After a three-day quest to download iTunes without paying, I have finally achieved the goal of installing this multimedia extravaganza on my computer. It took a call to Myrtle Beach where my sister is vacationing to get everything right, but the mission was accomplished. My skepticism of such a program quickly turned to elation as I found that by searching for songs, I could find them and play them instantly. Disappointment took over, however, when I realized only the first thirty seconds of the song plays for me- they want me to pay for Bon Jovi, and that stuff is old enough to be public domain music. As I reached across my desk for the remote control to turn on my trusty Black Crowes album, I finally made it to the podcasts search page without further incident. Unsure of how to find a good podcast without downloading half of them, I managed to figure out the right-click for information technique and I began my search. Unfortunately, this didn’t work on all of the podcasts, and none of the ones with a description sounded particularly relevant to me.
So I decided to try to use the browse feature. But after clicking on the podcasts category, then the education category, then on K-12, nothing happened. I tried right clicking, double clicking, and clicking just about every button on the page, but to no avail. The promised list of podcasts did not appear at the bottom of the page. Frustration turned to paranoid fear as I looked at the list at the side of the page, which was titled “Shared Music.” In about half of the names of this shared music was included the name of my dorm or the dorm it is connected to. If this thing is listing music being shared in my residence hall, does it know where I live? Trying not to panic, I made it back to square one and tried starting over again, but with similar luck. Something is strangely wrong in the land of iTunes, starting with the fact that the value of listening to “You Give Love a Bad Name” is still a dollar.
After visiting Meadow Valley Middle School* for another tutoring session, I am still thinking about everything that happened during about the hour and a half I was at the school. I saw two girls get into a screaming match in the hallway, one student get in trouble for pretending to snort cocaine, and I was lied to by another student in the hallway who said he was not supposed to be in Ms. Smith’s* classroom at the time when he really was. I also had the door held open for me, saw students helping the secretaries in the office, had a student plead with me to come to school on the day of her birthday, and saw students working diligently on their math problems during class. Yet, I realize that when I got home and talked to my friends, I told them all of the stories about bad things that happened at Meadow Valley Middle School that day- those were the things foremost in my mind after leaving the school. Why was this the case? Why was I thinking about the negatives I had observed instead of the potential for improvement I had seen?
One possible answer could, of course, just be the influence of my own experiences. I am not used to the atmosphere and everyday problems that can occur at an urban middle school, and so I think that some of these problems just stuck out in my mind because they were not a part of what I think about happening in a middle school. Of course, I’ve heard a million different excuses for not being in class, but some of the other things that happened, such as having a student pretend to use drugs, are not things I am used to seeing.
Another possible reason I was dwelling on the negatives is also related to my experiences, not as a student but as an educator. I am not yet experienced at all in dealing with discipline problems, and I was actually the only non-student present when the fight between the two girls broke out in the hallway. However, I quickly became a student again as I learned what would and would not dissolve the confrontation. Yelling at the student from Ms. Smith’s third hour who was involved in the confrontation and telling her to get back into the classroom was definitely not effective- the presence of a well-recognized secretary with authority was. I think that I was stuck thinking about this because I knew that I felt really incompetent in dealing with the situation.
A third possible reason for assessing what I observed as a “bad day at school” could be that, without effort, all a teacher will see are the bad things that happen. Good behavior can go unnoticed much more easily than bad behavior that disrupts instruction or activities. Recognizing the positive things students do should be more of a part of the day than discipline, which is where classroom management comes in- even if it was a “bad day,” so to speak, there is no such thing as a day when nothing constructive or positive happened. My reason for discussing my own focus on negatives is because I want to think about what my outlook as a teacher will be. While I know I will need to think about the negative events that happen in school in order to understand why they happened, I should focus even more energy on the positives and why those good things are going on. This will help with recognizing the potential of the students in my classroom, which I would never be able to if I only thought about their problems and ignored their strong points and accomplishments.
*These names have been changed.
During my fourth tutoring session at Meadow Valley Middle School*, I once again had the chance to do one-on-one work with Lynn*, a sixth-grade student in a special education math class. I made one quick observation of my own actions at the beginning of our time together while we were still in the classroom. The teacher was asking the students to settle down and begin doing the problems on the board, and Lynn leaned over to talk to me while Ms. Smith* was still talking. I put my finger to my lips to signal that she needed to be quiet, but I also nodded to acknowledge what she said at the same time. This was probably not a good idea, as I was sending her mixed messages about what she should do. On the one hand, I was telling Lynn to be quiet, but on the other hand I was telling her I heard and understood what she said, which is reinforcement for talking. I think I should change how I deal with this in the future as I feel I was telling her two different things at the same time.
The event I observed that I would like to focus on, however, occurred in the hallway as I waited for Ms. Smith to open her classroom. I observed two girls, one African-American and one Caucasian, standing by a drinking fountain and talking to people who passed by. At one point in time, the Caucasian girl yelled to someone else in the hallway, “You’d better not be calling me white!” From my perspective, this was a very interesting threat, as the student did indeed appear to be white. Of course, I could have been wrong about her ethnicity, but if I was right I am left with a question about what I observed. Why did the girl wish to be perceived as having a different ethnic background?
From the perspective of a student at Meadow Valley Middle School, I think there may have been several reasons. The first has to do with the same reason that middle school students everywhere speak, dress, and act in certain ways- social acceptance. Perhaps there is something about her situation, her group of friends, or who she wants to be friends with that makes her feel it would be easier to fit in if she was African-American.
Another reason could have been the student’s need for self-acceptance. When students at middle school ages don’t feel good about themselves for whatever reason, I don’t think it is uncommon for them to try to deal with it by doing something that will cover up that unease. For this young lady, feeling good about herself might have been accomplished by asserting a certain identity, different from the identity she has had previously. This reason is probably related to the first, as a feeling of confidence might also make it easier to gain social acceptance.
Of course, there could be all manner of cultural reasons that this student, if she was truly doing so, feels the need to identify with a different ethnic group. She may have been adopted by an African-American family and so feels that she identifies with their ethnic background. Perhaps she lives in a neighborhood where the majority of the population is African- American and so feels a cultural connection through the culture of the environment she grew up in. As I stated before, it is totally possible I am wrong about her ethnicity, but even if I was this has been something interesting to think about in terms of the perspective of a middle school student.
*These names have been changed.
My third tutoring experience at Meadow Valley Middle School* was very interesting, and involved switching classrooms with my student and two substitute teachers. I started out with Lynn* in her regular math classroom, where there was the first substitute teacher of the day, Mr. N.* A conflict erupted almost immediately when Mr. N. told the students they were all going to a different room together. The students practically exploded, and everyone was yelling at the substitute teacher because they knew that their usual routine was different than the instructions he had been given. The efforts of Mr. N. to explain to them that he had been given different instructions only resulted in louder protests. Later, I saw the same thing happen with a different group of students when I followed Lynn to the classroom where she participates in group activities led by eighth grade students. The substitute teacher in that room could not figure out how to work the video that was supposed to be shown, and the sixth grade students proceeded to ignore the older students and yell instructions at the substitute.
After observing this, I would like to focus on why the presence of substitute teachers seemed to create such chaos. The first answer may have been because of the change in routine for the students. I’ll use Lynn as an example- she seems very set on her routine in school, and often tells me which classes she is going to for the day and even what she is having for lunch. If the school routine really means something, such as a sense of stability for some students, it could be upsetting when the routine is disrupted.
The second reason could have been because of the mutual frustration of both students and teachers. When a substitute is visibly frustrated because of poor instructions or planning, their already precarious hold on control of a classroom can be quickly destroyed, especially if the students are already frustrated with what they perceive as a lack of competence on the part of the teacher. Sitting in the middle of the group of sixth graders, this seemed to be the source of their frustration, along with the fact that they did not want to miss any of the video being shown. When the teacher lets this attitude affect them and gets frustrated with the students, it makes the situation worse as they feed off of each other.
A third answer could be the general attitude of the students that the presence of the substitute equals a chance to goof around. During the time in the second classroom, I was actually invited by the students to participate in one of their activities about bullying. I had forgotten what it was like to stand up in front of the whole class and participate in a small skit, and the general feeling I got from standing there was one of complete apathy as to the presence of the substitute. The opportunity costs of socializing and losing focus seemed so diminished that most of the students were not even paying attention to the skits. Of course, a combination of these reasons is probable for the behavior of the students, the frustration of the substitute teachers, and the ensuing chaos.
A few weeks ago, I also read the article mentioned in Anna’s blog about a small school in New York City that has Human Rights as its emphasis. Although I did not comment on the article at the time, I find Anna’s insights on the structure of the schools very interesting. It is possible that there may be some sort of liberal bias in the instruction, and Anna has some good ideas about how a slight bias may not be such a horrible thing. In addition, I would hope that if the school really is concerned about human rights, they would be focusing on the historical, political, economic, and social factors that create injustice and not playing a partisan blame-game. This seems like the best way to actually achieve their objective of helping students learn how to think instead of telling them what to think. In my opinion, every school should be including discussions about current human rights issues in their curriculum time anyway, even if they are not as involved as School of Human Rights in integrating these topics with all academic subjects. All students need the opportunity to think about systems of power, justice, and equality, as these forces affect the world that everyone lives in.
To take the discussion further, I noticed that the article included the mission of the school, which is to “produce socially engaged young adults committed to equity, dignity and social consciousness.” This differs a great deal from the goals posted in Meadow Valley Middle School*, the urban middle school where I tutor. I cannot remember the exact wording, but their goals are to increase student proficiency in reading and literacy skills, as well as having their students adhere to a citywide code of conduct. These represent two very different ideas about how students should learn about various topics and, to a certain extent, what the function of a middle or high school is. The School of Human Rights uses one theme to tie many topics together, and in this way provide students with “traditional” classroom knowledge (math, reading, etc.) as well as a set of tools with which to consider issues of social inequality. The goals of Meadow Valley Middle School are also aimed at giving students the tools they need to live in the world, but, like most schools, fostering recognition of injustice is not a primary goal. While I am not going to jump to any conclusions about which school may be “better” in some way, I definitely think that places like the School of Human Rights have the potential to do amazing things for their students through using a unique approach to education. These types of schools would not work everywhere, but as Anna suggested, the students who do participate have more opportunities to explore how subject matter relates to their experiences and lives, which is always a positive thing.
Thinking about education at the levels discussed in this article is something completely new in my own schema about what it means to be an educator. Since there was a lot of information covered and most of it is new to me, I would like to approach the material on educational philosophies by arguing which elements of each I feel to be most relevant to education today. First of all, however, there is one element of many of the philosophies and theories which I do not agree with at all, and that is the practice of treating the literary “classics” of Western writers as the basis for education and how we should be living our lives. While I see no problem with using these texts as studies in literature and history and discussing how they have affected our society, telling students that they should model how we think and act seems like cultural domination at its most obvious. That being said, I also think that I would probably wind up incorporating elements from several of the philosophies into my view of what educations should accomplish. To begin with Idealist philosophy, I can see that the Socratic method may be helpful in certain situations for scaffolding the ability of students to form ideas about topics and to go through the questioning process themselves. Aside from this single practice, however, I do not think that I currently embrace the more general viewpoint of education as being the medium through which ideas surface from a type of collective subconscious.
I have problems with the realist view, which seems to treat schools as places where academic subjects will be drilled into students and mastery of subject content is the main goal of the academic process. I embrace a view that includes some problem solving or decision-making, not pure memorization, which is more consistent with pragmatism. Learning from experience and changing curriculum and instructional methods with the changing times seems like it would better equip students to deal with a changing world. The focus on interdisciplinary education is another positive aspect that I think comes out of the pragmatist view. However, the scientific method is promoted as the sole problem solving mechanism, which might clash with some students’ cultures.
The parts of these philosophies that it is hardest to wrap my mind around are those that deal with the way philosophies shape values. The abstract nature of the subject, and the knowledge that the values of my students come from such a variety of experiences, makes a discussion of values derived from philosophy hard to apply when thinking about a classroom setting. This is why existentialism is harder for me to understand, since the philosophy in general is based so much on forming one’s own values. After some reflection, it seems to me that the goals of an existentialist classroom environment would certainly create some problems in schools, especially when it comes to that ever-looming threat of school assessment through standardized testing. While the concept of letting students explore topics freely and without any type of curriculum structure at all may be difficult, I think the idea of the teacher “creating an awareness in each student that he or she is ultimately responsible for his or her own education and self-definition” is interesting. When I think about it, students really are, to a certain extent, responsible for their own education in that they decide how to do assignments, what to include in projects, how to participate in discussions, and ultimately how they decide to use new information in their lives. My point to all of this is, basically, I find it hard to embrace the ideas of one philosophy in particular, but it seems like each one results in some practice that I think may be applicable to the classroom.
Listen up, teachers of every level! I found this article at the Boston.com news site, and after reading it I think it’s about time to write about sex on this blog. The article describes the actions of Rhode Island education officials who have banned a certain abstinence-only program from being used in public schools because it includes stereotypes of both genders and requires a health test be taken that violated student privacy. After reading about the content of the program, which included descriptions of women as “caring” and men as “strong” and “courageous,” I silently applauded the people who noticed that something was wrong with the situation, then immediately fell to thinking about how sex education works in this country. Each year, more and more funding is allotted by the federal government for abstinence-only programs to be used in public schools. Besides the obvious problems with programs such as those mentioned in the article, I think the abstinence-only approach has two major flaws. First, it ignores the fact that by the time the information reaches students, a large percentage of them are already sexually active. Talking to students about not having sex when they are already sexually active is not going to do much to teach them about their health and safety. These people need to know how to communicate with their partner(s), use contraceptives and condoms, and feel comfortable with themselves, not be told that what they’re doing is wrong.
The second big problem that I have with the abstinence-only approach is that it often times uses scare tactics to convince students that sex will only give them trouble. In school, I was told stories about people with AIDS, girls who should have gone to college but then got pregnant, and I was actually shown pictures of people’s genitals with sexually transmitted infections, which was enough to make some students ill. What was the message we got? Oh yeah, if you have sex before you get married, this will happen to you! The emphasis was not on being responsible to avoid these situations, it was on gearing students towards thinking that there is nothing good about sex at all and they should just not do it, period. Not that these points shouldn’t be brought up- indeed, any comprehensive sex education program should talk about what you should be careful to avoid. However, there are also positives to having sex and it should not be portrayed as inherently bad, immoral, or undesirable. In fact, I was present for a speech given during the fall semester by a woman who did extensive research about sex education in some European countries, and I think we could learn a few lessons from their approach. Sex education starts early in middle school and consistently gives students accurate information about anatomy, the positives and negatives of sex, different kinds of sexual acts, communication about sex, contraceptives, emotions, and several other related topics. The result? Lower teen pregnancy rates and STI rates than in the Unites States. Much lower. So when I hear the old tired argument that talking to students about sex will make them start mating like crazy, all I have to do is think about what a difference accurate sex education has made for the lives of so many people.
I think we should face it- there is absolutely no way we are going to convince the 20,219,890 15-19 year old people in the United States (taken from the 2000 census) that they should not have sex. As teachers, this issue will directly affect us because we may be asked to teach or support our school’s sex education philosophy, and as teachers we also may have students who come to us with concerns about sex or pregnancy. Sex is a real issue for teens, and I think treating it like it doesn’t happen is no way to help those who have questions. There is always one argument, of course, that schools should not be involved in teaching children about sex at all because that kind of information should be given by the parent. My response to this would be, if it is really that much of an issue, parents could have the option to pull their students out of classrooms during sex education. The other argument I have (which I would not say in front of parents) is that the average person doesn’t know as much about issues surrounding sex as someone trained to provide information about sex, and teenaged students these days deserve all of the accurate information they can get. Of course, when parents talk to their children about sex it helps immensely, especially if the parents are open about the topic. All I want to point out is that they may not have answers to all of the questions their child has. Overall, I really think that we need to convey a message about responsible decision-making instead of telling teens what decision they should make.
After reading the original article and Lauren’s response, I would have to agree with her opinion and say that I do not think that adding more days onto a school year is necessarily beneficial to students or teachers. The rationale behind the plan is to expand the hours students and teachers spend together as well as provide more professional development and planning time. Lauren makes a good point when referencing Weinstein’s research that shows that more days will not equal more time actually spent engaging in worthwhile learning. Even if teachers and students are together in the classroom for more hours, it will not help the school reach their goals if time is not already being used efficiently. In addition, I am glad that she commented on the role of teachers in these changes. The teachers are not the ones trying to implement the longer school year, but it seems like they should have some say in whether or not they think additional days are necessary, what the extra time would be used for, and, if it comes to pass, and what kind of professional development would take place in the extra time allotted, as well as having time to plan engaging activities as Lauren suggested.
A statement made by a student in the article brings up another good point about the effects of a school year that lasts almost a month longer than usual. The student notes that a longer school year would interfere with summer programs that he attends- while those who plan these types of changes may not be taking it into consideration, there are a lot of important learning experiences that happen outside of the classroom, and students should have the ability to take advantage of those opportunities. Students may go to music or sports camps and learn about cooperation and teamwork, to service camps to help the community, or to leadership, international, or countless other programs that would benefit them in some way during the summer more than three or four additional weeks in school.
Lauren brought up one more issue in the article which I thought was very important as well, and this is the fact that students actually need sufficient time away from school to rest and pursue their own interests. I know from experience that a full load of homework plus a couple of extracurricular activities used to leave me exhausted and in bad need of a break from the nonstop action of the school year. While there is nothing wrong with working hard and it paid off for me personally, a longer school year would have made my attitude towards school a lot more negative, especially if I lost an entire month of summer. I definitely think that a substantial summer break serves a purpose for students of all ages, whether they are in third grade and spending time playing baseball or eleventh grade and spending time visiting colleges.
Before reading Linda M. McNeil’s writing on the relationship between knowledge control and classroom control, I never would have thought that the two classroom issues could be so interrelated. However, I think she makes a very good argument for the substitution of more challenging course content with simpler lessons as means of keeping order in the classroom. Within her writing about defensive teaching, I think that some of the central issues of the article are the effects of defensive teaching on the ability of the students to get anything meaningful out of their time at school. Most obviously, students will not be challenged to think in different ways if they are not doing projects or writing papers that require the integration of knowledge from the classroom with creative thinking. Another problem is the separation between the personal knowledge of the student and the content of material presented in class. If students never have the opportunity to openly question course content with information or experiences of their own, not only will they learn not to trust information presented at school as McNeil suggests, but they will also lack the opportunity to form connections between what they already know and the new information being presented. When this type of meaningful learning cannot take place and is actually subtly discouraged, the students will probably not remember anything they were taught past the time they need to repeat it on a test.
Finally, if teachers feel the need to withhold information (either through fragmentation, omission, mystification, or simplification), students will not be presented with the foundation on which to build a further understanding of the course topics in the future. Of course, I am not blaming any one person, whether student, teacher, or administrator for the practice of defensive teaching; rather, I agree with McNeil’s assessment that there are a number of forces that have shaped the way teaching is done, including cultural/ historical influences, the basic need to keep order in classrooms, and the pressure of standardized testing. My point is that, regardless of how it came about, defensive teaching is not a strategy that is conducive to a meaningful classroom experience.
A secondary issue brought up in McNeil’s writing is the incidence of teacher burnout. From her research, it seems that many teachers become tired of dealing with unruly students, goals for standardized test scores, meetings about discipline, and complaints from students about projects or difficult assignments. The reason I want to briefly discuss this is because burnout, or simply not being about to put up with so many pressures any more, is something that I think we all may have to face at some point in time while we are teaching. While some of the teachers interviewed for this article chose the defensive teaching strategy as a way to deal with these pressures, I wanted to try to brainstorm some alternate ways I might deal with burnout when I am teaching. The first thing I might try to do is look to my closest resources, my fellow teachers, and ask if they have found any successful strategies for classroom management. I might also try to adjust my classroom management practices slightly, possibly by looking to the suggestions made by Weinstein in our last reading. I may also have to think about how I am scaffolding the work of the students because I may need to give more support to the students. If they are feeling completely lost and become disengaged from the topic, that would cause more discipline problems and more pressure.
As future educators, we all know that it is important to encourage understanding and acceptance of all people in our classrooms. We also know, as students who all went through school, that not everyone around us was as accepting of their fellow students as our teachers probably hoped. This CNN.com article caught my eye because it captures a situation from the opposite direction, when a teacher is perceived as “different” from an accepted norm and draws the criticism of others in the education community. A New Jersey elementary school teacher formerly known as Mr. McBeth underwent a sex change operation and was currently rehired as a substitute teacher by the school district under the new name Lily McBeth. Parents are voicing their criticism of this decision, stating that the presence of a female teacher who still has male characteristics will be psychologically stressful and confusing for young students, and for this reason transgender teachers should not be allowed in schools.
When I read this article, the first thing that I wanted to think about was where anti-transgender attitudes come from. I think that a reasonable explanation may be that those ideas come from the anti-gay attitudes that have been around for a long time, even though transgender individuals are not necessarily homosexuals. The negative perception of homosexuality as unnatural and possibly even dangerous seems to have been transferred by some into similar attitudes about transgender people; just two weeks ago, I read another article about parents protesting the hiring of a gay principal, and the same kinds of arguments were made about the effects of a gay principal on the students.
So, the next question is, how would I address the concerns of these parents if I were a teacher at the elementary school where Miss McBeth will be teaching? In order to support the decision of the school board, I would have to respond to the parents who think that their children are being “put into a petri dish” by having a transgender person as a teacher. I would probably be upset that people are treating another human being as if they are some kind of creature being put into the classroom as an experiment on the students, so I would have to think clearly and tell the parents that, while the physical characteristics of a person who is female may appear more masculine to the observer, this is in no way a problem because there are a lot of people whose appearance does not match up with our gender stereotypes of how they should look, regardless of whether or not they are transgender. Children, as they grow older, will probably encounter more and more people who do not fit into our socialized ideas of gender, so it should not be an issue.
The comment that I personally have the biggest problem with is the comment about children being psychologically threatened by Miss McBeth’s presence as a female instead of a male. While it may be confusing for elementary school students, and they may certainly have a lot of questions, I don’t think that psychological damage could possibly result from being taught by Miss McBeth. The whole idea is fueled by the irrational fear that children will somehow become “confused” about their gender identity and/or sexual orientation by interacting with someone who has undergone a change in sex. These phobias seem so absurd to me that, at the moment, I am not sure how I would respond to a parent who said something like this to me. All I know is that I would try to calmly assure them that the school would not take action that would harm their child, but I know it would be one of those situations that I would have very strong feelings about because I believe in equality of opportunity for everyone, and I do not think that there is anything harmful about anyone’s sexual orientation, gender identification, or change in sex.
