's different between bureaucratization of education in the 19th century and James Banks' Multicultural Education theory. Yes Banks, I said theory because it is a theory, not yet a reality.

But there's a lot that is the same as well. What is with the general need for schools to be uniform and the same from campus to campus? When I teach art within the same district, I sometimes forget which school I'm at, until I see the students, because they all look the same. Same building colors, same campus layout, even the teachers and staff all seem the same.

So if we make all schools use the Multicultural Education system, then how is that any different from NCLB? Which, by the way, has an eerie similarity to the urbanization of schools around the 1900's. It's all "same same but different."

And I think I've found an idea for my thesis. Or at least for one of the projects on the way.

Courses: technology

I always feel a little sorry for people who have extreme frustrations struggling with technology. But I also have no mercy for them either. It's their job to figure it out for themselves as teachers. And if they are a little older, or a little less familiar with tech in general, then they have to work that much harder to get it.

They are the same people who are nearly the only ones actually following the instructor. You know everyone else is on instant messaging or facebook, or doing the homework assignment so they don't have to do it outside of class time. And it's really sad, because these non-tech savvy people are trying so hard to follow along, but they keep getting behind because the instructor is clicking through the screens WAY too fast for anyone to keep up with. Because the instructor also knows that most people aren't listening and he just wants to get through the university prescribed lesson and return to his own instant messaging or facebook.

Ok, that's not true all the time. But it's true enough of the time, no?

All of CSUS' credential centers (i.e. Twin Rivers, Folsom, Elk Grove, and my own UTEC) require a technology course. This is where we learn how to record digital videos (or convert analog to digital videos) and upload them, upload photos, scan and print, use Powerpoint for teaching, and a variety of other things.

We were also given a demonstration of the interactive whiteboards. Which are cool and awesome and l33t. But the type of schools I teach at will never see one until they become obsolete, so I'm not going to talk too much about this.

The main thing we focused on in that tech class was how to use Taskstream. Which, IMO, is completely useless. One of their problems is that you have to pay to use it, and there is no free version like flickr and youtube does. Another problem is that only other Taskstream users can see your work, it isn't viewable to the general public like a blog. Taskstream also does not have the internet's most user-friendly platform - all the color choices and screen layouts are pretty distracting too.

I did enjoy reading academic articles on tech in teaching. That part was really helpful. And I enjoyed the project and presentation on said articles. My group did our project on how sensory overload through technology can hinder learning rather than aide it.

Now that I've listed what we did in tech class, I'm surprised we didn't do more demonstrations of actual lessons involving technology. Showing photos and video and powerpoint are all well and good, but there has to be more than that. I think we should have created a lesson plan teaching students to use technology themselves (my fifth graders last semester were still typing with one finger - painfully slowly, they were not even familiar with the layout of a keyboard) rather than have the teacher throw tech at them. Something to remember in my own teaching.

In both my MA seminars this semester, we have papers that require research. And a lot of research journals are available online through the university library site. I spent an hour and a half Saturday afternoon after class to do my research. I found 22 articles to possibly use for three different papers in that short time. Great efficiency yeah? Well, several of my classmates were pretty stressed and had to have a lot of help from me to just figure out how to print articles out.

Which was why I was a little taken aback when I asked another classmate to point me in the direction of the theses shelves, since I saw her holding some of those green covered books as I headed downstairs to that part of the library. She snapped back at me and essentially told me to find them myself.

This is another word I don't use very often but here is a time that warrants it: MEOWRAR much?

I understand that she was probably stressed about all our individual workloads and didn't want to take much time to help someone else when she could barely handle her own stuff, but what was that? It wasn't like I was asking her give up an hour to help me. Just a point in the right direction of a place that she just came from would suffice. The university library is a very large place, with very few signs indicating what shelves hold what books. It is easy to get lost in there.

Well, in this case, technology brought people together while the old-fashioned way created more tension than it was worth.

In which I'm a flaming retard

As dumb and floppy as this crocheted bag
Today, for the first time in my academic career, I went to the wrong class. I went to the wrong class and sat through nearly all of it before I realized my mistake.

Let's start from the beginning shall we? Well, I supposed the beginning beginning, as with many other problems today, boils down to the economy.

Deep slump in the economy => less taxes => budget cuts => The Great Teacher Pink-Slip and Non-Hiring Extravaganza of '09 => more teachers going back to school => more people enrolling in the same masters classes that I'm in => the university suddenly creating another section of the course to accommodate the influx => me not realizing that I had been booted to a different section => me running clear across campus at 7 PM after getting happy and excited for 2.5 hours to get to my actual class.

They did send out a notification email about the change to me, and I did read it. However, I had checked my course schedule online the same day, probably not even an hour prior to reading that email, and I was complacent and didn't think I had to check my registration again.

And thus, another episode of when the gods of communications are not on my side.

But both the professors were really nice about it, and they both let me choose which section I wanted to stay in. And the one I was supposed to be in had a student add at the last minute anyway, so if I stayed in the one I'm not supposed to be in it would balance out the class size. I also like the assignments and the layout of the course a smidgen better in the section that I'm not supposed to be in.

So it worked out in the end. I am really excited about this course, and I anticipate a lot of learning and professional growth from it. I didn't know graduate course class sizes are supposed to be 10 students. In each section of this class I'm taking, there are now 16. Well, this is what teachers do I guess. When there is no work to be had, we go back to school ourselves.