Voices

I was impressed with how thorough this overview of educational philosophies was. It was organized in a way that made sense--it could have been grouped by most common attributes or by categories like "existentialism" and "pragmatism" but the choice to make it a timeline was a good one, I think. That way, not only do we get to see what the prevailing educational ideas of a certain time were, but we can see how they grow and change over the centuries. I was also interested to see some of the teachers on this list--Jesus and Native Americans particularly. I didn't apply any of their teaching strategies to my own philosophy, but I was interested to read about their values from an educational perspective. It seems the authors spent some time rooting around through passages in the bible and researching Native American social structure in order to write a pretty comprehensive and concise summary of their educational beliefs. It made the summaries of the other great thinkers seem more informed, as well.

As for my personal favorites, I think that in order of their greatest help to my personal philosophy, it would have to be Piaget, Counts, Froebel, and Aquinas.

I liked Piaget's pragmatic approach to student learning, and his belief that content of a higher level of thinking should be introduced when the student is intellectually mature enough to get the most from it. His emphasis on cooperation also falls in line with my own ideas, though i don't think it is quite as essential to the "real exchange of thought and discussion" as he might.

Counts' idealization of the teaching profession is an important idea. I liked how earnest he is in his belief that teaching has the most direct effect on mankind. As teachers we are responsible for educating future generations, who will be responsible for making the decisions that shape future societies. I think that this can be considered the most important profession of all.

Froebel is like me in that he rejects the idea of a child being able to be "shaped or bent" or starting off with a blank slate. His introduction of early childhood teaching tools and activities stem from a belief that every child has their own unique talent, something that I agree with. the quote "In play a child reveals his own original power" is one that I can really get behind. It emphasizes my belief that students all have unique qualities, but they must exercise them in order to bring them to the surface.

Aquinas' ideas on character development made an impression on me, especially the importance he places on giving students the opportunities to make good choices. I believe that each student has the "potential for knowledge" of Aquinas' vision, but that it must come from their interactions within their lives. I also appreciated the idea that if one "accustoms" students to being virtuous, they will remain virtuous throughout their lives. I think this idea is a little lofty and foolishly optimistic, but it is a hopeful idea nonetheless. Being a good role model to your students would be a good way to work this into your classroom without acting as though you know what it takes to be virtuous (hint: no one does.) There are some glimpses of the idealistic "teacher knows the truth" attitude in Aquinas' philosophies, however, and I am not sure I agree with everything he stands for.

Personal Philosophy Reflection

Classroom Organization
I'm not sure how much say I will have in the physical placement of things in my class, but I really don't think it matters much beyond moving the desks into either groups or a circle, depending on the activity. I find rows of seats to be intimidating, and I have a gut feeling that, while it might help keep students from peering over at their friends' work without being seen, it doesn't keep them any more motivated or engaged. Other than that, I think I will position my personal work space somewhere in one of the corners of the classroom so that I can counsel students during class time without making them sit or stand up in everyone's plain view.

Motivation
This is a tough area for every teacher. For the most part, I feel as though every rationale I've made up on all of my lesson plans just isn't good enough. I feel as though I'm trying to arrive at an elusive "right" answer that I can use as a retort to every rationale prompt, but it is the same "right" answer that has plagued the pedagogies of countless teachers and educational philosophers throughout history. What keeps a student motivated? Personally, I think that all examples depend on the student's interest in the subject. This is not always easy to achieve, but if you can help a student not just relate to the subject, but to gain an active personal interest in it, you will hold their attention for as long as you can keep feeding them more information about it.

Discipline
The punishment should fit the crime, and there are always exceptions to rules. A teacher's judgment can be the most prominent thing that a student experiences, and if it is handled the wrong way, the teacher will be made an immediate enemy of that student, undoing however many weeks or months of respect has been gained. I think that the administration's disciplinary actions should be utilized as a last resort, when something that can't be resolved at the moment or in class needs further attention. Then again, what do I know? My ideas on this are guaranteed to change after I student teach with my at-risk students.

Assessment
Formative and Summative assessment are great tools in theory, but I have a feeling that they don't gauge the learning of the class all that well. Maybe with an 80% success rate, 90% if your assessment is good. By good, I don't necessarily mean thorough, but intuitive. How can you tell that your students have been absorbing all of that stuff you made up for the last four weeks? Will a multiple choice test tell you, or just make it so that you can keep some numbers in a book of your students' names? I think that any assessment that gauges your students on both how many skills they have retained and to what extent they can apply those skills is good assessment. It's not so easy to create assessment that does all of that, though.

Classroom Climate
I need my students to respect me, but it should be a mutual respect. I want to have a class where discussions are encouraged and frequent, where no student feels as though they will be corrected in a way that insults their ideas or their intelligence. No one should feel outcast or on a different level of ability, and I have to make sure that my demeanor and action plans reflect the kind of atmosphere where a classroom like that can flourish.

Learning Focus
Since I think that knowledge is the most important thing you can gain to enrich your life, I am going to try and make the goal of learning in my classes about practical application. I will have my work cut out for me making rationale statements, but I think that thing is useless which isn't going to enhance my students' understanding of the world that they are going to be thrust into.

Technology Integration
There should be a healthy balance of technology integration in the classroom. If it can't be easily done with typical methods of student creation and planning, then I am all for it. I am not on board with substituting every class activity with a technological equivalent, particularly if the technological avenue requires more work or setup and nets little payoff to the students' learning. For creative projects and blog participation, however, I will be relying heavily on technology.

Teacher and Leadership Style.
As I have said in my Classroom Climate section, I want my class to be a comfortable place for anyone to ask questions without feeling like they are going to be judged or ridiculed for their input. In order to get to this level of trust and respect in my class, I am going to have to work hard to model this attitude. In this case, "work hard" means "pay attention to what I'm doing and saying" since one bad classroom experience or decisive action can outweigh the benefits of five good experiences or actions. In order to best prepare for the mindset I'll have to be in, I will make the professional distance from my students apparent, while still being someone they can feel comfortable coming to for help, academically or otherwise. I want my students to feel valued as people first, then as students.

Bright Futures

It's interesting to see how schools go about reforming themselves. This is a pretty lengthy and detailed fleshing out of the middle school's most problematic practices, and every issue was tackled head-on. I can't begin to imagine how long it took all of the faculty to do the research and compile these guidelines, but it is clear that there was a great deal of thought put into the document. All the same, I think that while the sheer volume of research and planning holds a lot of water, it came across as a little bit romanticized. Knox is pretty much aligning itself eye-to-eye with NCLB's standards. That's not at all a bad thing, of course. NCLB's 12 core standards are very ambitious and they address problem areas that need to be addressed, but aside from the usual 6 steps of "phasing out" in every rationale, I don't think that the school explained exactly how they were going to implement their new standards--of course, if I just overlooked that part, that might be an indication that they need a little bit more attention to the particulars of school-wide application. Also, describing ideal scenarios in every rationale for pages does a good job of painting a mental picture for the aspiring school reform hopeful, but at the end of the day it accomplishes little in the field of practical application.

Educational Issue: Assessment

I liked how much emphasis was put on the issue of standardized testing in this presentation. We often get a chance to become naysayers in our classes, but it was good to see the problem areas spelled out in so many different ways for us. Also, I liked how the focus on standardized tests didn't come solely from a position of negativity--there were enough examples of why the tests could be successful to make the criticism fair and balanced (though of course everyone knows that standardized tests are the devil).

The videos you showed in class were informative, especially the second one, in which the keynote speaker gave some interesting perspectives on his reasons for teaching outside of standardized assessment. The brief sample we saw of that video made me want to watch the rest of it and broaden my knowledge of assessment strategies.

Your strongest point was that the right assessment is the difference between students merely learning the "answer" and not the "process" or content. The points your group made to support the importance of students learning more than simple, concrete answers were clearly outlined and well presented. Good work!

Educational Issue: Technology Integration

You guys did an awesome job bringing all of these new resources to our attention--and in such an efficient way! Anyone else might have just plowed through all of the links in front of the whole class, but I think that your decision to split us up and show us links in groups was a great strategy. Your presentation was comprehensive and fun and you did a great job getting everyone's attention the whole time. I don't think Grace would have let you guys use almost the whole class for your presentation if it wasn't going extremely well, so you should be proud of yourselves!

Teaching Hope: Empowerment

This chapter read differently than the others--it seems like the authors were able to summarize many of the lessons of the previous chapters with their concerns about their students graduating. I wonder if all 150 teachers had to write 6 testimonies, and then the best from those categories were chosen?

Since I will be teaching at-risk students next semester, I found this section pretty interesting. Though I can assume that most of theses students in the book are at-risk, I don't think I saw it mentioned quite as much as I did in this chapter. These teachers really seem to lay it all on the line. I wonder how much of their all-or-none attitude is present during the scope of an entire year, or if it only seems dramatic because of the tone of the testimonies. If teaching classes lik this is so ridiculously demanding, I think to myself, how can I ever have what it takes to do it myself?

I bet if you come at it with an impossibly optimistic attitude, everything seems to weigh in the balance a lot more (I'm looking at you, entry 149) I don't yet have it in me to believe that every single student I ever teach is going to turn their lives around. Sure, if I am a good teacher they might have the ability to make a change, but if I start worrying that I can't affect their lives 100%, I feel as though I'll be setting myself up for failure.

This whole book really taught me a lot about what the at-risk students in this country are going through, but I think that it was most effective as a helpful collection of examples and counter-examples for the kind of teacher I want to be. I kept this in mind when I read every entry, and I found that I was assessing the teachers and their actions more than the students. Because really, though there were some truly unique students in the testimonies, the majority of them are all the same--or they are at least all in the same boat motivationally and academically. It is the role that the teacher takes on that requires close examination, and I feel that this is where the book is most helpful.

Theories Abstract

Perennialism
This teaching school of thought involves little student attention. Instead, the teacher is the center of the classroom, and it is considered his or her responsibility to imbibe the students with essential information. This theory borrows much from idealism in that it assumes that there are tried and true answers that need to be understood in order for students to be successful.
Essentialism
Every person has a core knowledge that is essential to their survival. Schools are expected to effectively convey these core skills to students so that they may become most productive. Under essentialism, there is less emphasis on underlying truths to information, and more focus on a strong understanding of "basic" skills.
Behaviorism
B.F. Skinner began this movement. True to his belief that an individual's behavior is determined by their environment, Behaviorism focuses on controlling stimuli in the classroom in order to most directly influence student behavior. Because of these areas of focus, Behaviorism is most closely linked to Realism.
Positivism
This educational theory throws out any approach to knowledge that does not rely on observable, measurable fact. Beliefs about the mind, the spirit, and consciousness are not validated, and all existence can be explained by known laws of science.
Progressivism
Developed from pragmatism, Progressivism restates that if an idea works well, it can be considered true, but takes it a step further by proposing that it should be tested for its ability to work. Developed by Dewey, the movement makes use of structured testing procedures like the scientific method to validate ideas, and learns from them by continuing to question those ideas.
Reconstructionism
This is a student-centered movement that views the classroom as a vehicle for social change. The agenda of a Reconstructionist classroom would be to include an awareness of controversial or dire social issues as often as possible, placing emphasis on the students' ability to shape the social status of their community and their world.
Humanism
Humanism believes that there is an innate good in every person, and that education should be concerned with enhancing that good within the individual person. This movement has little to do with group-oriented learning, instead maintaining a steady concern with the growth of the student as an individual. Humanism is related to Existentialism.
Constructivism
Students are encouraged to find their own frame of interest and to learn accordingly. The development of critical thinking takes precedence over memorization of specific facts. Teaching techniques involve a variety of activities which allow students to make their own connections to the answers they derive from the activities.

I find that Constructivism most appealed to me and my teaching strategies. Not only do I agree with the approach to student learning in this movement more than any other, it seemed the most forward-thinking and evenly distributed educational approach. Too many other movements like Behaviorism or Essentialism seem to rely on an absolute instruction method or mode of thought to be practically applied to a classroom without alienating the progress of some students. By contrast, Constructivism seems like the best way to reach out to every student, since it emphasizes the individual growth of every learner. It is also the most accommodating theory for planning lessons based on the interests or learning styles of a group of students. Since there is a clear emphasis placed on varying instruction and classroom activities, there ought to be enough ways of teaching information that every student can satisfactorily develop their own understanding and make their own connections.

A close section was Reconstructivism. I, too, think that the first step to social reform is the education of that society's population--so school would be the most direct way to influence the future. Since I'm not a social studies teacher, I think that I won't have as many opportunities to implement this kind of teaching theory in my class, but I do want to make my students as much a part of their community as possible. Discussion of current events and social issues are the best way of bringing the outside world to them, and since there would be no point in talking about it if I weren't going to try and get them to think of ways of affecting their society, this school of thought seems like it fits my intentions.

Educational Issue: Classroom Management

You guys did a great job with your presentation, and I liked how you gave us a couple of different teaching styles to think about--it sort of fits nicely with our latest work defining the different philosophies. In particular, I thought your explanation of the Laissez-faire style was interesting because you gave so many examples of the kind of teacher who might employ that style. Not only did you help us make comparisons, but you gave a few pros and cons to keep our ideas on the teaching styles fair and balanced. It's nice to talk about teaching styles every now and then, if only to help remind us that there are more styles and methods involved with teaching than learning styles.

I thought that the classroom activity was also fun. Another thing that I've gotten used to is thinking about my teaching career in hypothetical terms, since few of us have had the kind of experiences that will really test our decision making skills. Your activity helped put things in perspective for me, anyway, and any opportunity to get us teachers thinking about what kinds of decisions we will have to make in the future is good exercise.

Chapter 4 Philosophies

Idealism
This philosophy seems like it is in the throes of its use in education, but it might just be that I don't get out that often. This is a very teacher-centered philosophy, one that is most concerned with filling students up with all of the known essential facts that the teacher has. There are underlying absolute truths in the realm of knowledge, and in order for students to be the most productive and model citizens, they must know them front and back. The trick is to see through the imperfect material world and see the wholeness of the true spiritual truths that exist. It seems that this is an older school of thought, and the fact that it is used by so many religiously founded schools might attest to that.

Realism
Ideas are not the ultimate reality, in contrast to idealism. The study of reality and knowledge is implemented by sensory perception and abstraction of the world. In this sense, a scientific approach to information is the main way realists come to their conclusions. Realism applies the Aristotelian idea of forms to grasp the concept of the material world, understanding the characteristics and principles that make it up in order to then classify and group the information.

Pragmatism
This philosophy encourages change, never content to allow there to be unquestionably true information to know. Pragmatists understand their environment through personal experience and observation, then use the information that they have gained as a way to solve problems with their conclusions. Because ideas about our world and our universe are always changing, Pragmatists argue that the Idealist and Realist philosophies are unable to be proven.


Existentialism
This philosophy believes that nothing is absolute, not even change. For this reason, students must be allowed to create their own meaning, since there is no ultimate meaning that one must gain. Since scientific knowledge is limited, the most important kind of knowledge is that which is personal.

Out of these educational philosophies, I found that I identified with the Pragmatists the most. It seemed like most of the other philosophies were extreme in their conservative or liberal leanings, and as someone who likes to stay in the middle, I was looking for a philosophy that didn't put all of its eggs in one basket. What intrigues me about Pragmatism is its attention to the importance of change. By contrast, a philosophy like Idealism puts too much faith in absolutes for me.

Educational Issue: MultiCulturalism

Sorry I wasn't in class to see your presentation! From what I gather it was well done and engaging. I've read your paper, though, and I found it very enlightening and comprehensive. You do a good job of tying together not only racial diversity, but also gender discrimination and sexual orientation.

I think that it is always important to have an extensive knowledge of the history of these cultural issues, and not only the time-relevant information. Your paper bolsters the issues with historical context and then explains how far we've come in integrating the changes with the field of education. Good job!

PBS Documentary: Part 4

This part of the documentary made me think a lot about my early education like an educator. I have spent the majority of my time as an Education major thinking about how I will apply what I've learned in high school to my teaching after certification. There is, however, a lot to be learned from the policies of all our school placements, and if we are able to think about the motives behind them, then we might get a better grasp on whether we should try them in our own classes.

This video had a lot of talk about educational trends, and I think that these seemed to spring up left and right once we entered the technology age. Education was becoming a commodity, and with such a diverse and growing number of students, these trends were quickly becoming the basis for educational reform. A few trends that seemed the most influential in the time period of the episode (and also for present day, and in the future) were Charter Schools, Teacher Empowerment, Merit-based pay, and certification. These trends all seem to come from a student-centered, teacher-friendly area of thought that is built for progress.

Of course, not all of the hundreds of trends that have sprung up since the 80s were zingers, and a few of them have doubtless hindered economic enlightenment in many corners of the country. For instance, Privatization, tenure, Consolidation and Tracking are some trends that I had marked for detrimental issues. These trends all seem very much based on the state of the economy at the time, more geared towards the allotment of pay and funding and less on the benefit of students' gaining knowledge.

The documentary ended on a high note of satisfactory progress in such little time, but there remains--and there always will remain--much work to be done.

Teaching Hope: Rejuvenation

In this section, I found that I had more appreciation for the practical testimonies--those which had what seemed like a more realistic outcome. Of course, I am assuming that all of these teachers are telling their stories in truth and with little embellishment, but I can't help but feel as if there is an underlying tone of exposition in most of the stories. Sometimes after I've read a chapter I feel as if I've read a selection of very short stories from a bunch of teachers who want to be recognized for their story-telling prowess.

The testimonies that sparked all of this metacognition were some of the first entries in the chapter. The teacher who finally got a chance to read her problematic student's journal entry and the teacher who received a negative note from her sub both mentioned issues in their classrooms that I am most likely to face. I feel as though every other teacher has avoided or neglected these problem areas up until this point. For instance, I ended up asking myself: what do I do when I get a bad note from a sub? How can I most effectively punish the kids who were out of line without unjustly judging innocent students? What if I have students who refuse to go to the office when I tell them? What will I do? The teacher who wrote this doesn't offer any suggestions or remedies, but now at least I know that when any of these things happen (and they inevitably will) I will be comforted with the knowledge that it has happened to someone before.

Somewhat outside of my experience and level of expertise is the crippling reality of the sheer amount of work that goes in to cultivating student/teacher relationships. After her problem student shared some extremely personal information with her (which the author tactfully omits) the teacher is not all that surprised to find that the change was not immediate.

I think that a main issue I have with this book is its format. With so many short glimpses of extremely specific examples of teaching experiences, I am having a hard time differentiating between what can be considered absolutely situation-based testimony and that brand of testimony that will teach me something worth carrying into the field. The fact that I have had to read 3/4 of this book before finding some objective teaching advice (however inadvertent) speaks volumes for the effectiveness this text has on my teaching career and educational philosophy as a whole.

"A Nation at Risk" Abstract/Reflection

Nation at Risk expresses concern with America's position in the world of education. Too many schools are far below testing standards, according to nation-wide surveys. The general attitude of the teaching community is one of frustration, paired with a crippling "dimming of personal expectations." The address provides examples for success such as "commitment" "dedication" and "public awareness." The idea that education is the path to greatness for a nation is prevalent throughout the address. The document serves to raise awareness of the issue of America's mediocrity, and it calls the educators, community, and students to make a change in the direction public education is heading. The response article from 25 years later, while criticizing the Nation at Risk address for being too harsh in their condemnation and lenient in their statistical presentation, mostly agrees that the nation is still falling behind, and that, were it not for this address, we might be much farther behind in educational reform than we are now.

Nation at Risk seems to be at once a noble call to arms for America's education system, as well as a gross generalization of and focus on every American school's shortcomings. The address is dripping with that nauseous brand of patriotism, that proverbial stick-in-the-mud national attitude that won't have America being anything other than a perpetual forerunner in every aspect of civilization. While the country has made leaps and bounds in education reform, it seems as though at some point it dropped the ball, and other countries mastered many of our methods and began testing higher. Nation at Risk deserves much more criticism, but it is a close call whether or not its benefits outweigh its frustrating origins. The country would not have been aware that it had fallen by the wayside had it not been for the research that was conducted for the article, and even if its numbers were skewed, the point is moot. The 25 years later article picked up on this issue, and quickly realized that more good than harm was done in this case. America got a wake up call, and the programs and institutions that were founded in order to answer to this address were well worth whatever sort of blind supersession brought it forth.

PBS Documentary Part 1

I wondered why we were watching the episodes of this series out of order, but in the end I don't think it matters much in which order you watch them. Episodes 2 and 3 were a little more chronologically linked, and it seems like we have more to say about those eras because we have more historical knowledge. It seemed like Episode 1 was interesting because it clarified some gray areas that we might have known about in early American education, and dispelled a couple of myths that we might have picked up at some point in our American History classes.

While there was a lot in this episode that was completely new to me, the issue of inequity was something that interested me for its novelty. I had known that schools were used by many towns at once, and that they were typically funded by the community, but it didn't occur to me that certain towns were richer than others, and could therefore afford to offer their students more resources. Jefferson's fight for elementary schools was also news to me, though I'm not sure that the video was very clear about all of his motives. Someone in the video remarked that he wished to "Rake the geniuses from the rubbish," and I can't help but wonder if someone with such a plan should receive much praise.

Horace Mann, on the other hand, seemed to earn his historian-appointed title of "Patron Saint of Education, " considering the leg work (both political and physical) that he invested into schoolhouse equality.

I am a little disappointed that the Anglicization of the Native American population got only about a minute of screen time. There were many issues with inequity and discrimination within the educational system in the early days, but the American-led cultural genocide of Native Americans is the most poignant century-and-a-half-long atrocity in our history, and the primary weapon was white-washing in the newly-instituted education system. I think more people should be made aware of the scale and implications of this event, and if you are going to air a documentary on the history of education, you should take care to lend an equal amount of mention to one societal shortcoming as the other.

Teaching Hope: Disillusionment

I was glad for this chapter, because it shied away for a bit from the intense teacher/student relationships that dominated the previous chapters. It was also a bit more varied in the approaches to the testimonies, and by that I mean it seemed as if the reading seemed to encompass a lot of different issues that could fall under the moniker Disillusionment, rather than a specific theme like child abuse or racism (though there were a few stories that seemed to be linked by the military and teachers who were of middle eastern descent.)

I enjoyed some of these testimonies for their insight. It seems as though Erin Gruwell's horror story was not a one-in-a-million occurrence. I wonder if I will face any attacks on my teaching in my career. Also, the examples of teachers' personal lives, while mostly sounding whiny, brought me back to Earth. It made me think about what it is going to be like having a family with a job that requires you to keep tabs on 120 more children, or what kind of a relationship I will have with my wife after spending all of my energy at work.

I think that this chapter was fairly effective in taking the romanticism and philosophy out of teaching for a moment, if only to help me keep my profession in perspective.

Teaching Hope: Engagement

This chapter had a few characteristics that perplexed me. Of course, let me first say that I'm glad to see that we're moving into that portion of the book where at least a quarter of the testimonies are not heavy with descriptions of children in the midst of despair, death, and broken homes. The interesting things that I saw linking all of these stories together were race and a startling variance in teacher intervention.

Nearly all of the stories had to do with the students in focus trying to overcome racial stereotypes, something that I, as a Mainer and a student who has never been in a school with more than maybe 1% of a minority presence, have a hard time visualizing and identifying with. I understand that these issues exist, and I know the struggle that all of these characters must be going through in the midst of it all, but I feel as though this chapter was full of more those kind of issues that need to be experienced rather than relayed. My attitude on the chapter's effectiveness (i.e. in being a tool for beginning teachers) is that some of the stories are very specific in their situations to be of much help. I ended up asking myself, what can I take away from this? since the very first entry all I've seen is an abundance of ignorance in every community that these teachers seem to be working in.

This sentiment ties in with my other observation, which is that some of the teachers in these stories didn't seem to bring all that much to the table when faced with a pressing issue, a few teachers were spot-on in their reasoning and juggling of life lessons, and then there were those testimonies that made me wonder why in the world some of these people were getting so caught up in the issues of their students. Some examples would be, respectively: The teacher who had a student with defiantly racist views, the teacher whose student was rejected from the school play, and the author of that feverish and obscure retelling of an irresponsible trip to the American/Canadian border crossing.

While I can read these stories and make up my own ideas about why the teachers might be dealing with these issues in the ways they have, I have to keep in mind that I have not had a steady teaching job, nor have I ever gotten a chance to form a serious, trusting relationship with any students. This must be one of those issues that is so hard to judge for someone in my position, since I'm not currently teaching in Appalachia, I don't have any Hispanic students, and I will never ever put myself at risk of incarceration for any of my students. Most of all, I do believe that the issues in the chapter simply defy standard practice and rational explanations, so who am I to second-guess these teachers?

PBS Documentary Part 3

I feel that since I was born at a time when schools have been integrated racially for a few decades, I will never fully understand the extent of segregation in schools from the 60s to the 80s. I know I've learned about it in every history class I've ever taken and it's been mentioned in nearly every education course I've had, but this video gave me some direct information about the unfair treatment that many minority schoolchildren were faced with. I think I was mostly disturbed by hearing the testimonies of proponents of segregation in Virginia and other states who refused to submit to integration--their arguments for maintaining the sorely unequal facilities seemed so grounded in obstinant ignorance. It was interesting to learn that the Johnson administration came up with the allocation of federal funds only to schools that accepted the integration policies. It seems as though not much has changed since that period of American history, since the same kind of "carrot on a stick" approach to school reform is being used in many states today. I guess the quickest way to earn a state's support is to go straight for its treasury.

It was also enlightening to know that I had probably been giving Brown v. Board of Ed. too much credit for socio-academic reform. According to the documentary, the court ruling went largely unnoticed among states whose segregation policies were long-standing. It was not until the aforementioned federal fund ultimatum that states began to adopt any kind of change. Still, it says a lot about the all-white supreme court council that they could have arrived at such a fair and balanced decision on race discrimination in their time.

PBS Documentary Part 2: 1900-1950

One of the most enlightening things that I learned from this video was the cyclical nature of educational philosophy in the United States. It makes me wonder whether or not we are in the midst of a pedagogical sea change today. I was excited to learn of the "Gary plan" and the strides it took to teach students on an individual basis and its revolutionary ideas on giving students well-rounded experiences in school. It saddens me to know that it this plan was beaten down because of child labor accusations. Who knows where this country might be educationally today if the Gary plan was allowed to continue? What sort of education experience might our kids be offered had the plan been able to go through decades of evolution, tackling social issues as they came and taking on more and more students of increasingly diverse backgrounds and interests?

After hearing of the atrocities put in place by the IQ tests, I was more unsettled to hear that the SATs are an offshoot of this test. Though I can't say how much of a fact that is, the nature of the SATs sure seems to fit that of the early IQ tests. While SATs are not mandatory, they are forced upon high school students by many school administrations with a threat of earning the school's disappointment if they decline. These tests are still used to "place" students, and while they are probably not as culturally-specific as the IQ tests, the scores cast expectations on the students' view of their own future, and it also influences the views of institutions on the students' merit before anything else.

Article: Mixing and Managing Four Generations of Employees

This article both outlines the differences between four generations of Americans and explains why their individual traits often lead to conflicts at work and in society in general. The author stresses generational communication throughout the article, focusing on what he believes to be the main reason the generations have trouble joining their ideas. His concerns rest mostly on the methods that each generation uses to get information, and the kinds of information that each generation retains. While Veterans and Baby boomers are more personally and educationally oriented, Gen Xers and GenYers are more used to indirect communication and educationally skeptical. The author offers a few ideas on how to manage employees of different generations. Most of his solutions involve pairing employees of compatible generations together. The success of the method of pairing hypothetically comes from the traits that he has assigned to each generation.

While this was a good article for informational purposes, I don't think that it has much merit towards the latter half. While it was interesting to know some broad traits of each generation, and to have the names of each generation spelled out for me, the article seemed purely hypothetical to me. Sure, there were some good observations about how each generation learns, communicates, and which values they adhere to. The problem is that the separations of each generation are admittedly vague, and I feel as though coming up with scenarios for workers of a certain generation based on the traits outlined in the chart in the article is misleading. All in all, the article was enlightening, but I think that the author could have stopped at his early observations. It would have been sufficient to raise awareness of differences and come up with some ideas for inclusion, rather than make specific hypothetical situations based on the workplace to exercise some ideas.

Teaching Hope: Challenges

This chapter dealt with situations and issues that made me pretty nervous, because I know that there must be a high frequency of these kind of confrontations and confessions going on in every school--I know I'll have to face it eventually, but the chapter seemed merely testimonial to me, and I'm not sure if it really gave that many answers. I guess that is a good enough quality, that these teachers are talking about some of their more harrowing and desperate moments, but aside from giving the reader a range of things that might happen to you depending on where you are teaching, I don't feel like I took that much away from it.

I do think that I learned a great deal about what constitutes appropriate student/teacher physical contact. There was an awful lot of hugging and throwing of arms around students, and it made me cringe every time, because all I've ever been told in my teacher education is that it is really never okay to touch any of your students. I thought about this for a while, and I decided that I can't really judge the actions of these teachers because I haven't been teaching a group of kids for an extended period of time, I haven't had to deal with a student confiding in me or attempting to kill himself in my class, so there's really nothing I can say at this point about what is the appropriate reaction. Unfortunately, this chapter doesn't really shed light on an answer to what is appropriate action, but I think it might be another one of the many paradoxical teacher issues that is so hard to come to a definite moral solution.

Teaching Hope: Anticipation

For much of this chapter, I found it hard to ignore those two little voices that are my cynicism and my inexperience as a teacher. That said, I did find a few of the passages enlightening, mostly because I felt like the experiences some of the first-day teachers were having sounded like experiences I might end up seeing when I start teaching. Most of the first-day experiences I identified with for this reason were usually the ones centered on getting the attention of the students and giving them some idea of what kind of a teacher they are going to have. That said, I didn't agree with a lot of the actions of the teachers, a few were:

The man who told his students they had three birthdays, the man who created a "teachable moment" by allowing his classroom to verbally berate one of his students for the rest of class, and the teacher who, instead of allowing his lessons to accommodate "Tommy" and the kid's obvious interest in the map on the wall of the classroom, forced him into academic submission by traveling to his house and, among other things, coercing Tommy's grandma to help rearrange his bedroom.

I feel like I am not reading the same stories that these teachers want me to read, but when they are all placed next to each other, their remarkable situational similarities all end up becoming one easily-defined characteristic, which takes a back seat to the actions and personalities of the individual teachers. So, while I noticed that there were some testimonies that I was not quite on board with, there were a number of teachers who seemed to have a real ability to think on their feet, as well as a desire to help students become individuals. The teacher who created the cultural history research project comes to mind, and I hope that there will be more entries that showcase the kind of forethought and execution that he (or she) did. I guess that means that while I am optimistic about what I could learn from this book, I know that there will probably be a lot of teachers out of the 20 that I will have a hard time sympathizing with.

Pam Burke Guild Diversity Article

In this enlightening, yet poorly balanced article, Guild defines some of the more subtle nuances in differentiated learning. Guild points out some of the flaws in the widely-accepted schools of thought concerning differentiated instruction and expands on the theory of multiple intelligences, putting particular emphasis on the idea that there are many types of learners within their own overarching learning styles categories. Guild is also persistent in explaining that teachers should strive towards diversity in their instruction, keeping it from being solely based on a surface disparity in learning styles and taking into account the instruction's effectiveness: “To provide an equal opportunity for all students to be successful in school, educators must first develop a deep understanding of individual differences in learning.” Guild examines problem areas with recognizing learning styles in students such as cultural background, race, and the influence of a student's innate personality on learning. Differences in cultural and racial influence on groups of students are also addressed, and Guild cites a number of studies that show learning styles apply loosely to certain racial and cultural groups, but the learning styles of these groups also depend on individual learning characteristics. The author continues to ask versions of the same question throughout the bulk of the article: “How should we accommodate differences in learning styles?” The answer almost always involves an emphasis on raising awareness of learning styles and differentiated instruction, and ultimately, “...improved instructional methodologies and practices for certain students will result in improved instruction for all.”

Guild does a good job of raising important questions concerning multiple intelligences. It seems to me that educators love to speculate all kinds of instruction based on the surface features of many of Gardner's categories, but it almost always ends up being a method for educators to flex their lesson-planning muscles. Guild makes sure to emphasize how easy it is to create instruction that will ultimately make things worse. Citing a number of concerned researchers who make this argument, Guild makes a good point when she encourages educators to be more selective in their differentiated planning—taking all factors into account before doling out instruction for broad learning styles, factors such as culture, race, personality, and subtler characteristics of researched learning styles categories. Guild's cases for the differences in learning styles across cultures and race were a convoluted mess, however, and the second half of the article becomes hopelessly redundant. She ends up asking the same questions time and again, always circulating back to the all-encompassing answer that educators just need to be more aware of learning styles. The article's flaws become more glaring and frequent—i.e.: the personal bias-laced freudian slip “Many reports contend that African Americans or Hispanic Americans or girls learn in certain common ways.” and the vague, possible translation-error “Many of these instruments are self-report.” The article's disjointedness eventually works against Guild's otherwise intriguing areas of focus.