Blog Post 14

Teaching Can Be A Profession
by Joel Klein

- Better scholastic training for future teachers.
- A new approach to recruiting teachers- Instead of just hiring anyone with a college degree, recruit teachers out of the top 33% of their graduating class.
- Change how teachers are rewarded- The current system in place now presumes that all teachers are correspondent and, therefore, all distinctions are made on seniority. The simple solution to this is to judge teachers based on their effectiveness, rather than just their amount of experience.
- The experienced teachers ending up at better schools, leaving the less fortunate kids and schools to have inexperienced or experienced yet not effective teachers.
- Layoffs tending to go to the most recently hired teachers instead of the least effective.The solution to this, along with the problem above, is to professionalize teaching-- excellence would be the guiding hallmark. Everything within the school system will be redirected to this core principle of excellence.

Albert Shanker, one of the most influential teachers-union leaders of this century, stated this view of his about 30 years agony saying, "Unless we go beyond collective bargaining to the achievement of the teacher professionalism, we will fail...to preserve public education in the United States and to improve the status of teachers economically, socially, and politically". He believed that to create a profession, the following are recommended:
- We need to attract our best students and establish a "demanding knowledge base" to coincide with a "formal set of... peer relationships."
- There also needs to be a "national teacher examination" put in place. This will test the "mastery of pedagogy and content knowledge, akin to the entry exams now required for lawyers and doctors."
- Lastly, supervised internships, or student teaching, should be extended to one to three years to evaluate the performance of future teachers.

Shanker believed in this radical change and went even deeper in defining this ambitious transformation:
- Teachers build their own board to organize the profession, creating standards and providing means for getting rid of inadequate teachers.
- Teachers are obliged to "merit-based career ladders and would be promoted based on exams within their specialty.
- There are fewer teachers assisted by college graduates or college seniors known as teaching assistants.
- Teachers put an end to their support of kids being required to be assigned to neighborhood schools ("the greatest possible choice among public schools").

      The first problem addressed calls for better academic training for teachers-to-be. I agree with this because, according studies discussed in the article, 23 states cannot contest to having a solid math preparation program when being compared to better-scoring nations and fear than 20% of teaching programs prepare their prospective teachers with the basics of reading direction. That just sounds ridiculous to me. If I am preparing myself to be a high school history teacher, then I want more than just basic training. Within the history subject, a lot reading and examining takes place and I feel that that should require more that simply basic reading skills for me to properly teach my students to read and examine for themselves.
      The second problem Mr. Klein brought to our attention was needing a new approach to bringing in new teachers. The current system that has been in place for years is basically hiring anyone with a college degree in education to teach. Like Sandra Feldman said, that would be "disastrous". The solution they gave for this is to recruit out of the top third percent of a graduating class. When it cakes to not hiring just anyone with a degree, I definitely agree 100%. When it comes to only hiring out of top third percent though, I disagree in a way. Having prestige grades when graduating with a teaching degree is very important but I think it is very much possible to be a successful and effective teacher without being in the top 33% grade-wise. Going through middle school and high school, I learned many academic lessons, but I learned just as many life lessons from my teachers that still have an impact on my life today. I believe that if you are going to be a teacher, it is just as important to have that kind of impact on your students as it is an academic impact on their lives. That's not always found in the top 33% of a class. I know my grades aren't always in the top percents, but I know that I have just as much to offer to my future students as those top students do.
      The next two changes he mentions kind of go hand-and-hand in my opinion. Klein says that we need to change the way teachers are rewarded. Today, teachers are presumed as correspondent and, therefore, the only way to distinguish one from another is by seniority. The easy solution to this is to judge and evaluate teachers based on their effectiveness and not just their experience. This I completely agree with, it is very possible that teachers who have less experience can be more effective than those with more experience than them, but this problem of what teachers are where.
      The experienced and effective teachers are ending up at better schools, while the poor kids and schools are getting teachers that are inexperienced or experienced and not effective. Also, layoffs are commonly going to the most recently hired teacher instead of simply the least effective no matter the amount of experience. The solution proposed for this is to professionalize teaching. This means that excellence would be the "guiding hallmark" and everything within the school system will be redirected to this core principle. To this, I agree. The teaching job at any school should go to the best person for the job no matter their "tenure".
      As Shanker said, these are all very ambitious goals and I think if they could all be done, then the school systems would be enormously more successful and overall better. Like he stated, "education would not be sustainable if teachers continue to be treated... as workers in an old-fashioned factory". We need to professionalize teaching and make it well-respected like other professions such as lawyers and doctors have.

Blog Post 13

      This week, watch this video and visit these links (explore the website). Tell me what your opinion is of Reading Like A Historian by writing a quality blog post. What is RLH? What are the benefits? Would you consider using it?

How to teach history (and how not to)

Reading Like A Historian

Reading Like A Historian Video

      This curriculum encourages students to take inquiry into historical events, instead of just hearing about them through strictly lecture. Within each history lesson is a central driving question on the topic being discussed that is accompanied by sets of primary historical documents and resources. The Stanford History Education Group designed the program this way so that students with different levels of reading and comprehending can achieve the same goal-- improving their overall literacy and successfulness. By using this curriculum, students will learn how to "investigate historical questions by employing reading strategies such as sourcing, contextualizing, corroborating, and close reading". The students are taught how to look at multiple aspects of a historical event or issue and evaluate it for themselves so that they are able to make their own historical claims.
      Within the RLH website, the Stanford History Education Group has provided you with numerous tools to enable you to incorporate this program into your classroom. They have given you FREE access to 106 flexible lesson plans, along with introduction materials, that you can customize and adjust to your classroom and curriculum. Also, all of these lesson plans provide you with primary documents and sources from reliable places such as the Library of Congress.
      I plan to be a high school history teacher one day and I thinkI would definitely consider using and incorporating this program into my curriculum in my future classroom. I believe this program and way of teaching can improve a student's literacy abilities and understanding of historical events way beyond the average lecture and discussion would.

Project 12: Part B

Blog Post 12

Blog Post 11

What can we learn about teaching and learning from these teachers?

The first video we were asked to watch was Back to the Future by Brian Crosby. Mr. Crosby feels like some curricula can be too narrow which can cause students to be distant and disable their creativity and passion to learn and create. Because of this, Crosby has come up with a project that incorporated technology in many different ways while also meeting the class's standards. Leading up to the project, the class had been learning about the layers of the atmosphere. To go with this topic, Crosby came up with the idea to have the class send up a balloon in to the atmosphere. Throughout the project, the class did numerous activities and lessons that really got the students engaged and excited to succeed. The students were also able to incorporate many different types of media in to the project such as wiki pages, blogs, Flikr, and many other computer programs. From this project, with all their resources, they were ultimately able to create their own learning networks and to reach out to a wide audience. I think this project that Crosby came up with was great overall because he got away from that narrow curriculum so well.

The next video we were told to watch for this blogpost was Paul Anderson's Blended Learning Cycle. According to Paul, blended learning is combining the compelling parts of learning (online, mobile, and classroom) in the classroom. He did this by basically turning the class in to a video game with different levels based on blended learning. He also stayed true to his fiveE's of the cycle in the process: engage, explore, expand, explain, and evaluate. The only obstacle throughout this project was getting the students to learn independently. This can be abad or good thing because you want your students to learn how to work as a team to collaborate and communicate but you want the students to be able to work and learn things for themselves, as well. One of Paul's theories that I partially agree with is that you haven't learned something until you can explain it to someone else. I agree with this because being able to explain something new to someone and have them understand it also shows your own understanding of the topic. The only reason I say partially agree is because when I was in school learning any kind of science or math, I was very good at learning and understanding something but I couldn't always explain how I figured it out or explain it to someone else. Even though I didn't always have the ability to explain it, I still knew for myself that I understood the topic and did well in the class.

The third video we were asked to watch was Making Thinking Visible by Mark Church. His goal was for his students to see their thinking process in action and how it can change throughout the class. He had his students watch a video on human origins and then break in to small groups to discuss the topic. The groups had to think of a headline describing what they thought their unit was about and thence able to explain their headline choice. After their last project, he will ask them what their final headline is just to show them how thinking can change.

Another video we were asked to watch this week was Sam Pane's Building Comics. Mr. Pane's biggest question for his students was "What kind of power does the internet give us?". He requested that his students become like digital citizens which means that they act safely, respectfully, and responsibility whenever they are online. Following this discussion, he asked them to create a comic built around their digital superhero and provided them with a website for the project. In order to meet state standards, the students had to write a narrative between their superhero and themselves. He also wanted his students to have the ability to show their peers their work so he had them do a gallery walk. the students loved showing off their accomplishments and having it appreciated.

Project Based Learning by Dean Shareski was the fifth video given to us to watch for the is post. Three teachers worked together to create a unique learning experience by combining different topics and subjects. We have been discussing PBL all semester and we have seen all the positives and the struggles of changing over to it. The teachers had to pitch this to their administrators and convince them of all the benefits of PBL. It turned out very beneficial for the students because they were able to use technology to really broaden their learning and ideas.

The last video we were told to watch was Roosevelt Elementary's PBL Program. PBL is described here as an in-depth learning experience that emerges thematic instruction based on real-world issues using research based projects. By doing this, students learn accountability, responsibility, public speaking skills, and other 21st century skills at a young age.

Project 14: PBL Plan 2

Group 6 (Faith Kennedy, Marcus Thomas, and Carissa Watford) website for Project 14

Blog Post 10

We were asked to watch Ms. Cassidy's 1st Grade Class in Little Kids... Big Potential for this weeks Blog Post 10. This video along with many others that she made showed some great ways to incorporate technology into the classroom. Her videos did a good job at showing that using technology can encourage students to develop social skills instead of isolating them. I think students would love the use of more technology in the classroom because it gives them so many opportunities to learn how to learn on their own to further their own knowledge and show how relative it is to their lives even outside of the classroom. I liked her use of blogs in the classroom because creating your own blog and also following others, such as fellow students or other teachers, can really expand students' world of learning. Another thing she did that I liked was her sending out permission slips for the students to use such technology because i can see where some parents mat not be okay with using so much and having that much access to technology at such a young age. As we have seen so far in ED310 this semester, younger students can have the ability to know much more about some technologies than we do and have very little problems when it comes to learning new types of media. I personally think this is great. At such a young age, these students are getting such a jumpstart on learning how to write, read and communicate with other, which can really help them in their future education and, eventually, careers.

C4K October Summary

C4K #5 10/12/14:
For this week, I had Jenna's Blog Challenge Three: The Fourteenth Goldfish. Jenna's assignment was to answer the question "What do you think will happen in the story?". Jenna think that the grandparent will end up having a cure to make him age again, but will not be able to get into the lab to obtain it because he still looks like is 14 years old. She also thinks the authorities will show up and possibly accuse him of being responsible for the disappearance of her grandpa because he still has the I.D. of a grandparent. I think that Jenna did a great job at describing to her audience what was happening in the story and what she thinks is going to happen in the future.

C4K #6 10/19/14:
This week, I was assigned to Jenna 5SC. I think her assignment this week was to describe a scene that she was seeing either in a book or some other type of media. She discussed how she saw the church and lots of people and also the ducks paddling in the stream along with other animals around the town. Personally, I think Jenna did a great job at describing in detail was she saw and making sure her audience could truly picture it for themselves.

C4K #7 10/26/14:
I was assigned to Taine's Similes and Meetaphors blogpost this week. For this post, Taine had to write a metaphor and simile with two different objects that he had chosen. The first he did was his metaphor about a lobster. I think he did good job at showing exactly what a metaphor is to his audience and was descriptive. For his simile, he chose to talk about a bully. I think Taine did a fantastic job with this simile because not only did he do a great job at showing what a smile is, be he also discussed it so well. Bullying can be a big issue in schools and I love the way that he said "a bully is small as his fear' and "know it's ok like God is with you". Wow. I just loved that part and he did an amazing job at giving a great message about bullies.

C4T Summary #1

The first teachers blog that I had to comment on was by Meredith Somsel on a site called Teacheing Matters. She discussed how the curricula and ways of teaching are constantly changing. Somsel and her fellow teachers teach at a school in New York and are having to learn a whole new program for teaching their math students. The program was a struggle for the teachers because they were being introduced to various new materials they are to incorporate into their math lessons, along with new strategies and content all while creating their own lesson plans and getting to know their new students and how they learn best. In her words, it was the "perfect storm". Her and the teachers spent their summers attending conferences and taking additional opportunities to become more familiar with this new program. It is very important for teachers to stay caught up with the ever-changing curricula in education so that students will learn all that they can and get the best learning experience they possible.
I found this as a great blogpost that, even as a student, I could relate to because this is similar to a realization I had when taking a math education class about a year and a half ago. With almost every lesson, we were taught equations and methods to teach that almost the whole class had never heard of because we were not taught those methods when we were going through school at a younger age. That was just one of many times that we realized how important it is to keep up with new and evolving curricula.

The second teachers blog that I commented on was on a blog site called Two Cents Worth by David Warlick. Mr. Warlick's post wasn't as lengthy as others but it sill made some very valid points. "In much the same ways that we all conduct our essential learning outside of school" was one of the biggest things that stuck out to me because that is something we focus on in our class. We are learning about and using various technologies in the classroom, some being very similar to the things we use outside of the classroom. I find this very important because that is what students today really want out of their education. They want to know that everything they are learning is something real and relative to their lives instead of something they just might need to know someday. Students want what they are learning to be applicable and giving them the opportunity to use various technologies in the classrooms allows that.