I want to start this post with a story that I remember hearing a long time ago. I tried searching for the story but could not find it so bear with me while I try to recall it.
There was a little town with many students there to teach. One day, someone figured out how to give each kid the exact same information and have everyone understand it equally. From this point on, each student would come into a room, sit in a chair and have some sort of plug put into their spine. Then, the machine would turn on and they would be instantly filled with the knowledge needed for the year. This was a huge success and the program became wide spread across the world! Everyone would walk out knowing the exact same information as everyone else who went through the machine. But one day a student was waiting in line outside. He noticed a dark little building off in the distance and asked “What was that building used for?” The boy in front of him said “That used to be the school! Thank goodness we don’t have to go there anymore!” But the little kid was sad. He did not want to be fed information. He wanted to explore! He wanted to be unique.
While I don’t think this is exactly how the story goes, it gets me to my point.
We, as pre-service teachers, and current in-service teachers are about to witness something will change us. I see friends now deciding to switch their majors for the fifth time to something out of the educational field because of this whole Senate Bill 5. While I have had very little time to do my research on the bill, I know it’s anything but good and I’m worried. I’m worried that I will not have a job when I graduate. I’m worried that I will loose so many good friends to fields they are less passionate about. I’m worried that education is going to completely change.
We now have three states that are supporting SB5 which are Ohio, Wisconsin and now, New Jersey. In fact! The governor of New Jersey was quoted saying that teachers unions are full of nothing but “bullies and thugs” and they do not deserve collective bargaining rights.
Often times, I think of the show Dollhouse (or any apocalypse type movies) as the way we are heading and I’m starting to see it in math. The way the show Dollhouse worked is that people could be changed into “Dolls” which can be turned into anything you want them to mentally. They will be put into this machine and spat back out as a serial killer or a guidance counselor. As the show progressed, technology came out that changed the way things worked. They were now allowed to be “wiped” remotely which means they would just be an outer shell with no idea who they are or what they were doing. This became such a disaster and the entire population was afraid of being erased.
In a school district that shall remain un-named, I have seen this new type of math arise. The creator of this curriculum actually gave a presentation in front of my class around the beginning of the year. I quite liked the concept at the time. Now, I’m having second thoughts. Major second thoughts.
This math class is created entirely on powerpoints and all the teacher has to do is click through the powerpoint presentations and have the students copy down what is in red. The curriculum is designed so that anyone could teach it and I fear this is what is going to happen. As the district loses money due to budget cuts, who is to say that the school does not let go it’s teacher staff and hire a bunch of teacher assistants at minimum wage to teach these classes? Then they will get cut further forcing the school to sit all students in a computer lab and have them leaf through the presentations to teach themselves. This pretty much eliminates all teaching jobs in schools! Who needs em right? But does this really help students? Do they walk out of these classes really ready to move on to the next class? I do see this happening in our future and it really scares me. Most professions have seen a decline in workers needed because of technology. Teachers do not need those same cuts.
So, I hope that my little opening story relates to the information about the powerpoint math class. It took me the longest time to remember that story!
In the next few weeks, I want to open a section on this blog dedicated to SB5 and want YOU to discuss on it. While I know this blog is not popular yet, I would like to start hearing some information about it from the few readers I do have.
Thanks for reading.
While I am not planning on being a special education teacher, I like the idea that we are required to take a class that is all about special education. The class that I took was over the summer and our teacher basically read from powerpoint to powerpoint about different types of disabilities one may see in their classroom. I have heard that other teachers take a little more time going and doing activities that show the student how someone with that disability thinks. For instance, when they talk about blind and deaf students, they are partnered up with a non-blind/deaf student who helps them complete a task.
I also wish this class would talk about testing. How can I modify my classroom and assessments to be better helpful towards the students with disabilities? I am told that these classes do not go over those types of things because we are just starting out in the field of education and we do not yet know much about education so it would almost be useless. I feel quite the opposite. In my opinion, I knew I wanted to go into education long before college. In fact, I started looking at teaching as a career when I was very young. While I may not understand some of the philosophy about education, I think these are more real and more important things we need to address.
I feel that this is how much of my education experience has run so far. We are given information that is most likely irrelevant and it goes in one ear and out the other. Teach me something that I need, not something that you want me to know. I want a class that’s strictly about classroom management, not one about planning and then throw in a bit about management.
Let me try to get back on topic. I like the concept of this class. It needs to start with the basics and really go in depth on how I, as a teacher, can and will help that student. I was taught about the signs that a student has some disability. While this may be important somewhat, it’s not as important as what I can do to help that student and better their education.
I am not really sure what the next student should do. I guess really try to take advantage of the field experience and talk to those teachers about what they would do if they were in your shoes as a general education teacher.
I guess the next post should be a bit more topical… Senate Bill 5.
I apologize for not posting this right away. I seem to have difficulty writing about this course because it is so elementary and yet could benefit so much if it went to a more advanced level. I honestly wrote this post at least 5 times before getting to a point where I thought it was publishable. I think it was because I did not like where the post was going. Nevertheless, lets get started.
Ed Tech is a course that goes through basics of creating a letter to parents about a field trip, making tables in Word, creating a simple Excel grade book spreadsheet, to making a powerpoint and a portfolio that you upload all of your assignments to at the end. In the class, there is not too much formal instruction time where the teacher stood in front and demonstrated how to accomplish these various tasks, but a lot of time for us to sit at our computers and complete the assignments. She implemented a “ask three then me” rule where we had to ask three other students before we could ask her a question. Since I have a strong background in computers, I really did not ever follow that rule and just asked our teacher directly. At the end of the semester, we created an E-Portfolio that displayed all of our work for the class. Since I am a web designer myself, I took this project and went above and beyond to create something that looked so good that students in the class the next semester borrowed some of my ideas and implemented them in their own portfolio. Since I learned the CASE method (Copy And Steal Everything), I felt it was OK for them to use my portfolio as an example knowing that many of them could not figure out what I did.
The class needs to be completely redone. While I do think that some of the assignments are necessary and are helpful, I think there are a lot of wrongs in the class. We start the semester now by creating a field trip newsletter, a letter to parents about the field trip and a homework chart. The way it should start is taking a day or two to discuss how to design a website, then actually creating the first few pages of it. In a classroom, if we are to make a website, we are not just going to create it at the end of the semester, we need to have it up and running from day 1. Another thing about the class is there are a lot of unnecessary assignments that are given way too much time to complete and can be combined into a day or two. There are also some old technologies which should be phased out such as a transparency assignment. What needs to be added are various internet tools that can be useful in a classroom. For instance, we were recently told about this podcasting website that would be perfect for creating a virtual lesson for students. That could be something we have to do in class! If I am unable to be in school for prior engagements (aka Jury Duty), then I can create a few lessons that the students can watch while they are in class and the substitute does not actually have to do anything except login and hit play. Learning about the SMART Board would be another great technology to add to this class. It’s something that you need to be certified to use and most students do not take the time to get that certification.
At this point in my education, I have yet to see how much of this information applies to me, so having each student in the class present on various technologies that would be useful for their content area would be excellent. This could take the place of the PowerPoint presentation.
I’ve often been told that this class is so elementary because we do not know much about education. Why not make it tougher and make us think like teachers at this early level. This was only 2 semesters ago for me and I still think it could have been more advanced and better.
So that’s what I would do to change the class, to the next person taking it, I would suggest building your portfolio from day 1. Think about it. If you are a teacher and you need a website for your class, when will you put together that website? I would hope it would be before school started for the year and not at the end of the class.
If you are in the class and you have free time, don’t get on facebook! Instead, explore other technologies that sound interesting to you and write yourself a little note that reminds you of this technology for later. That way, when you are getting ready to teach for the first time, you have these tools that would be great under your belt.
This class is a necessity to education. We need those other technologies in our classrooms. I also suggest, probably to be taken at the same time as this one, a class that is about teaching with a lack of technology/funds which is something we see so often in schools. I am currently now working with a school that does not have technology–which is by choice.
I think this is it for today. I also want to take a small side track for the next post and talk about my current thoughts and what I’m worrying about right now.
In conjunction with Intro to Education, we have to take another course which is called Educational Psychology. They are taken together so that the field observations can be twice as long for both classes. In this class we learn basic psychology and how it is applied to education. It is also there to see how some of the concepts we learn in Intro to Education apply in different classrooms.
This course is also one that I believe is necessary in our educational process. We need to know the different discipline techniques and how our learners think. It is also great that there is a field observation with this course as well so that we can apply some of the concepts we are learning in class to a real life situation. I think real life is what some teachers take for granted. Some don’t seem to realize that seeing an example in the real world reinforces a concept to the point that the student will remember it so much better. This is a topic that I will address in a better fashion later… It’s something that bugs me about math education.
Back on topic, the only real changes that need to be made to this class were stated yesterday in the Intro to Education post. The field observations need to be in different school levels through the same district. Since the field observations for both Intro to Education and Education Psychology occur at the same time, we should have to compare and contrast districts as one will be urban and one will be more suburban. While I realize that has no value, I believe that there was enough comparing and contrasting being done anyway without the paper, it would just be nice to have a place to write it all down and share.
There are no real suggestions for this course. I do believe that it should have a Part II offered towards the end of the education program. It should briefly go over what we talked about in Part I and then expand upon those topics in each area (grades 7-12 have a section, etc.). This way, the information directly applies to you and you are less likely to forget what is important and what you wish you had remembered 20, 30 years down the line.
For the next person taking this course, I would start now keeping a good record of important education notes, books, etc. This class gives you great resources and gives you some examples of how to approach the situations. Make sure what you are learning applies to you. If you cannot figure out how it applies to you, then ask the teacher. Otherwise you probably will not remember it.
I think that about wraps up the first semester of my education on education. I think I will talk next about Education Technology and how that course needs a complete over-hall designed by the best.
Side note, if you notice, I am currently posting on a daily basis… expect that to change soon as I start gaining course work and such.
As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I was going to start at the beginning of my education on education. At our university, we are to take a course called Intro to Education as well as Education Psychology at the same time. Today, I’m going to address Intro to Education and work on Education Psychology later. As I said before, the basic outline of my posts is going to stay fairly consistent. I will talk about a class and the problem with it, then talk about how the next student can make their experience better if they are in the same situation as I was, and I will address what I think the university should do to make this course better.
This class defines what we are looking for as teachers. It exposes us to a classroom in an urban setting, one of which most of the class may not be used to seeing. We learn about the different types of teaching philosophies and read some important literature for a pre-service teacher. It really opens the minds of potential educators and also may change some people’s minds about going into education. In all honesty, some people go into education for the paycheck, as funny as that may sound as we all know how much teachers make. They think teaching others is easy and they can get by.
As great of a class this is, there’s always room for improvement. However, I think my issue is not really with the class itself. In our class, we are required to complete about 10 observation hours in a classroom. This is where my issue is. We were placed in an elementary school which was grades K-6. While I enjoyed every aspect of being at the school and watching the students think and learn, I feel that it does not really help me for when I teach high school students. This is a fundamental course. It shows you the beginnings of education. Shouldn’t we as pre-service teachers be able to see what we might teach in the future? Some of us are still deciding whether we want to teach middle school or high school. This could be a deciding factor!
What needs to be done with this observation time is spend a class in an elementary school, a class in a middle school, and a class in a high school, maybe even a special education classroom. This should be the path for all education students. This allows us, as pre-service teachers, to see what these different classrooms are like. It does not matter that we have yet to learn anything about instruction, assessment, etc. All that really matters is that we get exposure. If I’m trying to decide which college I want to go to for school, I visit it. I don’t just pick one to visit and assume that all colleges are just the same and then pick one to go to. It could be a totally different experience that what I was expecting. This same example could be applied to workplaces. I could interview for a job, get the grand tour, but there is no assuming that all other companies are going to have the exact same job that company A had.
For the next guy going into Intro to Education, I would suggest going and spending an hour or two visiting schools (this would of course have to be cleared with the school first!) and talk to them about what you are trying to do. I would have said that I was trying to decide which level of education I was going to get in before actually having to go through the classes and finding out I’m in the wrong spot. Even just tutoring after school would be great. It’s the students that matter. One thing we are having to do more and more is build our own experience. Not just do what the guy before you did.
So I do believe that this course is essential and I would definitely keep it as a lead in to the education department. Just a few updates need to be made. Tomorrow, I will talk more about Education Psychology and why that course also needs to stay in this college experience.
I should start this blog by talking about myself. I am a third year student at a local university. My plan is to become a high school math teacher, but as of right now, I’m not sure if that’s going to happen. I have two jobs: one is working in a computer lab as their systems administrator which basically translates to me being the go-to guy who people go to when they have questions or issues with their computers. I’m also supposed to work on keeping the lab up to date with the next best technology. I also work in a middle school with their after school program. Not only do I do that for the school, but I volunteer there twice a week.
I started taking education courses about a year ago as well as working on my content classes. At our university, you have to complete your general education courses before working on any content specific courses. At least that’s what they told me when I started…
That’s basically all I need to say in this post. Next time, I will start with the beginning of my education experience and how that can be made better.
This is the traditional “Welcome to my new blog post and here’s what you can expect” post. While I really do not know what I am expecting out of this blog, I can already say what I plan to post about…
This is not a place for me to bash every aspect of my educational experiences at the university I attend although I’m sure it will seem like that. For now, I plan on posting what was wrong with my education followed by what I think would be a better experience for the next guy going into the program. I also plan on keeping the name of my university as well as its staff members anonymous throughout the process.
I am also open to comments! They are welcome on any post and I will try to reply to them all when my schedule permits. I have a lot on my plate this semester, but this is something I have been meaning to do since I started with my education program.
Stay tuned for the first real post which will appear soon!
