Public Purposes of Education-Andy

school visit one

9999-12-31T15:26:00.000-08:00

i enjoyed going to the school but i was in for a suprise. i needed to do some service hours so i went to the media center. at first i was thinking it would not be a big deal but then i got my assingment. i was to arange books for three hours. i have decided that i will never want to be a librarian ever! so there was not much that happend, just a lot of books. i was lucky enough to see two classes come in but they did some drawing and a short story time. rather bland but still not to bad overall

Newark

9999-12-31T14:57:00.000-08:00

two things about Newark. one our school sight to visit is in it, and two we read an article about it. pretty much Newark has a bad rap because a lot of things happen in the near by area. i am not really scared of the area but all the stories that i hear honestly make me a little wary. so the article was about shootings and how even though the neighborhoods are few and far between, the whole area gets the label of what happened. suddenly everyone and everywhere is judged the same. its a natural human thing to do, to judge, but that does not make it right.
needless to say, i was surprised when i we arrived at the school. it was right off a main road and the area did not seem to bad. i was also expecting a little more run down neighborhood but everything was in nice shape. the school is also brand new and was really awesome to work with. most students were well behaved and there really were no problems. so whats all this talk about all of Newark being so bad? i know the parts i was in and went through were pretty nice for sure. lets not be so fast to judge until we see it ourselves.

stuff you can be fired for

9999-12-31T14:52:00.000-08:00

an actual really interesting lecture in class was what you can and cant be fired for. i learned some new things. everyone should have a copy of it in their notes so i am not going to waist my time typing it back up but i was surprised at a few. you can be fired for
having a sex change operation, not living in the district, drinking, encouraging attendance to a certain religious meeting, and homosexual advances on non-students. aside from the religious one, they are all personal lifestyle choices of the teacher. i dont see why they should have to be punished for being a little different. i guess i am just a lot more accepting than whoever makes up these rules. stuff you cant be fired for thats just silly : obesity, smoking marijuana, use of vulgar language outside of school, adultery, and aids. again most of these except for the last one are personal choices but i guess these are... less bad? the real question is Does it reduce the teachers effectiveness. i think thats how things should be sorted in the can you be fired or not categories by the answer to that question.

birth control at a young age

9999-12-31T14:46:00.000-08:00

so it came up in class that some schools or at least one school offers birth control at a young age. we are not ever talking high school here i believe the school was a middle school. first of all i don't even want to think of kids that young having kids, or ever needing birth control. i learned about that stuff in like eighth grade. our lesson was this is your body and how it words and such, not go make babies but use this so you don't get pregnant. did i miss something? did i miss the memo that says its ok for young children to have sex? i don't even think teenagers should and/or almost anyone in college. i guess my views are a little more extreme but the way i was raised its not something you are really supposed to do outside of marriage. i think that's old fashioned but come on, little kids. the kicker was that i don't even think that the parents had to know about it. they might have had to sign a slip saying they could go to the clinic but they don't get to know what happens inside of it. so newsflash, you are permitting your kids to go mess around. i think this is the worst change in schooling that i have heard of in a long time, its almost as bad as half of the NCLB stuff. education is one thing, turning a blind eye to doing it is not acceptable

the love of reading

9999-12-31T14:36:00.001-08:00

With all of the things that we do on the computer and on the internet today, how many people honestly still read books or printed materials. Some people stay true to their every day paper while some look up the news online. In school we use books but many books have online functions and or online versions. You can download PDF versions of readings and never have to touch a book. Some classes you can get away with never even opening the book, I know I did in one music class. For our age there is not really a problem, the way I see it the problem is for the younger generation. If we do not get them to start reading now, they will probably not start reading on their own. With all of the technology available, we need to get them to still love books. Books will stay around forever; it’s just a fact of life. I know that for one of my school visits they were still pushing reading programs and I thought it was great!

my headline

9999-12-31T14:36:00.000-08:00

Tuition zooms-we all know that school is not cheep. We shell out a lot of money to come here. Tuition prices never really go down but they do like to go up. Because of this a lot of borrowing/lending of money happens. I personally am taking out student loans to offset the price of education. It’s a shame that it has to cost so much just to read more books and have discussions with peers and mentors. As loans go up, so does debt. My article was just an informative one on loans and such. I was surprised to learn that even if you declare bankrupsy, you still have to pay student loans. That’s like Wow to me. Also the totals of loans and tuitions are something like 400% increased. We are talking from 4 billion in 2001 to 17 billion in 2006, we are talking dollars here. Overall I found it an interesting topic but it did not raise much class discussion. I think it’s just accepted, it costs a lot and we have to pay it!

grant case study

9999-12-31T14:35:00.001-08:00

This is a simple case study but an interesting one all the same. Simple summary, first year teacher has a different approach to education and has a lot of hands on practices. More experienced teacher says that she needs to drill her students for the test. First year teacher does not wish to follow that teaching style.
There you go there is the story, and here is what I have to say about it. Being a new teacher you get a little bit of slack. If your kids don’t do amazing on the tests you almost get a freebee. I say go with the way you want to teach and let what happens happen. There is no proof so far that the different style will change the outcome of grades. It could be better or worse at this point. Until the students are evaluated on some standardized scale, there will be no way to say if it worked or failed. I would personally recommend at least one practice test so the children know the format of the exam. Knowing the format is just as important as knowing the content. If she teaches the same content there should be no problem at all. Let her try it out and don’t complain until the results are in! You can’t count your chickens before they hatch

Gen Ed requirements

9999-12-31T14:35:00.000-08:00

Much debate is on the topic of general education requirements. Should we have them or not. Do they do anything for us or not. Should an art major be forced to take pre calc and English 2? Should the math major take two semesters of writing and foreign language. Who knows the answers to these? There are yet again two sides, like there is to most everything. Some say we should be rounded students, and some say we should be specialists and not waist our time. I am personally dreading taking history because that is probably my least favorite subject. I did ok in English even though that is also not one of my favorites. I am enjoying my math classes but go figure. I had to take performing arts, well lucky for me I sing and was able to get into choir but what about other people with no musical talent. If I have to take an art class, I am screwed because I can’t draw very well. Languages are a whole nether topic of it. Many students just think that it’s a waist of time, money, and effort to take classes that do not help in our future careers. I would have to agree on most points but I don’t mind horribly because I like to be rounded. What I do mind is the fact that my GPA is probably going to take a hit in my lesser liked subjects.

autism and special needs

9999-12-31T14:34:00.001-08:00

In today’s society more and more people are getting diagnosed with various things like autism and the ever so classic add and adhd. A statistic shows that about 1 out off 150 children have some form of autism. Some people argue that they would rather have their kid labeled as special needs, so they can be accommodated as such. Some parents want their child to be treated as normal so they might not get picked on. Either choice results in the fact that the child still has special needs. These special needs need teachers that are well certified in dealing with them. If one does not know how to respond to the situation, nothing productive is going to come from it. Many times, special needs students are thrown in a group (special class) or are intermixed into the general population and ignored. When they are all grouped together it is way too much for a single teacher to deal with, and when left alone, they are probably not with a specialized teacher. Accommodation for special needs is a serious issue and I think more teachers should learn at least the basics. I personally don’t plan to initially but I might take some additional classes after I get my math major and finish the teaching program. I think it is a very worth while thing to have under my belt.

alms for the poor

9999-12-31T14:34:00.000-08:00

In class we had a small story/situation that we somehow related to giving money to poor people asking for it. This happens frequently depending on where you are from. Some people were raised to help anyone they could, while some were raised never to give a hand out. I personally would prefer to help, but it’s so hard to know who to help. Some people don’t really need it and are just looking for a quick score. Do you really want to give that bum money for a quick drink?
In class somehow we related this to NCLB. That wonderful program that can be linked to just about anything. We equated the poor person to the schools and the passers by to the government. Schools are desperately crying out for more funding but none is coming back. The government was obviously raised very stingy! Whatever you think, I think it’s a little bit of a stretch but sure I can see how the schools just don’t have the money. I wish I had the solution, but honestly I don’t. I am sure I will face this soon enough and be one of the poor begging for more funding.

teachers with blogs

9999-12-31T11:12:00.000-08:00

wow what a great topic, considering our whole class of to be teachers is required to write this blog. many many times has an issue come up with teachers and staff having issues with online social networks. these usually contain pictures friends lists and comments from or with anyone that uses the sight. because it happens, inappropriate stuff goes down sometimes. some schools are making it mandatory that any teacher with a blog or similar online thing to delete them. even so, the problem comes from the fact that people can use your name and or picture and create dummy profiles. this is also not a new concept. some school assignments are even to make a blog site for a fictional or historic character and put in all their information. shouldn't teachers be allowed to use the wonderful world of social networking just like the rest of us? i think its only fair. would i suggest that they take off any suggestive pictures, yes i would. why would you post those in the first place? should the monitor the site regularly to make sure there are no bad comments? yes they should. should they report any fake sites claiming to be them, yet another yes. i had a personal idea though. maybe they should be required to keep one, so they can have an official blog or whatever and then be able to claim that this is them and none other. sure anyone can make the "official" blog but i am sure there are ways to go about it. yay social networking!

flawed test scores

9999-12-31T11:09:00.000-08:00

so much for blogger auto saving posts, now i have to type this again. o well

a international test was going well until somehow the USA reading or writing section had a error found and needed to be thrown out. obviously since we were the only ones to have this error, and i believe the test was created in English than translated to other languages, there is nothing shady at all about this. there is some program that wants to test every 3 years to evaluate how we are doing. is it possible that the scores were thrown out just because they were bad? i think its possible. apparently there is a copy of the flawed page on the NY times sight or something. its there so if anyone can find the error good for them. one of the students in class could not find the error but admits they are no reading/writing pro. regardless i think its rather stupid that scores are being thrown out over like one question on a whole test and that its a big deal. the whole American education system is off key and something needs to be done. and by that i do Not mean NCLB. eww

phone blog

2007-12-19T17:44:00.000-08:00

just to test it out this is from my phone. go rave for once. this is kind of fun

yet another post

2007-10-08T11:54:00.001-07:00

well after class today i kind of realize how important this blog actually is. its not that its hard, its just almost an inconvenience. well anyway it could be much worse. i will write about the class in a separate post but i will have a topic for this one. so, this class and my education psychology are pretty awesome! both are about education and learning about what we will see in our every day teaching lives. i like how this class will give us first hand experience of classroom procedure and i like the discussions in Ed Psych. not that the topics in this class are bad it just seems so long that i lose focus sometimes. i like the shorter class with one topic and the ability to really look at it and take it apart. we ask questions about the readings and talk further about the parts that mean something to us. i do like the current events for this class. i was never big on watching the news but i do like to hear what is going on, especially with education and such. stay tuned for a review of last class and how this class went for me. i am gonna try to spread it out a little to get into good habits. feel free to comment anything if you read these... i feel like nobody does.

jones reading

2007-09-24T07:42:00.000-07:00

while i did not find either of the readings for today all that insightful, it was still good to read and see whats out there. these are all written by real people who seem concerned with education. i think i found the case study to be the most relevant even though i am going to teach in high school not 3rd grade. the Jones reading seemed to be all over the place and in my opinion off topic. he begins talking about the movie plesantville and then talks for nearly 2 pages about standards. then in less than a 1/2 page conclusion, he states that standards need to be removed and proposes a small idea. while i agree with his statements on many of the standards i feel like its something that most of us know about education. i would rather read/hear what is being done about it or proposed change than to just hear what the problem. i guess that just makes me proactive... the case study was simple in my opinion. i thought it would be more formally written but it read like a child's chapter book to me. my simple solution to Melinda's problem, give them a practice test! then you know how they can preform and what areas you need to study more. then she can minimize the time doing review and go to the other things she is doing. i like my simple solution

social experiences

2007-09-17T08:03:00.001-07:00

The book reading assignment for the first class was on "should schooling be based on social experiences". the yes is argued by Dewey and the no is argued by Hutchins. in my opinion this all comes down to whats more important, book smarts or street smarts. if we are basing learning on social experiences then we are saying that we need more adaptive teaching methods, ever changing and evolving. if you argue no, then you are saying that education should be book based rote learning. so what is more important, events that happened hundreds of years ago, or the conflicts that occur every day in our lives. should school be based on society or on books written by select, intelligent few.
My personal opinion is that learning should be changing. teachers that are "fossils" or just old style teachers dont captivate classes anymore. memorization and repetition dont always get the job done. we need an interactive changing education process which would be decided on social experiences of both the teacher and the students. i think that dewey has the better side of the argument but i also see where hutchins is going. if we adapt to much and change based on experiences, there will be no standardization. while i personally dont like standardized tests, i believe that some things have to be standard to insure the quality of the larger scale education. so i guess i propose a slight mix of the two ideas, but leaning towards the dewey side

last post

1999-12-31T21:30:00.000-08:00

this will probably be my last and final post on this site ever. i might keep the site up for a little while to see if anyone comments back. i would be very surprised if there were any comments after today. it was an interesting experience to say the least. this brings the grand total to 26 and i think thats more than enough topics to talk about. the class was good, i was just not really into this assignment. you would be surprised how many posts can be done in a very short time. i think that just goes to show that i have been paying a lot of attention and took good notes to do it all at the end. so farewell to blogs and this education class. i really got a lot out of the class time and the shadowing experiences. best of luck to everyone else in the class!!!

school meetings

1999-12-31T15:53:00.001-08:00

the meetings was a 50/50 experience. one was really good and one was really not so good. the first one was a local meeting at first ave. it was on teacher development day so there where no kids at the school and lots of meetings. the one that i observed was a math teacher meeting, perfect for me. it was an interesting meeting and they stayed on the agenda. one central focus of the meeting was scores and all of them in an excel sheet. it was kind of sad that most of the teachers did not know how to use excel the right way
the second meeting was long, boring, and pretty pointless for me. i guess it was nice to see a difference in styles of meetings. there was a lot of the public involved, probably around a hundred and more. i found that they did not really stay to the agenda and it was a lot of technicality and procedure. maybe if it was not so long it would have been more enjoyable. there were a lot of presentations and community involvement during the first part of the meeting. the part i liked best was when a few mothers got up and talked about their children being active in the school and its programs.

shadowing

1999-12-31T15:53:00.000-08:00

this was probably the best day out of the entire experience. i show up and go to the classroom, say hi to the teacher and begin to relax. i had a few nice chats with my teacher and met the homeroom class. one student in particular was really warm to me and that made a difference. he came right up to me, smiled and said "student teacher?" it was just a small comment but i sat next to him for homeroom and it was awesome. then came the first of three lectures. the lesson was the same idea three times but she presented it in two different ways. i say two different ways because it was not her who taught the third class. you might be able to figure it out... i got to teach a class!!! it was beyond amazing. so i taught the class, i think i got through to them, and it was great. this was my first actual teaching experience and it was all positive. i had a rough time getting through to some of the students but after i had them do it individually and i got to walk around for one-on-one. that worked very well and i was able to help a lot more of the students. i was actually kind of sad that i had to leave. i really wanted to be able to spend more time with the kids but i don't think i will be going back. i know it was great for me, and i really hope that it made a difference for some of the students.

school visit three

1999-12-31T15:52:00.000-08:00

so this time was a lot more ... exciting at least. after the students did the whole eating and working thing we yet again split up into groups by grade level. this time i went to the computer lab. i enjoy computers so i thought this would be a breeze. what happened was we helped a room of children with an interesting computer program. the idea of the thing is that it adapts the questions as they go. the fun thing that happened was that i got yelled at be the teacher. what happened was that some kids were apparently working on a "quiz" and we were not supposed to help them. so it went from help everyone out to help everyone except random ones that we could not establish the difference between. lesson of the day: communication is important!

school visit two

1999-12-31T15:39:00.000-08:00

my second community service visit was a lot more awesome. i actually go to work with some students. after the kids did a little eating and school work, they go to different classrooms. in the classroom i went to they were doing some reading program. the book program was the 100 book challenge. it is what the name suggests. this was the first day of the program for this class so they had to lay down a bunch of rules and general procedures. the topic of all the books was the rain forrest so that was interesting. all of the children picked books at their reading level, assigned by the teacher, and began to read and log their books. everything went smoothly, i even got to help one kid translate from English to Spanish. it was a fun and educational experience

bi lingual education

1999-12-31T15:04:00.000-08:00

this has been one of my favorite topics to comment on. i realized after doing a few of them that i actually have argued both sides of it at the same time. so now that its my time to write my own blog hopefully my ideas are in order. i think i kind of went outside the question the first time and went on a big tangent. i think bi lingual education is really importnat but i dont think it is the most important thing out there. i think that general education about everyone is more important. i think that the popular language spoken should be english. i think that if you are living here you should be speaking english. i support the learning our language and others but i think that english should be learned. i think that languages, cultures, and histories should be learned. so i guess i support multi cultural awareness but not entirely pushing for bi lingual education. so go learn english, but do it with a smile! thats my way of trying to not feel bad for what i said

NCLB enough is enough?

1999-12-31T11:11:00.000-08:00

someone brought up that some staff are leaving the workplace because they can not take any more of this no child left behind nonsense. a common belief could be that it is causing more trouble than its worth. with the obvious lack of funding its hard to get much of anything accomplished. a random statistic someone threw out there was that we used to be 4th in testing, i believe that is global. now we are somewhere around 10th. i wonder if this is because of all the stress and problems that NCLB is causing. sure the idea is great, but if you ask me. did it really take for the government to tell us, for us to decide that we actually want our kids to get good grades in school?? come on we have always wished that everyone would pass and know all the material. no matter what program you establish, short of brainwashing, its not gonna happen ever.

cell phone college class

1999-12-31T11:10:00.000-08:00

everyone take out your phones... now log into class, and listen to and watch your lecture. where are you? some pace in an Asian country most likely. don't take that wrong, speaking strictly on a technology based assumption and the fact that Asian cell phones are like a completely different level. if you think the I phone is awesome go check out some Japanese phones. they have cell phone cameras that are probably as good as your digital camera at home.
anyway, so what if classes could be taken not just online, but on your phone. even our lovely rave phones have basic Internet capabilities. they might stink but they can get you online. is it fair to have classes online? some classes just cant really be held online. physical classes for sure, how about the arts? what are you gonna do, scan your work and send it in? sure i will submit my own work... not! what about speech class. at least in NJ i think all students must take a speech class for gen ed. so do you just have a phone presentation? that kind of eliminates the whole public speaking part of it. final thought: cell phone classes- Awesome idea, not piratical

RAVE BASHING

1999-12-31T11:08:00.000-08:00

we have done this countless times in class so i figured i get one blog about our rave phones. so since i am free to say whatever i want, i think our rave phones suck. there i said it ooo scary. my biggest problem with them is simple, where is my Verizon service. where is any service other than sprint/nextel. hmm wonderful marketing strategy, i wonder if montclair gets anything back for only buying one type of phone. i have a Verizon phone and plan, my whole family has Verizon, i mean my whole family. i have 2 full Italian families here people we are talking about a lot of relatives. so i can either talk to them for free via our Verizon plan, or i can buy a service that nobody i know uses. sounds good right? ok so no need of another company but yet i am forced to get a phone anyway. so my phone is a new alarm clock. had to get a use out of it somewhere. so what do they do for us. let us check our mail, ok decent. but at the speed it takes, i could probably walk to the lab or my room first. that and the size of the font is impossible to read. go online, yah right phones like this were not built to display web pages, i cant even look up the train schedule without the screen messing up. rave guardian anyone? ok first lets sign into our rave accounts since we have not used this phone in forever, whats my pw again? o i forget darn. Finlay got it good ok lets to to the rave guardian now. ok found it now what. ok pick a time, 10, 30, 60 mins. hmm nice round choices. ok lets set an alarm. how about a damn panic button or something instead of all that hassle. excuse me Mr bad guy would u mind if i activate my rave phone before you do something to me? thought so. a friends parent made a joke that i like, " you know what the rave phones are for? locating the corpse when we cant find it." i think its great. feel free to go anti or pro rave here anytime.

test 123

1970-01-01T14:42:00.000-08:00

just a test woot go blogs