MIddle school student-teacher interaction

On Wednesday's class, a group presented on the book Not Much Just Chillin' by Linda Perstein. This book talks about the hidden lives of middle schoolers and what's going on in their minds, bodies, and in our society that causes them to be the way they are. Beside reflecting on my own middle school experiences, I got thinking about how I, as I future teacher, will impact the stereotypical middle schooler. I think there is currently a cyclical relationship between the middle school student and the teacher. Because of the stereotypes of middle schoolers being difficult the teachers may be more strict or not as excited about courses that they assume their students will not try at. Students see these attitudes of their teachers not expecting much of them and in return don't give the teacher much attention or effort in their classes. Teachers need to have more faith in the students and expect much of them. I think if the students see that the teacher is in invested and believes in them, then they will put forth more effort and get more educationally out of their middle school experience.

Chocolate Milk for Wellness??

Last week in class we talked about a competition that was put on by the Dairy Council in North Western Iowa: "Which school can drink the most chocolate milk:?" Decorah High School won. The prize money, around $15,000, is to be used for wellness activities/ facilities. I think this is irresponsible for a school to sponser a Chocolate milk contest.. 3 Cartons of chocolate milk (that the average Decorah high school kid consumed each day contains about 1/2 of the daily processed sugar that kids should be getting. I think the contest is a great idea to encourage milk drinking, but it should be WHITE milk! I am taking a Nutrition course this semester, and one day we discussed this event and its implications for children. By By encouraging kids to drink a few cartons of chocolate milk, we are in effect telling them that it is okay to eat that much sugar. Yes, kids are saying "At leeast it's better than pop." Sure, they may be right on that one, but there is still almost the same amount of sugar in both chocolate milk and pop. This contest just makes me laugh and cringe at the same time, thinking about how many more kids will now prefer chocolate milk to white milk.

Cancel classes day before spring break?

Earlier this week, Jim asked in class what our opinions were about teachers canceling classes the day before breaks since often times many students need to leave early. I did not have a strong opinion of this at the time, but since have thought more about it. I think that teachers should absolutely NOT cancel their classes. For example, this upcoming spring break, the break is officially marked on teh calendar as starting on Saturday. Students should make their accomodations for leaving after their classes are finished. Jim gave the example of someone needing to leave early to catch a flight. I'd say- Book your flight for a later time that you can still make it to after attending your classes. If professors are going to cancel classes, then students are going to try to leave early from their Thursday classes. There needs to be a definite start of break, which is Saturday of after your Friday classes are over. I do think there could be a few extreme case exceptions to this, but in general, I belive if I student elects to miss a class right before break, they should suffer the consequences of missing class just like if they skipped any other day of class that semester.

Assimilation Lecture experience

Wednesday's lecture given by Jim Langholz was on the topic of Assimilation. Rather than give answers or concrete conclusions, Jim instead added more questions to my mind (which was already swimming with questions before the lecture.) Before the lecture Doug Knick emailed all of the Paideia students telling us to assemble in the basement instead of the lecture hall and about 2 munutes after class was supposed to start to go to class as a large group. Initially, it didn't even cross my mind that I was just blindly following the instructions of Doug. Knowing Doug and Jim's relationship and Jim's sense of humor, I just figured it would be a funny joke. While Doug's experiment was obviously an example of assimilation, so is going to the lecture and class on time every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and following all of the norms and criteria of the course in order to achieve what? a good grade? life enrichment? I'm trying to understand why we do these things we do? But on the flip side, wouldn't the world just be a crazy place if everyone just did whatever the heck they wanted? Questions questions questions!

Early Education

There has talk about the idea of mandating early education for all children in our country. Today my discussion group talked about this. While I don't believe that they should be mandated for all children, it would be great if there were more support for lower income families who would like to send their kids to preschool. (I realize that there is not an unlimited supply of funds in this country, but I feel this is something important.) There are programs like Head Start and some schools that provide aid for those who can't afford it, but unfortunately there are long waiting lists and not enough aid for everyone. I believe these years of early education are very important for children. I would hope that parents are raising their kids from the very beginning, teaching them their values and general behaviors of our society, but I would incorrect if I thought this happened everywhere. Early education is an opportunity for these kids who are missing out on these lessons from their parents to learn them somewhere else. As for the kids already receiving nurturing in their home lives: Early education provides kids with something they can't learn at home - interacting with others (besides siblings,) sharing, and other life skills that one must learn through interacting with others who don't the same attitudes or viewpoints. I don't believe learning to read or extensive academic subject should be started yet at this young age, but there are many other lessons that will positively impact the children's lives.

Micahel Pollan's In Defense of Food: Simillarities in Education?

This Tuesday (2/23) I attended the Farwell Distinguished Lecture entitled In Defense of Food; the Omnivore's Solution by Michael Pollan. Pollan spoke about what's wrong with the way we eat and look at food. He described the "American paradox": our unhealthy obsession with health. I thoroughly enjoyed what Pollan had to say, not only because I am taking a nutrition course this semester, but also because of the correlations between food and education that Pollan's words got me thinking about.
Pollan asked the question, "How do we get to this point?" He described how the unspoken judgements and ideology of nutrientism is the root of our problem. Pollan laid out 4 main points of nutrianism. Below I will compare these ideas about what has gone wrong in our understanding of food is quite comparable to the ineffective beliefs that have made education what it is today.

1. The key to understanding any food is understanding the nutrients they contain. Similarily, I think we may focus to much on what schools are made up of (students based on race, SES, etc.) I'm not saying we should completely ignore this - we can't. But what about looking at the bigger picture of what education should be for everyone?

2. We need experts who understand better than us to tell us what to eat and depend solely on them. In education, we depend so much on the research. We base our instructional strategies and the content we teach on the "teacher experts." When people say, "You must have a standardized test score of x to succeed (or at least graduate from high school), why do we so willingly take their word for it and put so much dependence on the numbers?

3. We divide the food world into good and evil nutrients. We focus so much on whatever the "good" nutrients are at the time. We divide teaching ideologies, types of students, and many other aspects of education into good and evil sides. We also follow several trends of the times within our classrooms. I believe it is good for education to work for what the society needs as time changes, but not every aspect of society need be followed and dropped so quickly.

4. The whole point of eating is health. Whereas, in other countries eating is for pleasure, community, identity, etc. I think we may be missing the point of education too. Are we just putting kids through schooling to give them something to do? Conditioning them to be good little American workers? Teaching them that it's just your intelligence measured by a number that will determine the success of your life?

Michael Pollan addressed many other interesting beliefs that we hold about food, that just seem ridiculous when you actually think about it. What about educations has become this way? How did we get to this point?

Socialization in schools: Great goal, but not following through

There is often discussion about the purpose of schoooling. I believe one important goal of education is socialization. I found a definition on dictionary.com that I feel defines the process well: “a continuing process whereby an individual acquires a personal identity and learns the norms, values, behavior, and social skills appropriate to his or her social position.” Socialization within our schools would ideally prepare students for the behaviors and social skills that are expected of them once they get out into the “real world.” It would create proactive individuals who are confident in their personal identity and the values and behaviors of their social position. Unfortunately, there are several factors in our school systems today that are decreasing the possibility of this socialization to occur. For instance, many schools are cutting the amount of time given for lunch and recess (some lunch periods down to 20 minutes!) What ever happened to sitting down, relaxing, and actually enjoying lunch while socializing with others? Yes, much stress has been put on meeting academic standards, but do we really need to cut down the time set aside for kids to play with one and other and to develop as a kid (part of their current social position)? I agree with Brighouse in On Education when he says that we must provide for our students the best judgement for their long term flourishing, not just our viewpoints or opinions for them in short term. Part of developing for long-term flourishing includes going through the stages of social development as a child (while they're still a child.) I don't know how to solve this issue, but here are a few ideas: 1) Evaluate our philosophy often, making sure it is fitting to the needs of our specific classes and the changing times. 2) provide opportunities for students to simply socialize on a deeper level whether it's in study hall, discussing the meaning of a song in choir, communicate in phys-ed and sports (sportsmanship. 3) Encourage the development of students' personal identities by not teaching to one level, but making accommodations and differentiating your instruction to reach each child.

A new experience

This semester I will be blogging about a course I'm taking, "Making Decisions in US Schools." I currently don't know much about the politics of education. I am prepared to be challenged in this course and look forward to exploring new ideas and developing my own philosophy of education. Here's to a new look at education.