Fun and helpful website

So I was searching online for a helpful website for teachers. I came across this website that listed a bunch of different categories of subjects for teachers and if you click on a category it takes you to a page with many links to other websites that can make learning fun for your students. Thought you guys might like to see it, especially if you are an El. Ed major. Who knows if this site will still be around when we teach but it shows that there are ways to make learning fun in your classroom!

http://www.bestedsites.com/

Letters to a Young Teacher

I have posted my groups video on the side of my blog. It is the first video. It is called Ed psych 220 if you get confused which one it is.

Chalk

I really liked the first half of the movie Chalk. I enjoyed the sarcastic tone throughout the movie. It helped emphasize how ridiculous the things the teachers were saying and doing actually were. I teacher never tells a student to not say so much in class because they are smarter than the teacher or just walks out on a class because they are frustrated. The movie really showed that not just anyone can be a teacher which I was really glad to see because I get crap all the time about "those who can't do teach". Someone who was a computer engineer can't just be put in a history classroom and expect to be able to teach the class. They need people skills (which the teacher in the movie didn't have at all!) and they need to be an expert in the content area that they teach. Just because you are smart doesn't mean you can actually teach and get through to students. Yes, anyone can go up in front of a class and ramble on while the students are falling asleep and daydreaming, but NOT just anyone can go up in front of the class and engage the students for the whole class period. That takes education, talent, and HEART. I can't wait to finish up Chalk next week to see what else they make fun of in the teaching world to get the point about teaching across!

Youtube link

I was searching youtube for something related to motivation since we seem to focus on that a lot in class even if we don't really realize it. Motivation is a part of everyone's life but as teachers we have to realize that students all learn differently from each other and even differently than how we learned in school. Here's a video about it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_6GUx1Zx0w&feature=related

Parents at Lecture

I thought it was very interesting to hear the parents perspective now that I am a little bit more informed about the logistics of Education since I've taken some Education classes. I kind of figured that parents really wouldn't understand what the point of all the testing is but it was interesting that the 2 parents involved in Education in some way were not as harsh towards NCLB and the testing but the Dad who is a lawyer was very openly against standardized testing. I also found it interesting how each parent was involved in their children's education to varying amounts. The dad said that he let his kids deal with problems at school until they come to him for advice or he can tell for sure that something isn't going well and his child is always upset. The 2 moms have kids with disabilities so they had to be involved in the education process a little bit more which causes them to advocate for their child more instead of the child advocating for themself. Parents all have different opinions about education but, in the end, they just want their children to be happy, enjoy school, be somewhat motivated and successful. This is all that matters to a parent, not the state test scores or any graphs, just are they happy and doing at least moderately well.

Lecture by Dr. Charles Ahmjad-Ali

Dr. Charles Ahmjad-Ali gave a lecture about how Christianity and Islam are connected to each other. This lecture was kind of hard to follow but one thing I got out of it was when he said "the separation of church and state never meant the separation of religion and politics." I see this in schools because of what influences the decisions we make for the schools and policies. People making decisions in schools try to leave their personal ideas out of the decisions and just use the facts. But we all know that everyone's emotions come into decision making at some point in the process. Our morals and beliefs come into play even if we don't want them to. Just because we say that the church and state are separated doesn't mean we actually do that. Subconsciously our beliefs influence what decision we make. Our religion or belief in no religion influences what we believe in the first place, therefore affecting what our morals are and what decisions we make. I think it is good that some of our morals influence the decisions we make for schools because there are students involved. In a way it puts what people believe are the students' best interests first. If all decisions were made based on logistics then the schools wouldn't be as personal for students. There is a line of when letting your morals take over too much but I'm not sure where that line is. We are all human so we can't completely block our feelings and morals.

New Teachers

It was really nice to hear from teachers that graduated somewhat recently. They were easier to realte to than the school board and administrators that came to talk to us. I liked how they were honest about teaching. Saying that, yes, there might be days where you just want to stay in bed but as soon as you get to school you feel better because of the students. I also liked that they said you can't expect to be able to change things and implement new ways of doing things because the teachers that have been there for a while have ways of doing things that have worked for them in the past. It might work to try it in your class on your own and then if it does work, tell the other teachers and they might listen to you more since you have evidence of it working. It is also important to take time on your lunch break or something to talk with your colleagues. It's okay to step away from teaching for that little bit and talk about other things in the world. As a teacher you will most likely have to take your work home with you but also take time for yourself because it will make you a much happier person. As a teacher, you also need to relate to your students. I liked how the one teacher played Hannah Montana or Jonas Brothers music for her students in the morning to get them energized for the day. Just the little things help your students see that you actually have a life and you aren't just a teacher. I think these teachers were the most useful ones to hear from in our night lectures.

Effective Teaching

Today in class we discussed effective teaching. To me it was conveyed that effective teaching cannot be engaging/interesting since we divided them into two different categories. I think that engaging/interesting activities is a sub-category of effective teaching. It is one way to effectively teach when combined with other ways to teach. The main part of effective teaching, to me, is differentiation. One way to differentiate is to use different methods of making the lesson interesting or engaging. I believe it is easier for anyone to learn if they can relate to the topic somehow so they have something to build off of. One could also say the engaging/interesting teaching IS differentiation because you are trying to find ways to engage everyone in your class in the lesson. It may be just an enthusiastic lecture or it may be a hands-on activity. There are many ways to engage your students which is why I feel that in order to be an effective teacher you have to know how to engage and capture your students in the topic.
The example of engaging/interesting teaching in class about "the tea" might have been an extreme or elaborate way of engaging the students. It seemed to get the children's interest in learning about the Victorian Era and they did different projects in each class to relate back to the unit. For some students this is the perfect way to teach them information and for others, they might not see the point. In the situation described it looked like almost every student looked forward to "the tea". If they enjoy learning then they remember more. It's the teachers job to make sure that there are opportunities available for the students to actually learn valuable information that they need to know about the unit.

Discussion with Administrators

The discussion with the Decorah administrators was good insight into the teaching world. It gave perspective and showed that as a teacher NCLB isn't necessarily a bad thing. They really rely on those test scores to help them decide what to do. It was comforting to hear that as long as you do the job you are supposed to and teach everything you are supposed to then NCLB will fall into place. It was also nice to know that teachers know that the tests aren't always reliable and that there are students who do the exact opposite on the test compared to how they do in the classroom. The main thing I took from this discussion was that teaching is always changing and their are never 2 days alike. This makes me even more excited to teach because I know it will always be interesting.

Banned Books

So today I just read the article in the recent Chips issue about Banned Books Week. I didn't know that this was even taking place in our bookstore here at Luther, much less existed at all. I don't really understand why someone would feel that they need to bann the book from everyone in society. I know people say they are trying to protect other people, mostly children, from certain ideas but it seems a little bit ridiculous. I think banning books is taking away people's freedom to express themselves. It's almost like we are trying to hide issues in our society by banning these books. Yes, there is a certain age for certain topics but you can't keep these issues hidden for all of eternity. Some books that talk about homosexuality, or rape and abuse, or depression and suicide, plus many more issues, are the only ways people have to relate to something. They feel like someone else knows how they feel. By banning a book about race it shows that we as a country have not actually come to terms with these issues even though it's said in history books that, everything was solved in the 70's. I think with these books people could learn to be more accepting and it wouldn't seem so taboo to talk about certain issues in society. Hiding the books by authors that actually have the courage to talk about something everyone else is afraid of is not going to hide the actual issue.
As teachers I know we need to carefully think about what we are going to have our students read but I think some of the books that are banned, if read at the right age they can be beneficial to our students. It makes the students think about the issues in the past and if they had changed today. Also, as teachers we can emphasize the fact that this is how certain things were viewed at this time. We don't have to teach our students these views that we don't agree with anymore, they should just at least now that they existed at some time and see how far society has come.
Below is a link to a page from the American Library Association's website. It is about banned books and if you go to the bottom of this site, "under Frequently Challenged Books" you can click on the last word (here) to see the list of most challenged books and other information about banned books.

http://www.lita.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oif/bannedbooksweek/backgroundb/background.cfm

High Stakes Community School

Before the lecture, I was very confused about what was exactly going to happen during lecture. I didn't know we would actually be standing up and presenting our sides about the issue. Since our class was never assigned a role to play we didn't think we would have to do much with our role. It seemed that it would be an informal debate. I think if we would have actually been assigned a role in class and told more of the layout of what was going to happen in lecture we would have known how to prepare.
Once we got into the lecture/debate though, I found it to be very interesting. It was good to hear how different groups would support or not support the proposal and why. It made me think about NCLB more and what I think actually needs to be changed in it. I'm not really sure that I completely understand everything about NCLB. What level does it specifically require each student to be at? Are there exceptions for students with disabilities or in special education? What happens to teachers if they do everything they can to prepare their students for the tests but they still didn't pass? Are these standarized tests really the best way to see what level students are at? Some students are intimidated by tests and freeze up on them. I think we need to spend a little bit more time learning the guidelines in NCLB before we learn what needs to be changed. It would help us understand why current teachers feel the need to change NCLB. I know that with the upcoming election NCLB could change in the near future but to understand that change we need to know what the current guidelines are.
The role playing helped us form opinons about education methods but as far as NCLB goes we just learned what is wrong with it, not just the general outline of how it works in the actual schools.

Library Lecture

I feel like the lecture about library resources was mare than we needed. I think if we would have gotten a list of the references and sources that she gave us we could have figured out where to find stuff ourselves and spent our time in a better way during lecture. There was way too much time spent looking at the ERIC site when it is pretty much the same thing as every other EBSCO website. We also were not told about the Curriculum Library which we will need to know about in our education career. This lecture just seemed kind of pointless to me because we learned a lot of this stuff about the library in Paideia last year and we are from the technology generation and most of us know our way around the WWW pretty well, at least well enough to figure out how to use a search engine or search on EBSCO. I would have rather spent our time doing something else.

Chalk and Wire and Class Discussion

I feel like in the longrun chalk and wire will be very useful as a teacher searching for a job. It is basically helping us to prepare our professional portfolio and resume. Right now it just seems kind of tedious and almost impossible as to how we are going to cover all the competencies for each level of portfolio in our 3 years left. I hope it all falls into place a little bit more as things move along in our classes. In the future, I will be very grateful to have been required to do this portfolio all through school so I don't have to do it on my own when I am looking for a teaching position.

The class discussion we had today (Wed. 9/24) I feel was very interesting. I always wonder why we teach children what we do and why people feel that they need to learn certain subjects. In some ways it is what is expected of us. In high school, a lot of people expect students to get all the way up to Calculus if they can. But for me, taking the difficult classes that I probably wouldn't need ever in my life were just a way to challenge my brain and keep me thinking in new ways. Yeah, it's nice to not have 3 hours of homework every night if you take easy classes or the minimum requirements but I get bored taking those classes and feel that I'm not working to my full potential. When I know I could be doing more it makes me feel lazy. It's a hard semester when you take these classes but it opens your mind to a new world and who knows, maybe you find something you really like to learn about or you will discover that even though you are good at something and capable of doing it, it just isn't your cup of tea. I want to be taught things that I didn't know before and that will challenge how I think and make me work hard. I think that is the point of taking the more difficult classes that you will never use again in your life.

Reaction the "Write and Wrong" article

I was amazed when I read this article! I couldn't believe that a teacher would be fired after cooperating with the principle of the school to not start out with the book "The Freedom Writers". She asked parents for permission to read the book in class and not one of the parents asked their child to return the book to school once they were handed out. I feel like the principle didn't even read the book so they couldn't have realized that the students in this class would have related very well to the students in the book. The teacher didn't even really seem like she got a chance to explain why she wanted her students to read it. She was just told to not start with it. But on the other hand, what are you supposed to do when the one or two parents that didn't sign the permission form to read the book come in and complain? I don't think it seemed likely that the parents would complain about the book because none of the students returned their books. I feel like the administration should have explained more about why they didn't want the book used in the classroom because this may have helped the teacher to understand why she couldn't use it and may have caused her to not hand it out to her students ever during the year, and then she wouldn't have been fired. I think the school needs to communicate more with teachers so they know why decisions are being made.

"Lions for Lambs" Reflection

At first, I didn't really understand what a movie about war over in the Middle East had anything to do about teaching, but as the movie went on we met the profesor and his student. The student was so unmotivated but you could tell he was smart. He made up the lamest excuses for why he didn't show up to class. I liked how the profesor said something like, if you can't balance your academic and social life then you shouldn't be in school. I think that is very true. There needs to be room for fun but you can NEVER forget why you are going to school, to learn. I also liked how the profesor said his job was to sell the student to the student. I agree that that is a big part of teaching. Teachers are trying to show their students how valuable they are and what their potential is. Teachers should always be pushing their students to do better. Overall, the sections of the movie where the profesor was talking with his student were very useful for teachers to learn something from.

Reaction to Hiroshima Lecture 9/12/08

I thought this lecture on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was pretty interesting. The information about atomic bombs was something new to me and hearing the story of Mr. Inoye gave great insight to what it was really like for someone that lived there during the bombing. The presentation was definitely geared towards college level thinkers. For younger kids, this lecture would have been completely boring and not understandable. A PowerPoint was used to show the main points of the atomic bomb information but it was not creative by any means.
I really liked how Mr. Inoye talked about education. He had to leave school to work in military factories when he was in eighth grade, and after the war he wasn’t really sure if he wanted to continue his education. His father encouraged him to go back to school; to make a better life for him in the future. Mr. Inoye loved to read and had a book collection that he was devastated to lose in the bombing. Education was so important for his family that he had to walk three miles, take the train, take a streetcar, and then walk another mile before he reached the makeshift school. The building was so rundown that when it rained the students had to hold umbrellas above their heads while sitting at their desks. To me, this shows just how important education was to Mr. Inoye and that he didn’t take it for granted. I just wish that younger middle school and high school students could have been at this lecture to hear his story so they realized how well off they are.