The Blue Blog

Here is a link to the podcast of my presentation, which is based on the final paper (also posted on this blog) for TE 302. My feed address is:
http://katie-lowden.edublogs.org/feed/

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In my position as a junior in a teacher education program, I feel that I still have a long way to go in the process of defining myself as an educator.  Through this blog and the writings posted within it, I have made some of my earliest attempts to begin this process by exploring a [...]

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I would like to respond to Debbie’s writing concerning an article from Cnn.com, which discusses the high dropout rates in American public high schools.  Debbie writes that at times, it seems that politicians are only worried about this problem because they would be heroes if they come up with a solution, and school administrators sometimes [...]

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I think that, in his article about conflicting goals in our educational system, David Labaree does a good job in describing the historical and social forces that are pushing and pulling at our school systems.  Going on personal experience, I think that I have seen democratic equality and social efficiency play a part in what [...]

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This article from the Boston.com Education News covers a story that is local in its content but national in the implications and topic that has been causing debate for some time- affirmative action.  The reason the article was written was to point out that the amount of minority students at Boston Latin, an elite public [...]

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This week I returned to Meadow Valley Middle School* for the sixth time, and once again I worked one-on-one with sixth-grade student Lynn* in Ms. Smith’s* third hour math class.  Ms. Smith asked us to work on some social studies work from the previous class that Lynn had not gotten anything done on.  The assignment [...]

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My second attempt to use iTunes was moderately more successful than the first.  Navigating this extensive program finally became possible when I searched for all podcasts listed under education, then selected one that sounded relevant.  It turned out to be a podcast about Internet security, which was wasn’t what I thought I had selected based [...]

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I have a few things to say in response to Amy Marsh’s comments on the Burbules and Berk reading about critical thinking and critical pedagogy.  I, too, see critical thinking as a method that could have very positive results for students as they learn how to consider things from different perspectives and collect evidence to [...]

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I am glad that Amy Bastarache tackled the issue of teacher protests in her response to an article from Cnn.  I have also been reading about these kinds of events in the news, and struggling with the seeming conflict of interest between showing displeasure for my working conditions or pay and sacrificing a day of [...]

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The first thing that struck me as interesting about the work of Nicholas Burbules and Rupert Burk on critical thinking and critical pedagogy is that I never had a teacher at the elementary or secondary school level who practiced critical pedagogy.  Perhaps this is not an uncommon experience, but I thought it interesting because the [...]

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