I love the analogies he used in his video clip. I agree that teaching should not be like making motor cars, but at this point in our education system, it tends to lean in that direction. But do teachers really have a choice not to work on such a mass production system? What I mean is, teachers have this standard we must reach. Principals, superintendents, they all have a certain goal for their teachers to accomplish, and that goal as we know, is to have the students pass the state test. Honestly, it's not even to get the students to pass high school. From what I can see, teachers are trying to save their own butts, and want to get their students to pass the SOL test so that they don't get fired. And all of this reform talk that Obama is doing isn't helping the situation. Why in the world would you fire all of the teachers at an under-performing school? It's exactly acts like this that cause fear in teachers to perform higher (get better SOL/state test passing scores) which comes right back to Ken's point about building motorcars. This gets me pretty fired up, because I'm about 95% sure that there was at least 1 teacher in that Rhode Island school that actually cared about the students and not the test!
It's pretty rough for teachers right now. We are in a lose-lose situation on our part. We can teach the way schools want us to, and conform, but keep our jobs, or we can inspire kids to find their passion and grow, at the risk of losing our jobs. I know that this is a very extreme statement and situation, but I think that we still need to find that middle ground. I believe that at Virginia Tech, the masters education program that we are all in, is preparing us for such a time as this. I can see the value of inquiry and getting students to think for themselves. It still gets the SOLs across, but we are breaking through the barrier and leading the kids away from the road to the bad neighborhood.
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I think we do have a choice about our educational practices. That choice may happen when we choose where we work, but it is still a choice. The schools where you MUST conform are in the public realm. I think it's sad, but there are definitely many private schools out there that aim at student understanding, not test taking.
ReplyDeleteTo comment on the RI school district (which is really close to where I grew up... my parents were all over this when it was hapening), that situation has been pretty misrepresented by the media. Central Falls is a truly underperforming school district. They had a 48% graduation rate! 48%! That's crazy! More than half the kids don't finish high school!
I agree that firing all the teachers is probably not the best plan of action, but it was not the first option. Check out this article, which does a better job of talking about the "why's" than the one that was linked from the other page. http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/03/17/rhode.island.school.reform/index.html?iref=allsearch
I think it's disappointing that it is even being discussed (and I'm not sure I like the whole way this funding is being handed out...), but sometimes you have to have drastic measure in place to make people take the reform seriously. I just hope that the people involved don't lose sight of the most important issue; the kids and their education.
Ahh that Rhode Island thing made me soooo mad! If you read more about it, those students gave up. It was not only the high school teachers' fault, but the parents, the elementary and middle school teachers as well. Plus it is a union and that raises more issues. Some of those teachers wanted to try, but the union wouldn't let them.
ReplyDeleteI agree fully that teachers are in a hard situation right now. How are teachers suppose to reform their classroom when more restrictions and regulations are placed on them? I like that we are not teach to the test. My problem that I have experienced with my students is that non-inquiry based learning is so engrained in their heads that when I tried easy simple inquiry based activities they did not like it and didn't understand what to do. I'm hoping this will be easier when we all have our own class for a full year and the students won't have to try to do something new after that have had a certain rutine for the past 6-7 months. I really wish teachers didn't have the pressures of getting fired if their students dont pass a test. Learning occurs in many ways and isn't represented fairly through one test. I hope we can help change and inspire our students for a better future in education.
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