Reflect upon this week’s content and how it relates to your practice: Post to your blog what you feel are the key elements you must include in your classroom to prepare your students for the future.
I had tons of notes about what I should be writing here and then I say Joe's post and thought, 'Crap, he said everything I said, but he said it much more concisely.' His words are in blue, and my simplified responses are below.
~I have a responsibility to expose my students to as many different types of activities as possible, in the hopes of accessing all their different learning styles and intelligences
-To me, with relevancy to the recent content, this means I need to be using technology in ways to support my students, rather than just shoehorning technology into a lesson for the simple sake in having technology in the lesson.
~Make the most out of the classroom resource I have
-For me this means figuring out how to make my 18 classroom chromebooks work with classes of 25-36 students. Finding ways to rely on my 4C's to make these happen, to design my lessons so that students are collaborating and communicating with the same devices.
~Teaching skills other than the math standards, such as: collaboration, perseverance, communication, independence, problem solving, responsibility, organization, initiative, caring, effort, trustworthiness, enthusiasm, integrity
-For this I look to our new PBL frameworks. So much of these ideas are built into the idea of PBL units. It also speaks to the idea of educating the whole child.
On pg 105 Darling-Hammond quotes Ferguson's research to say that, "The single most important measureable cause of increased student learning was teacher expertise." That once socioeconomic factors were accounted for, nothing made more difference in the quality of a student's education than the quality of their teacher. This is one of the reasons that I became involved in this master's program. I wanted to make sure that I am the best teacher I can be. I have long said that if money wasn't an option I would be a professional student. Since money is a factor, it's important to me that I make the most of my continuing education in ways that support my students.
The biggest focus of Ch 4 is the inequality of funding. It seems to be common sense that a lack of funding would have a negative impact. I think there is certainly a case to be made for the idea that how funding is utilized is more important that the overall dollar amount (within a certain window of margin.) but a systemic lack of funding is a detrimental as squandered funding. The best way I can figure to address this issue is to become involved. To be active in my union, to take part in the NEA funding, to take an active roll in my school site council/PT Club to have a say in how funding dollars are spent to best support students. However I wonder how much more time I have to give since all of those activities happen outside of contract hours and there don't seem to be enough hours in the day as it is already.
I had tons of notes about what I should be writing here and then I say Joe's post and thought, 'Crap, he said everything I said, but he said it much more concisely.' His words are in blue, and my simplified responses are below.
~I have a responsibility to expose my students to as many different types of activities as possible, in the hopes of accessing all their different learning styles and intelligences
-To me, with relevancy to the recent content, this means I need to be using technology in ways to support my students, rather than just shoehorning technology into a lesson for the simple sake in having technology in the lesson.
~Make the most out of the classroom resource I have
-For me this means figuring out how to make my 18 classroom chromebooks work with classes of 25-36 students. Finding ways to rely on my 4C's to make these happen, to design my lessons so that students are collaborating and communicating with the same devices.
~Teaching skills other than the math standards, such as: collaboration, perseverance, communication, independence, problem solving, responsibility, organization, initiative, caring, effort, trustworthiness, enthusiasm, integrity
-For this I look to our new PBL frameworks. So much of these ideas are built into the idea of PBL units. It also speaks to the idea of educating the whole child.
On pg 105 Darling-Hammond quotes Ferguson's research to say that, "The single most important measureable cause of increased student learning was teacher expertise." That once socioeconomic factors were accounted for, nothing made more difference in the quality of a student's education than the quality of their teacher. This is one of the reasons that I became involved in this master's program. I wanted to make sure that I am the best teacher I can be. I have long said that if money wasn't an option I would be a professional student. Since money is a factor, it's important to me that I make the most of my continuing education in ways that support my students.
The biggest focus of Ch 4 is the inequality of funding. It seems to be common sense that a lack of funding would have a negative impact. I think there is certainly a case to be made for the idea that how funding is utilized is more important that the overall dollar amount (within a certain window of margin.) but a systemic lack of funding is a detrimental as squandered funding. The best way I can figure to address this issue is to become involved. To be active in my union, to take part in the NEA funding, to take an active roll in my school site council/PT Club to have a say in how funding dollars are spent to best support students. However I wonder how much more time I have to give since all of those activities happen outside of contract hours and there don't seem to be enough hours in the day as it is already.