Group Seven Presentation

Group seven did their presentation on chapter 10- School Law. They discussed the U.S legal system and how some aspects such as constitutional amendments that play into school laws. They showed a news clip on facebook and where the lines should be drawn in regards to becoming friends between teachers and students. I think teachers should simple not be friends with their students on facebook or even their parents. This comes into play when asking "what is ethical?" I don't think that students and teachers should have that type of relationship outside of school. I think this could take away from the respect aspect and very likely could put your job on the line. They also showed a clip on the Wisconsin protests. They also did an interview with a man who was a principal in a Wisconsin about the protests that are going on there. He talked about how everyone has come together to get the best for the students and their education.

Finland vs. United States Teacher Prep...

Finland is the highest ranked country in the world in regards to education standards. Families in Finland value education and have many of the same goals for their children. School in Finland is relaxed and casual, student's address teachers by their first names. Their schools are much smaller than the average school in the United States, this gives teachers a better chance to give each student attention and time. The classes in Finland really encouraged students to think rather than memorize.Once students get into their upper classes they have a choice to go on a technical and vocational track or a more general education track.
* To be able to become a teacher in Finland you must have good grades to even get accepted into the college. If they are accepted, they also have to do well on the entrance examination to get into the teaching program.
*People in Finland have a five year program to become a teacher, they are required to get their masters.
*When training the teachers in Finland, they get a great deal of classroom experience and coaching from professors and teachers.

Philosophy of Education

In class we took a test that exames your philosophy of education. There are four different categories: Perennialism, essentialism, progressivism, and social reconstructionism. I scored the highest on social reconstructionism. This is the idea that teachers believe in asking social questions, questions about society. It's about improving the world around them and making students think critical and make their own conclusions. I scored the next highest on progressivism. Progressivism is a student centered way of learning. The idea that you learn by doing or doing  hands- on scienetific experiements for example. I think both of these philosophies really benefit the students in the long run. Learning in these types of ways teaches students skills they will need throughout their lives, instead of just memorize material for tests. Doing this survey made me think about what I really want my philosophy to be, it's somethings I never really thought in depth about, but I think it's really important to understand what your goals are through teaching.

The Type of Teacher I Want to Be.....

I want to be the kind of teacher who makes a huge impact on the student's lives. The type of teacher where you look back and think of all the great memories you had in that class. I think making learning fun and interesting for the student's is really important. I know I specifically have great memories of my 2nd grade teacher because he put a huge prioritiy in making sure the student's were engaged and having fun. He would have us play a lot of games and do different activities to change things up. I know that you can't always do "fun" things in school, but I really want to try and make my classroom as fun and inviting as possible. I also want to be a caring and understanding teacher. I want student's to feel comfortable talking to me when they have a problem. Letting your student's know that you care is so important in creating a good learning enviroment for everyone. finally, I hope to become better educated with in helping student's with exceptional needs. I plan to get a minor in special education because I think it's really important that I know how I can help these student's since I will always have a variety of student's with many different needs, these student's deserve to get a great education just as much as any other student does. I look forward to getting into my student teaching and learning new ways to become the best teacher that I possibly can.

Students First Website

http://www.studentsfirst.org/

The website, studentsfirst.org, is a website that strives for a movement to transform public education. It's lead by Michelle Rhee, who is the former Chancellor of D.C. Public Schools. When a new mayor was hired Michelle Rhee was let go, but instead of stopping her fight to change the educational system she decided to start the "student's first" website and organization, she started this because of the huge demand for a better educational system in America. One of the huge issues is that unions are putting the teachers first instead of the students. The goal of this  mission is to put the "students first" and imporve the quality of the education they are recieving. We watched a video in class where Michelle Rhee explained the goals of the mission and introduce a petition that can be sigined on the website to get things started. There is clearly a problem with our education system and I think this is a great website, and hopefully will be the start to some much needed impovements and changes.

Group Six Presentation

Group six did their presentation on school governance. They sent around a really interesting booklet on Anoka-Hennepins finances. It was a good example for us to see and how schools might decide how the money will be spent. Levies are also something that many schools ask for to pay for past debts, this is voted on by the community. The biggest issue for funding inequity is that each school district has different needs. They also had a group discussion about how we could fix school funding issues. It's such an important topic, yet very hard to think of a solution.
They also brought up the idea of alternatives to local control. Instead of having school boards some cities are appointing the Mayor of the city to take control over their school district. I have never heard of this so I found it interesting that some schools are actually doing this. An example of this was in the movie we watched "Waiting for Superman," when Michelle took over the schools, this was a very controversal issue because many people in the community did not like the decisions she was making, especially when she tried to take the tenure away from teachers. On the other hand, some schools think this idea works great saying schools tend to run more efficeintly and budgets are  balanced. They interviewed  Finacial officer of Anoka-Hennepin School District- Michelle Vargas. She gave some really good information and opinions on what needs to change in the financial part of school districts.
The final aspect they went over was schools choices and the pros and cons that come along with the different schools. Schools such as public, private, charter, and KIPP schools. We also watched a video clip on charter/KIPP schools. At the end the group handed out crossword puzzle on the material they covered. Overall I think this group did a really good job, I was introduce to many things I wasn't familar with and got me thinking about what needs to be changed in our schools in regards to budget.

Waiting For Superman

We watched the movie, "Waiting For Superman" in class. I thought this was a really good movie. It covered many things in our education system that need to be changed and things we need to focus on. The movie also focused on some students in Washington D.C who were looking into getting into Charter schools. These students were not receiving a great education, so they applied to charter schools. Each school had a lottery to pick which students would be accepted. Only two out of the five students were picked to be enrolled in the schools. It was really difficult to see how hurt these students and their families were. This made me realize how fortunite I was to not have to worry about my education it was just something that I guess many of us take for granted. This movie opened my eyes to the flaws in the United States education stystem. For example, we are not able to get rid of bad teachers because of the tenure contracts that many teachers have. I think if we got rid of the tenure and based pay off of performance, like Michelle suggested in the movie, this would improve teaching and encourage teachers to put time and effort into such an important part of a child's future-their education. We clearly need to change our priorities, it shouldn't be about the adults, it should be about the students.