How my school was organized.

I attended Anoka High School. Our school was organized in a block schedule, with about a nine month school year from September to the beginning of June. I had four classes a day for a semester, some elective classes switched at the end of the quarter but the core classes lasted for a whole semester. I enjoyed this schedule because it allowed longer time in the classes and less stress about having to worry about homework for 6 or 7 classes. One thing I did not like about this was that if I had math at the beginning of my freshman year then not until the second semester of my sophomore year, that leaves a big gap of not having a math course. Over all I thought this worked out well, and now this year at Anoka they have switched to trimesters and 5 classes a day, I am glad I left before this change.

Group Five Presentation: Chapter 8

Group five presented on chapter 8, organization of American schools. The presentation was full of information about the types of different schools and how they are setup, organized. They talked about the characteristics of an effective school, a few examples are: optimal school and class size, clear academic focus and strong leadership, and a strong parental involvement. We watched a video on virtual schools. Virtual schools are schools that take place completely online. This had become a more popular trend over the years. Then they went on to talk about 4 day a week schools, and the pro's and cons of going to school only four days a week. We talked about year round schools, block scheduling and all day kindergarten. This group did very well providing us with plenty of information.

2 Million Minutes

Today we watched a video in class called 2 Million Minutes. They estimate that students spend on average 2 million minutes in school this video follows school in China, The United States, and India. In each countries those 2 million minutes are spend drastically different. The difference in how time is spent reflects how students do on testing, their level of determination, and the career path they choose to take.

In China there determination comes from wanted to get out of poverty, they want a better life for themselves and their family. Most of the students time in China is spent either at school or at home. They are not allowed to drive at the age of 16 like we are here in America. Their family wants nothing more than for their child to succeed in school and get a quality education. Chinese students are in school twice as long over all than here in America.

Indian schools are for-profit schools.They have education much like China with long days and an intense work load. The students parents push the career onto their child that they feel will make them successful. They do not take jobs that are risks like careers in sports, music or arts. They want a career that will allow them to be financially stable. One girl stated she felt "American education is like a dream no homework, light syllabuss and study only when you want to." This statement is pretty much true. Most, not all, American students do not spend as much studying as they do hanging out with friends or playing sports.

The American school they visited was a suburb school with great test scores. These students spend much less time on school work then they do on other activities. We scored 24 out of 29 countries in math. One professional talked about how Americans do work hard that is not the problem. The problem is how we spend out time, many students are involved in extra circular activities that take up a lot of time. For example, football there is an average of 20 hours a week spent practicing football. If the time was spent on homework and school there could be a big difference in school work completed by the student.

Unequal Education Video

In  class we watched a video called Unequal Education. This video consisted of taking videos from two very different schools for a time period of the semester. One school was in the Suburb called Riverdale. The second school was an inner city school and I do not recall the name of this school. The school in the suburb had very new equipment and much more equipment than the inner city school, there was a nice rec area and many activities for the students to do after school. On the other hand the inner city school had no such thing. There gymnasium was small and crowed, they have only basketball hoops to keep the children busy. This school is also in the bad part of town so the fact that they have no place to escape to after school is very upsetting. The education between the two school is drastically different. The suburbs school is equipped with fully trained teachers, text books and equipment. Many of the teachers in the inner city school are not qualified to be teaching in the areas that they are teaching in. For example their science teacher, he did not go to school for anything related to science, he is a dance instructor. Although the principal at the inner city school is very inspiring. He knows that his school does not have the best educational system, but he goes out everyday to make sure these children get to school, and receive some sort of education.

The video also followed around some children from each school. Lonnie is from the inner city school. Lonnie is a smart boy, but he hates school and is very bored with his classes. He feels they are too easy but has no interest in even doing the work that he claims to be "easy." I feel he would do much better in classes that are of interest to him and if he knew that he was getting a quality education. The students they talked to at the suburb school knew what they wanted to do after school, assumed that they would be going to a good college. It is very disappointing to me to know that these differences in schools is a reality. All students deserve an equal education but that just doesn't happen.

Group Four Presentation

Group four did there presentation on Chapter 7 which is called the Philosophy of Education. I thought that the presentation today went very well. We got an important quiz that helped us find what our philosophy of teaching is. These results are will help us write our paper and the end of the term. The group gave a lot of insightful information as well as showed us a few video clips that related to the PowerPoint. They went through four different types of philosophy: Perennialism, Essenitalism, Progressivism and Social Reconstrutionism. For each of these different types they gave us detailed information from the text about them. They also included some very inspiring quotes.

21st Century Skills Video

In class a few weeks ago we watched a Clip of a speech by Tony Wagner. He went through a part of his book  The Global Achievement Gap. There are several skills that Tony came up with that current employers are looking for when they hire an employee. The seven are as follows:
1. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
2. Collaboration Across Networks
3. Adaptability and Initiative
4. Accessing and Analyzing Information
5.Effective Oral and Written Communication
6. Curiosity and Imagination
Watching this video and reading this book by Tony Wagner was inspiring and will be very helpful. I think the first step of Critical thinking and problem solving may be the most important. Students these days do not do this as much as they should, and like Tony said when you are thinking and problem solving you will ask questions. Asking good questions shows that you are dedicated to learning new things, and are able to figure it out.

IDI Blog

My IDI score was about where I thought it would be. My perceived orientation was 124. Then my developmental orientation was 103. The gap between the two was pretty high a "meaningful difference." As our teacher explained throughout our next few years we are going to try to find ways to close this gap and get out developmental orientation higher. I went to a school with a lot of diverse students, but I never really interacted very much with students outside of my group of friends. The next few years of schooling I would like to branch out and have new experiences within different cultures.

Day 4

I love my class!!! I went in today because they do not have school tomorrow and we are on spring break so I had some extra time to make it in. This is such a wonderful class, and Kari is a great teacher! I also LOVE being at Ramsey because I know so many people there. I got to see some more children from Adventures plus in the hall way. They are in second grade now and are growing up so fast. I got to see one little girl, Maddie who was at Adventures Plus as long as I was. It is true how children have an impact on you.

When I got to the class the children were excited to see me. I was able to work with three children on their math boxes. Doing this once again made me realize how much different they are teaching math. There was a subtraction problem that they were having a really hard time with. I did not know how to explain it to them, and felt kinda stupid. So I asked Kari how to best explain it to them and she told me  few ways they are taught to subtract, a main thing is them understanding why their method works. So we talked about that with them and I had the children work together to figure the problem out. After math Kari asked me if I would read a chapter from their story to them, I forgot my glasses today but I made it through the chapter. :) Today acted as a Friday and we did fun club after the story. A child's father brought in some ice cream snacks and the children loved that! They were very wild today since it was the last day of school before break, but I had fun! This has been a great experience so far and I am excited for the rest of my time I am able to spend at Ramsey.

Obama Pushes Education Turnaround

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110308/ap_on_re_us/us_obama_6

This article talks about Obama's visit to a school in Boston and how Bill Gates and his wife donated money to the school and they improved their graduation rate. Also, that the responsibility for getting a better education system falls on everyone including the students. Both parties of the house are coming together and realizing something needs to be done about our education system. Our schools need more money, that we don't have, but need to find a way to get. There are many changes that need to be made and I just hope they will be able to be made fast and start making chances as soon as possible.

Group Two Presentation

Group two did chapter 5; student diversity-development, ability and exceptionalities. They started with passing out a IEP and some other handouts. They did a great job going through the specifics about the chapter. Their information was very in depth. They talked about how teachers can accept students into their classroom and how they can adapt things to help the children with disabilities. They gave a list of ideas from the book about specific things a teacher can do, I like that they included that into the presentation

Group One Presentation

I was in the first group presentation we did chapter 4; student diversity. I enjoyed working on this presentation, my group all got along very well making it easier to work on a project. We had an introduction of diversity and the concepts that go alone with that. Also some main facts about diversity in schools, what it looks like now and how it will be in the future. After that we went in to talking about bringing diversity into the classrooms and acceptable ways to do that. Then finished with how it affects the students. We did a class discussion and I was surprised by the responses and very pleased that people did respond. I enjoy hearing what the class has to say and their opinions. Over all I felt our presentation went very well!

Day 3: Field Experience

Each day had been going about the same way. Today I was able to go into the office and catch up with some of my old friend's mothers who work there. It was very nice to see them and be familiar with the people at Ramsey Elementary. Also a mother came in from Adventures Plus where I used to work, which was nice to be able to catch up on how the kids were doing! The children were very excited to see my like usual when I came in. Friday we did exploration activities for math. The children were asked to practice making estimates. Also they used polygon blocks to explore fractions with shapes. The math they are teaching is a lot different than when I grew up and I like the new way. They also worked on problems from their math books, and I had the chance to work one on one with one of the little boys who was a little slower and needed some extra help. I felt bad for this child because he was slower I noticed that he never really finishes his math problems. He is smart, it just takes him a little more time than the other students. This student is going through a very hard time so I know that this time we spent on his math problems made him happy, even though it was only a few minutes. Kari spent a little time explaining to me the lesson plans and how they work. It is pretty much all laid out for her, and I feel as if that leaves her with no room to be creative or to expand the learning. It is do the lesson, worksheets, a game or two then you test them. There is a lot of teaching for tests for math, this is talked about in the book we are reading Global Achievement Gap and I have been able to see that first hand. It is sad that it is that way.

Speaking in Tongues

On Tuesday we watched a video called Speaking in Tongues. It was about immersion programs and mainly focuses on Spanish and Chinese. I was blown away by how well these children were able to speak a new language at such a young age. Being bilingual has many great benefits. These children that know another language are going to have a much easier time finding jobs, they will not be limited to jobs in the U.S. Being bilingual allows them to eliminate limitations that exists by being monolingual, it gives them more options for a better future. In the video it stated something along the lines of, learning another language at such a young age allows them to use and trigger parts of the brain that typically are not used at such a young age.