ED 240 #5: Who cares?

So I've been trying to answer the question that I try to answer for my students when I prepare a lesson plan: "Why do I care about what's being taught?"

This program has thrown us a lot of fast balls, more than a few curve balls, and a couple of wicked knuckleballs...and honestly it's been really difficult to even get a hit, let alone a home run. Well, okay, I can't say that I've completely struck out, but it has been challenging.

So baseball metaphors aside, why do I care? Is it because I want the prestige of a Master's Degree? Do I honestly care about bettering myself and "mastering" the skills I need to become a passionate, powerful teacher? Or do I just want the pay increase? Or is it a little bit of everything?

I find that, as long as the content seems relevant, I enjoy learning. I honestly enjoy stretching my mind, my intellect and doing the work that will improve my understanding of my new profession. I wish I had been like this during my undergraduate days. My grades would have been a heck of a lot better. Be that as it may, I have honestly enjoyed learning about the technology tools available that I can use to better instruct my students. I would have never used Powerpoint to create an adventure type presentation...because I would not have known that was possible. I now use Google docs for just about every assignment in all of my classes. In my other classes I have learned how to conduct my own research and how in many ways science had changed history and how history has driven scientific discovery. As long as it is relevant I stay interested and I try to learn it.

I guess that is the lesson for me over all, and the one I will take into the classroom with me. The content being learned has to be RELEVANT to the students in order to keep their interest. It seems like a simple concept. Keep it relevant. But as a wise many once said, it is the simple things which are the most difficult to accomplish.

ED 240# 4: Cheating in Atlanta Schools...by TEACHERS!

This week I read a story about cheating in Atlanta schools. This cheating was not by students, it was by teachers and administration! Apparently folks in the Atlanta Public Schools were so concerned about their districts' performance in state regulated testing that they felt the only way to keep the state off their necks was to change the answers on students' scoresheets. Dozens of teachers and 38 principals (yes, THIRTY-EIGHT!) were found culpable in a 428 page report carried out by state investigators. Some teachers interviewed in the report said that "APS was run like a MOB" and if you did not go along with the cheating to improve school scores you were threatened by administration in some cases. Although this is an extreme case, it illustrates to me just how harmful state testing can be. The teachers felt so pressured to improve their scores they cheated.

The question I have is this: why didn't they feel they could increase learning in their classrooms and improve their scores honestly? Why didn't they trust their own teaching skills? Why didn't they trust their students to learn? In other words, why be a teacher if you don't believe you can teach?

Most of the candidates in the program here want to teach because we are passionate about learning. We believe that we can make a difference, and we can encourage our students to be better, to WANT to be better. Apparently, this is not the culture former APS Superintendant Beverly Hall promoted in her district. She recently retired after 12 years on the job, but she denies that she had anything to do with the district wide cheating but teachers and administrators. She DOES admit that some of the people who worked for her did cheat...but of course she had nothing to do with it, nor did she create a culture of cheating. It's just that THIRTY EIGHT PRINCIPALS in her district decided they would all alter their schools' score all on their own.

Sometimes when there's smoke, there's a fire.