Looking Back

Looking back at the coursework from our Strategies for Curriculum Change, I realized that I got the chance to throw away what I was expecting of this class from the get go. The general programs here at MSU are so straight-forward and by the book. We read from our texts and then spent 45 hours being lectured. We then perform a project that gets put together in the span of a few weeks that is nto useful for our craft. Well, this class was actually different. Did we do a lot of small assignments just to check our understanding? Yes, we did. However, we performed these tasks using creative and exciting technologies that actually made the work fun. Making a slam, writing a couple weekly blog entries, working on a collaborative essay. I have to say I cannot wait to integrate these ideas into my Middle School classroom [I am currently pending administrative approval for blog usage.] I have learned new, practical techniques for my classroom.

Secondly, and more directly I might add, I learned that when assessing a building's curricula, it is imperative for a new administrator to assess the hidden curriculum from within the building. Elementary Schools, Middle Schools and High Schools are living, breathing entities that are different from one another. It is important for an administrator to fully grasp the feelings that a school building engenders in its student population. I never thought about the value that the unwritten curriculum holds on the student body.

Orange

The involvement level of the staff of Orange Middle School strikes me as different from many other inner schools. The difference shows in their interest to develop a plan of action to aid their student’s growth. The staff members know that students need to connect to teachers in order to learn. The Orange Middle School wants to develop more administrators who wish to foster a sense of community to allow the non-existent family ties to appear in the classroom. Setting up small learning communities is a great idea to help reach students in a smaller forum.


I think it would greatly benefit the students in Orange if the school building was to establish more ways to keep the students off of the street. What I mean is, if the school develops intramural sports or helps develop more extracurricular activities, the student’s will feel like a stronger part of a school family which is very valuable for student’s who may not have a strong family life at home.

Mapping

I think that the curriculum mapping plan can be beneficial for a district to keep tabs on continuity across the content in each class in the building. The problems with this program appear to me to be twofold. 1) This program relies greatly on teacher buy in. If teachers do not follow through, trying to map them together will not work and can crumble the program. 2) I think there is great fault in school district’s looking to change over to mapping plans as I feel that many schools struggle to implement changes appropriately.
Districts that have several buildings that teach the same grade would seem to also struggle with them across buildings. It would take a lot of time working inter-building-ly [I made up a word]. I can see my district attempting to adopt this policy while not following through at all. What I mean is, it seems like a good idea so our school system would jump at the idea to look better than the other local districts. They would not, however, offer assistance on how to align the programs across our four elementary schools.

Online Coursework is AOK with Me

I think the experience of online coursework is an appropriate shift in my educational experience. Getting a chance to learn all of the vast knowledge that Montclair has to offer me from the comfort of my own living room makes my commute wonderfully simple.

I like the opportunity to hone my computer skills while learning my new material. I think it is the approrpriate wave of the future and I am all for it.

I think that it could be useful to continue taking these half in class and half online courses. I think it could be beneficial for us to have a place, at a set time, to log on and actually talk with each other to answer each others' questions live as they come up.

Essential Question

1 Page Template

Stage 1: Desired Results

Established Goals:
1) Identify Impeachment
2) Discuss the reasons why Congress needs the power of Impeachment

Understanding: Students will understand how the process of impeachment works and what the value of the power of impeachment is to the United States.

Essential Questions:
1) Is impeachment an effective way to "check and balance" presidential actions?
2) Why does Congress need the power of impeachment?
3) How does the power of impeachment enable Congress to help check the power of the President?

Students will know: What impeachment is, why Congress gets the right of impeachment, what happens in the Case Study of Andrew Johnson

Students will be able to: Discuss the power of impeachment and decide whether or not Congress should have the right to impeach the President

Stage 2: Assessment Evidence

Performance Tasks: Students will produce a project acting out the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson where they debate the value of the Congressional impeachment power

Other Evidence: Classroom discussion

Stage 3: Learning Plan

Learning Activities: Students will be introduced to the concept of impeachment and discuss the values of such a power. Students will debate the pros and cons of the Congress having this right. Students will then use the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson as a way to see the weaknesses of the impeachment process.


I guess the problems people have with Understanding by Design is the fact that this style of planning is time consuming. Personally, this is the type of lesson planning that our district utilizes. I am used to the formality of it. I like the fact that, using this model, the particualr goals that are expected is the focal point of the plan. This is a great way to help, especially new teachers, to focus on their objective. I like the format being as that this is the format that I am used to utilizing.

Schmoker in my school

I failed to directly mention how Schmoker's revelations are relevent in my school. I do see a lot of examples of how teachers are not held accountable for their performance in class. Our school does feel it is imperative to always offer constructive criticism as no teacher can ever be completely perfect.

Criticizing Constructively to Aid Practice

I have mixed feelings about the Schmoker article. I was not happy with Schmoker judgment about education as a hard-line field. There are multiple facets of education that may not show up in other arenas. I don’t believe that education’s results can show up as quantitatively as in other areas. What I mean by this is simple. In business, if production and sales drop, the money that is made generally drops. The field is very cut and dry. Employees may have strong ties to their duties, but I believe that the connections pale in comparison to the connections made by teachers. In education there is a very strong personal tie between the employees [teachers] and their production [the students.] The teachers feel a more than professional bond to their work, and tend to take it personally when they are offered even the most constructive of criticisms. I am not trying to be an advocate of lassiere faire education. I think it is important to offer critiques to hone educational practice. However, I feel that in our area more than others a gentle hand must be used in evaluating teachers and other professionals. Like I said to open, I have mixed feelings about the article. I feel that it is vital for a school to evaluate itself and to try to reinvent teachers who are not performing up to the needs of their students. If you have read my blog, I don’t mean to be repetitive, but I believe that teachers need to be held accountable to their standards while having freedom to teach to their varied interests. That being said, even though I think evaluation needs to be made with a gentle hand, I think that it is the duty of administration to outline directly with staff where developmental needs lie while offering solutions on how to remedy the specific staff needs. Very basically, I believe an administrator can express some desire to change what is occurring in a classroom as long as the administrator can offer ideas and maybe some PD to help that teacher to grow his/her practice. Schmoker discusses the value of constructive criticism and I have to agree, if appropriately given, constructive criticism is vital for teachers to grow.

More on Did You Know

What are your initial reactions to what you saw in the presentation? I, quite frankly, was appaled by our lag and how we are lacking a real plan to bridge this gap.

What do we think it means to prepare students for the 21st century? I think teachers need to go out of our way and our comfort zone to teach foundation skills like ciritical thinking, independent thought, team building, etc. as the careers our students will be taking on may not exist as yet.

What skills do students need to survive and thrive in this new era? Critical thinking; outside the box thought; teamwork

What implications does this have for our current way of doing things? I think that the main implication is that we need to change our approach. Clearly, what we are doing is not working as well as we may wish. We need to study the approaches of otehr places, i.e. India and China, to see what we can do to better serve our students.

How do we get from here to there? Teachers, administrators, boards of education, and the US government need to all embrace the necessary changes. Once each link in the chain admits we need to develop, we can start on the right track towards helping our youth.

Did you know? No, I didn't, and I don't think any of us do.

Wow. Let me preface this post by stating that I knew only that we lagged behind other countries and that I did not know the extent of our gap.

Secondly, once again I believe I keep repeating myself, we need to take a look at the way we are educating our youth as their future jobs probably do not exist yet. We need to find ways to help our students to think outside of the box all on their own without being prompted by teachers/parents. We need to develop more independent thinking and critical thinking skill sets for our students to be able to work without being spoon fed information.

On another point, why don't we just blatantly admit our lag and study the approaches of other countries all out. I know, there has been research and "Did You Know" showcases this idea, but, I mean, our government should take the lead on this by helping us to learn what we can do to assist our students. Whether it is to find a new way to intrinsically motivate our kids or whatever it is, we need to find out. That would be more helpful than the old reliable governmental approach of standardized testing.

Lastly, in terms of technological advances, I understand that it may be difficult for school systems and veteran teachers to keep up with the ever-changing world. However, teachers should be willing to learn the new technologies as they come about through PD hours to be able to realte to our students. Using blogging as an approach to get kids to write is a tremendous idea, in my point of view.

Rodney Frelinghuysen Letter

Congressman Frelinghuysen,

It was my pleasure a few years back as an undergraduate student to meet you while serving on a panel of students at FDU that you debated several issues with, which included No Child Left Behind. After a couple years have passed, and I have become a tenured teacher here in Morris County, I would like to offer a very basic opinion about one aspect of NCLB that I, as an educator, fear is hurtful to our students. The fact of the matter is that I do not feel our students our learning to their max potential. My reason for this thought is that many of my colleagues, due to the stringent guidelines of NCLB, are being forced to teach directly to the many state mandated assessments and are no longer having the opportunity to directly teach to the specific skills and interests of our students. I think that the reason for this is fear that teachers have that is founded in district administrations sent down from the NJ DOE and, even further, from Congress. I would strongly urge you to please vote to revise NCLB to give teachers a bit more leeway in educating so that our students can have a better chance to learn their material.

Reading Don't Fix No Chevys

Never have I thought about the different ways that boys and girls learn in class. I mean, there are the stereotypical thoughts that boys perform better at History and Science, and girls excel in Language Arts, but I have never thought about the whys of how these ideas came about. It makes complete sense that boys who may not have an interest in sedate activities such as reading may struggle with it. Clearly it would benefit these students to read about topics that they enjoy as it will help their reading skills and peak their interest. This is a nice way to differentiate their content while still getting them to learn the skills.

Learn How to Learn in the 21st Century

Students are different now then they were 30 years ago. Students are different now then they were five years ago. In our ever-changing society that relies on invention and more widespread technology usage, it is the teacher's task to find ways to integrate technology usage into the classroom. Why not have students write blogs on the internet to respond to classroom topics? Why nto allow students to create web-pages designed to discuss the basis of an educational endeavor?

The greatest gift that the technology age has given our students is one that some teachers cannot stand. The gift I am speaking of is their desire to have their specific interests' peaked. What I mean is, our students are constantly facing choices about what they want to do and what they would like to read and work on. For teachers to reach their students today they need to give students options for topics and even for means of assessment to keep students interested in class. I think this is why the idea of differentiated instruction by student interest has developed. This gives students a chance to learn according to their specific needs and desires and keeps them highly motivated to learn to their best potential.

New First

Educational change is important to all teachers. It is important to think beyond the bounds of established curricula and to find other areas of necessary growth for students. In the Saber Tooth article, New First wanted to go beyond the standard learning that was being achieved to offer more standards to students to fit the needs of the world. I agree with what is being presented herein, and think that it is vital for educators to find a way to connect our students to what is their world. To this end, I deem it necessary for teachers to constantly be learning the new waves of technology to best help our students to grow in their world.

Time for NJ to Step Up

Get with the times State of NJ Department of Education! Particularly, update your web-site so it can be a useful tool for teachers and administrators.

While navigating this nearly unnavigatable [actually a word?] web-site, it dawned on me that since we are teaching technology to our students, why can't we teach the State Department of Education the same basics of technology. Maybe, what the State really needs, is a group of teachers to reinvent the standards site. I know, in my four plus years of teaching, I have never once found any need to go online for assistance, simply because I feel that the site offers no resources of any value.

180 Days

180 Days to fill with a yearlong curriculum. And field trips. And fire drills/intruder in the building drills. Don't forget assemblies. And ASK testing. There's also the half day prior to Thanksgiving.

The theory of 180 class days is just that, a theory. Don't get me wrong, I whole-hearterdly agree with the importance of a field trip, an assembly or two. But I do feel that occassionally classroom interruptions get out of hand. For instance, for each of the past three years, our district has spent big money on bringing in children's book writers for the students to hear about the writing process [side note: Ben Mikaelson, http://www.benmikaelsen.com/ really reached the kids well.] Alright, I get the reasons for it, they can help motivate students to write, to read, etc. But do the same group of kids need to see this same assembly three times in three years?

I think, as an administrator, it is important to include every possible learning scenario for our students. I do think that there comes a time for administrators to try to cut down on some school year interruptions to allow focus time on curriculum.

There is one particular field trip that we spend three days at with our sixth graders. It is a community building trip where students work on social skills and independence that I believe is imperative to their growth as young adults. I think if they were to lose this experience, some would struggle with their introduction to our school and not feel that they would be able to perform as well in their new environment.

Shame on Teachers

It is my belief that change is necessary and inevitable in education. Our students of today differ greater than students that we had even five to ten years ago. It is the duty of all educators, teachers and administrative, to always keep ears and eyes open for new ideas that can best help to educate students. We need to step out of our professional comfort zone and into a world that can contain a variety of new practices and ideas to assist our students' development. We also cannot react to quickly to a minimal adaptation in student performance. Research shows that it takes 4-6 years for an educational reform to reach its maximized potential ina school environment. I fear that, at least in my district, our administration is always looking for a quick way to raise our standardized scores, and we quickly dismiss eductional methods and gravitate towards other ones. We should be willing to accept long-term change and see how it can help our students before we scrap it to search for new ideas.
Now, I think it is fair to say that educational personnel need to always keep a look out for new ideas that can help in the classroom to add to daily lessons. I think that my main concern with education today is that many in our field feel it is quite alright to rest on their laurels and actually not search for new ways to teach. Once a teacher decides that the way they work their craft is paramount, I believe that teacher needs to retire. We are never going to be perfect at aiding all of our students. I hold that teachers who disagree may simply be unwilling to learn new practices and would probably benefit greater from retirement. I do not wish to come acorss and harsh and combative. I do, however, work with several teachers who go against the ideas that my district promotes [differentiation, lesson study, etc] simply because it would take them to much time to learn these new techniques.

The Prensky Challenge

Prensky has found a way to reach even the most oppositional of students and to help them to reach their maximized potential. If we were to offer students what, quite literally, could be the chance of a lifetime to learn a wide array of useful technological skills, we may be able to reach out to every potential demographic and give them the needed enthusiam that it would require to learn a year's curriculum in a 5 month term. However, there are a few issues that I think would need addressing.

1.) First and foremost, the class that would serve as guinea pigs for this experiment would have to include a group of highly motivated students to begin with. It would probably be best to work with a GT group of students or, at least, a group without mainstreamed Learning Disabled or ESL students who may struggle with the doubly fast-paced curriculum.

2.) It may be wise to teach this class in the manner of a college course. If you have students break up into teams to prepare work on different curricular units, they will be able to prepare lessons for themselves and share them with their classmates. This will take some of the time restraints off of the classroom teacher. Keeping all of the material, including student produced lessons, accounted for by standardized testing and other formal classroom assessments will ensure a strong accountability of your students.

3.) Finally, I think Prensky should also encouarge his students, as a further carrot, to showcase their particular talents in the second half of the course. If a student has a great deal of capability in the robotics field, that students should be able to serve as a sort of guest lecturer in that field to help the other students feel that these grandiose technological projects are attainable even at their young ages.

Original Post

This is just my way to verify proper set up of the blog.