Week 2 Reflections

Reflections on the Michelle Rhee interview with Jon Stewart:

I have to start out by saying that I agreed with everything that Jon brought up in the interview. I agree that standardized test don't accurately show a student's learning or a teacher's teaching and I agree that we need to have more things like creative learning and collaboration in the classroom. I also agreed with Michelle when she said that there can't be no accountability for teachers, but that their should be an over emphasis on the test. She said teachers are overwhelmed by the amount of standards and tests that schools are throwing at them. She agreed that we need to free teachers up so that we can allow them to do what they do best. She even mentioned that other ways we need to be evaluating teachers is by looking at student achievement growth, student surveys, and observations of the classroom. So far, I am on board with Michelle is saying. Michelle even recognizes how hard teaching is and even said that they do not get paid enough. However, I disagreed with her on some points. Michelle is all about getting rid of failing schools and making sure that parents of students in failing schools have other options (like charter schools) for their kids. I think what we should do is fix up the failing schools! Why are we paying to create new schools when we have schools. All they need is some spit and polish! Jon also brought this up in the interview. He said if all we do is take the good students out of the failing schools, then they are stuck with only the students nobody wants. That just doesn't seem right! That has to hurt the students in those schools even more and they probably have just succumbed to the fact that they will never succeed. We need to be fixing these issues and reviving the life into those failing schools.

To reform the system I would continue to get rid of ineffective teachers and replace them with effective teachers like Michelle did in Washington, DC. However, I would be implementing plans to get the failing schools the help they needed to becoming a great schools again. I would also continue to fight the overwhelming amount of standards and standardized testing that they give to teachers and students. Teachers know what is best for students. Yes, they need to be held accountable in some way but does that really mean the students need to be tested every year sometimes several times in that year? Can teachers not create their own data such as portfolio and things of the like to show their students' growth in the classroom. There has to be a better way! Teaching for the test just isn't working. If we really want to make workers for the 21st Century students have a lot better things they need to be doing in the classroom then memorizing things for a test.

Student Profiles:

Meet Zeke

 Zeke is a student with an IEP because he is almost blind. He is a very happy kid, and no one in the class seemed to pick on him at all. They accepted him while they were doing group work and listened to him while he read his story out loud to the class. He was excited to share his story about a play station and a PSP (he called it a baby PSP) coming to life. I was told that Zeke does miss a lot of class due to doctor appointments. He also has to be very close to his paper to see it and the teacher is required to place him close to the board.

      Zeke obviously likes video games based on the story he read above to the class. His story however, was all over the place and didn’t really make a whole lot of sense. The baby PSP was going to the doctors and in the next sentence he was waking Zeke up in his bed wanting to play. So, what I would do is to first go over the plot elements of a story in a video game because a video game tells a story just like a book. Then, I would have Zeke do a creative project where he created his own video game. He would have to demonstrate that he understood plot elements to a story by creating his own video game story. Hopefully, he would learn from the model that I would show him and apply it to his own video game!

 

Meet Brittany

 

       Brittany is definitely one of the popular girls. She dresses very nicely and she is very confident in herself. My co-op described her as an attention seeker. She is very unscripted as I later found out when my co-op described a story where Brittany hinted to my co-op that perhaps he should date one of the teachers within their team. I am really taming down the story and it seems Brittany lacks some morals. It makes me wonder what her female role models are and it also concerns me that it could affect her as she continues through her schooling. Despite all of this, she is an “average student” and seems willing to learn in class.

 

        If Brittany were in my class, I would be tempted to do a unit that would be filled with literature from strong women that we could study. Perhaps we could study literature like The Scarlett Letter, Jane Eyre or Their Eyes Were Watching God. The possibilities would be endless and we could compare classic literature to characters like Katniss in The Hunger Games. I really think that Brittany is looking up to a female role model that perhaps does not have the best morals, and maybe studying strong female characters in books would help her to develop as a young adult.

 

 

Meet "the loner" (sorry I didn't get his name)

 

This young man is a master at folding paper. He can do some serious origami. My co-op said if he isn't folding paper he is nibbling on some food like a mouse. He just needs to always have his hands busy, and my co-op allows this because he gets good grades. My co-op thinks that the folding and nibbling our nervous habits. These habits annoy Brittany in the classroom. He keeps to himself for the most part and is happy folding his paper.

 

I honestly haven't had the light bulb go off yet on how I would teach him in my English class. I think I would need to do something where I could keep his hands busy. Perhaps, we could study a graphic novel, and then he could have some fun making his own. The drawing would keep his hands busy. I am still thinking of answers as to how I would teach him, but I want to studying him more to find out why he has those nervous habits. If it is a confidence level thing, I would want to do something that would help him to build up his confidence.