Standards......Or the lack thereof

Recently, the issue of standardized testing has been prevalent in the media and in Education. There have been a number of arguments for and against required testing due to students who felt it was unfair to be required to pass a standard test given throughout the state. A good argument can be made for either side, but personally, I have an opinion on the topic. Throughout my 4 years in High School, I heard many rumors of grading standards going down, to where a passing grade would become a 60, instead of a 70. Another thing I noticed was when I graduated, I walked the stage with certain students who I was pretty sure were unlikely to have passed their classes. I personally feel like in today's education system, standards have been lowered, and it is worrying. I feel like a High School diploma isn't as valuable as it used to be, people used to work very hard to pass High School, but now, there are arguments for no more grading in schools, with a number of schools following a "free" concept, where there are no grades, no assignments, nothing, the students choose what they do "http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2003645914_unschooled01m.html". I personally believe there should be higher standards, a diploma should mean something, not just a piece of paper given to students after four years, but something earned. People are too worried about offending other people, one argument is that it's unfair to fail students, well, I say, too bad, if everyone is given a diploma, then where is the value? During my senior year in High School, a number of students brought alcohol to a school event. They were threatened with not walking the stage, but guess what, they did. Empty threats, low standards, and giving everyone a diploma after four years. This brings me to another area in schools that bothers me. Many schools have banned dodge ball from gym class because it could injure students or make them feel bad.  I have also heard about banning any form of activity where students can lose, due to them feeling sad, I don't understand why we have adopted this mindset of "don't offend anyone, everything must be P.C". In the end, when I become a teacher, I can honestly say that students will earn their grades, if you deserve a 40, well, you'll get a 40, not because I want to offend or sadden or discourage the student, but because my classroom will have standards. On a slight side note, this is also a problem in colleges, where in my freshman psychology class, it was scaled so that no matter what, three students at least would get an A.........why?
As a disclaimer, this is obviously all my opinion and I beg of anyone reading this to agree/disagree with me, I'd love to have a discussion about this!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-sigman/when-everyone-gets-a-trop_b_1431319.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ann-he/grade-inflation-killing-i_b_1392527.html

Teaching strategies. "Fun edition!"

During last week's class, we discussed understanding by design as well as using different strategies as structures for learning, for example, the square game. The square game was a simple way of demonstrating many important techniques. Team work, roles, and understanding instructions we're all covered during the class, but I believe the hidden meaning behind the square game was the most interesting. We learned that through this simple exercise, one could build a framework in a students mind through which many different exercises can be implemented. Forming sentences by giving each student a part of speech and then having them form the sentences together was very interesting to me because it's an activity that would be useful in my field of study. It would allow each student to understand how to use a verb, a noun, adjectives and subject pronouns, etc.. All the while they would work on teamwork skills and playing certain roles in a group.

The other topic covered, although more in a secondary fashion, was the topic of "fun". I found it interesting that the word "fun" had an odd meaning in class, "I thought classes weren't supposed to be fun?!" I heard a couple times from Professor Horwitz, clearly poking at our opinions of fun and it's place in a class. Personally, I don't see why a teacher wouldn't want a class to be fun. Anything g that's fun is going to be have a good reception, as well as more interest, thus, more attention is paid and more learning happens. A fun project will inspire students to work harder, whereas a dull assignment will likely cause students to loathe the assignment and do anything to get it over with. Throughout this semester my essential question has been forming, and is currently, "how do I make a  class where my students are MOTIVATED to learn". I believe motivation and fun can go hand in hand, especially since foreign language is not as required as math and science, where motivation can come from necessity and not from interest or fun. Foreign languages need to be fun, motivational and interesting because if they aren't, students will simply stop taking them after the required one or
two years. Thankfully, I believe a foreign language is the easiest course in which to have fun.

http://funforspanishteachers.blogspot.com/2012/08/17-fun-games-to-play-in-spanish-class_15.html?m=1

Why I want to be a Teacher. "Portuguese Edition"

Porque é que quero ser professor? Bem, isso é uma questão que tem uma resposta fácil. Para mim, desde a escola secundária, tenho querido influenciar as futuras gerações, mas isso é apenas uma parte da minha resposta. Talvez seja um pouco egoista, mas quero ter um emprego que gostarei, que vou disfrutar. Eu sei que não se pode ter tudo, e não desejo ter tudo, mas também acho que com muito esforço, é possível ter muito, e uma coisa que sem dúvida quero ter, é um bom emprego. Desde iniciei os meus estudos portugueses, sabia que era a minha paixão. A gramática, a estrutura linguística, tudo, adorava. É excitante saber que um dia terei a oportunidade de trabalhar com línguas estrangeiras, de trabalhar com estudantes jóvens. É excitante saber que um dia eu vou trabalhar como professor.
http://www.alleducationschools.com/education-careers/article/teaching-career-perks
"Please use translator on the right side of the page to translate to English. Select any other foreign language then choose English and it'll work. If anything sounds funny, it's because translators are not perfect...Thanks!"

 

Chapter 5 and making connections

After reading chapter 5, I started to think about a personal experience I had in High School. In chapter 5 I read about Brainstorming strategies, and I remember how my 12th grade English teacher would approach every reading assignment. Right before we would start any new book, he would have us speak out loud and just give out basic ideas of what we thought the book was about by looking at the picture on the front cover, the title, the author, the size of the book, anything we wanted. After this he would tell us a basic summary of what the book was about, confirming whether or not we were right. Every time we read the book for homework, the next day we would come in and talk about what we read, what we liked, didn't like and what we thought was going to happen next. This way, we were constantly making connections with the reading, and getting involved with it. At the end of the unit, we recapped on everything that we had read, talked about what we liked, didn't like, and then we had a book report. I really enjoyed this style of teaching because, as was discussed in one of our very first SED 407 classes, we made many connections and didn't forget the book. It made it interesting and I looked forward to talking about it every day. Making these connections to everything that we teach is crucial, no lesson should be half-baked, no matter what it is, if it's important enough to be taught, it's important enough to be taught well.

Blooming Onion

During the last few weeks, after a number of visits to School C, I feel like I've been seeing layers peeled back week after week. The first visit was rather calm and, not bland but.....safe? Unassuming? Anyways, every week since I've been seeing new things that I didn't notice on the first day. I feel like there are more students in the hall every week, more interactions, more things being revealed. Last week, I was stared down on the bus by students sitting on the sidewalk, we've had to jostle by crowds in the halls, also last week I was scheduled to go into a special education classroom, but there was some kind of commotion going on between a student and the teacher, so we didn't go in. On the first day, the hall was empty, there were no students outside, nothing but a clean school, and now, I'm starting to see more, and it's really interesting. I don't mind being stared down by students or being surrounded by crowds of students yelling in Spanish to each other, I find this all interesting and exciting. I have never quite had a class like this before... It makes me wonder what am I going to see next week, or over the next couple months. Another thing that I've seen develop is the interactions between the Principal and the students. On the first day, we didn't have a chance to see this, but now, walking through the halls with him, I see him shaking hands with students, while he's telling them to get to class, which is interesting because he's obviously respected and liked, but at the same time, authoritative and commanding, he does his job well. I will try to keep updating new things that I see during our experience here.  

Toward a Balanced Diet of Reading: Hard vs. Easy

While reading chapter 4 of Subjects Matter, I came across the "Hard vs. Easy" portion of the chapter. This peaked my interest because it's such a subjective thing, hard and easy. What is easy for me may be impossible for others, for instance, I can easily explain the difference between indicative and subjunctive moods, but others may not, in the same was that I can't do Shakespeare, but English majors could do it in their sleep. In this part of the chapter, the concept of students needing to read text that they understand is mentioned, and this for me was obvious, but then I realized that it doesn't always happen. Students with reading disabilities for example are sometimes given the same text as the other students, at which point they may sit there and stare at the text without even trying because it's too hard. It's understandable that teachers may not think that a student can learn from a very basic text, but once again the chapter explains this, it says that in order to get good at reading, sometimes a student has to read a lot of easy text to build up their skills. This reminded me of weightlifting, you can't go into a gym and start with 50 pound weights. You usually start with 10, then 15, then 20, and so on and so forth, so why isn't this method utilized in High School? This is one of the reasons that I enjoy reading this book, because it gives us obvious yet not so obvious information and advice. The link below leads to a website describing strategies for helping students with learning disabilities. The other link is a cool chart that I couldn't use as a picture but that shows when certain reading objectives are explored in schools.
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/33084/
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/testing/sol/standards_docs/english/2010/progression_charts/reading_skills_by_grade.pdf