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.