Cutting Back

This past week, I received some disturbing news from home; schools in the Des Moines area were facing serious budget cuts. The school's response was to cut back on the amount of time allotted to the art, music, and gym programs. By cutting the amount of time given to these courses, the administration reasons that they can then cut back on the number of teachers working.

My first concern was that the schools were cutting music programs since I will be licensed to teach music in just over a year. I was furious that the amount of time given to ensembles in a week was restricted because this meant that these musical ensembles wouldn't have an appropriate amount of time to rehearse. Music is something that is best rehearsed as an ensemble and cannot easily be given homework assignments outside of class time to complete. In addition to losing time, the decision was also made that the 5th and 6th grade band program would be cut entirely and students would not be able to begin until 7th grade. This sort of move could either eliminate the interest in band entirely, assuming that students find playing instruments "uncool" by the time they reach middle school, or turn into complete and total chaos when students from multiple elementary schools filter into middle school and decide they all want to sign up for the program. Teachers at this level would be given the responsibility of teaching an extremely large group of students that were more than originally bargained for while the high school music program would greatly decline in skill now that students are robbed of two years of learning. The end result, I fear, is an extinguished band program altogether.

Soon after realizing my fears for the music program, I found that the greater thing that I should be fearing is the elimination of time spent on physical education. Already, there is concern at the rate that obesity is rising in the children of America. Some schools believe that by simply taking out vending machines or changing the lunch menus will solve this, but I don't think that enough time has been spent looking at the physical education programs and how important they are to children. They are also key to elementary schools. Without gym programs for kids to get excess energy out of their systems, how do we expect them to focus and pay attention throughout the day? Everyone, no matter your age, needs at least some time to do something active to get the body moving and alert for the rest of the day to come! Cutting physical education programs is the absolute worst thing schools can do!

An Outsider's Opinion

This past week, I was absent from class and given the assignment to discuss our case studies with a student that was not in our Paideia class. I chose to speak with someone who is a biology major and got an interesting response from them on these case studies. For the most part, she and I agreed on how we would try to solve these issues, but she seemed to struggle slightly more to give a definitive answer.

As a whole, she seemed to take a much more scientific and data driven approach to solving this issues. As we moved from one question to the next, she seemed frustrated by how difficult they were to answer. Then, after hearing the question, she would often say that her answer would depend on so many factors that she didn't know how to respond, such as who the individual was in the story, what her role was at the school, and other pieces of background information. At one point, when discussing a case study that involved test scores, she essentially threw out the question because no numbers for these test scores were discussed and, therefore, the question was not valid! It was good to see a similar point of view, but also interesting to see how our way of thinking differed!

Case Study Discussion

In my discussion group's last meeting, we decided to go back to the case studies that we spoke about in class on Monday since we didn't have as much time as we would have liked. One of the questions that our group found the hardest to answer was which of the three students should be chosen to participate in an advanced program. Although we could agree somewhat on the first two students, the third to join the program ended up being the hardest to pick because everyone had a different opinion as to what was most important for a student to have. In the end, we all seemed to agree that the process would be somewhat easier to determine who would or wouldn't particpate in the program if we knew the students personally.

It was just as difficult to determine what to do if we were in a situation where we were supposed to paddle a student. All of us seemed to agree that we never would have gotten into a situation that would require us to harm our students, even if it was permitted by the school and their parents. We tried developing some alternative ideas that could be used as a means of punishing students and maintaining behavior in the classroom without physical harm towards the students, but we felt that the children would only see us as weak or without power in the classroom if we tried any other form of non-physical punishment.

Surprisingly, the easiest question for us all to answer was how to handle budget cuts. If we were forced to choose one of the options, none of us would have cut AP or extended learning programs like the group in class chose to cut. Instead, we all decided it would be better to increase the classrooms by 5 students. This would be the best method, we all believed, since there would be no loss of additional programs. Also, we all commented that our class sizes in elementary school were around 30 to start with, so it didn't seem like a room of 30 children would be unmanagable.

Paideia II

This past week at my small group discussion, we thought it might be a good idea to begin brainstorming ideas for our paper due this Friday. Somehow our discussion got onto the topic of school being mandatory for students. This discussion ended up being one of my favorite education based peer conversations I've had in a long time. For the most part, the four of us brought up many different ideas pertaining to both the benefits of mandatory schooling and the weaknesses of our current system.

For example, we all agreed that mandatory schooling is good for those children who may need to be exposed to the benefits of education when their parents might not have had a good experience or believe in the schooling system. But as children enter older ages, when would it be acceptable for them to drop out of school and make this educated decision on their own? Even if these students think that they have a profession for their future in mind by the time they reach middle school and do not believe they need any further schooling for that profession, are these middle schoolers old enough to make this type of mature decision on their own and not an impulsive one? Certainly questions to ponder!

The Freedom Writers i-movie

This semester, my group and I had the chance to create a movie that reflected our knowledge of the book The Freedom Writers. Click on the link to check it out!

Amy Streck

Paideia Text and Issues Lecture (Going Green)

I attended Claude Mertzenich's paideia lecture on Green Chemistry. Similar to the Religion and Politics lecture that I attended, I didn't feel as if I knew a ton of information regarding the subject. Unfortunately, I don't feel like this lecture did as great of a job explaining the topic so I felt very confused during most of the lecture.

I enjoyed the fact that Mertzenich chose to use a powerpoint and a video to give the audience something to follow along. However, he tended to read straight from the slide when the audience was capable of doing the same thing. He also included a bit too much information on the slide, making it difficult for the audience to see everything that he had written.

Another unfortunate drawback was that Mertzenich seemed to have only an alotted time to give his presentation because he had to speed through the last half of his lecture and was talking too quickly for me to comprehend everything that he was telling us. However, with a bit more time, I feel like he could have been able to slow down and given us more information so I wouldn't have felt as rushed and confused.

Although I didn't love this lecture, I was glad that Mertzenich was able to relate the lecture to Luther. At several points during the presentation, he was able to address the audience and explain how this applied to us at Luther, including using examples about different groups on campus.

Amy Streck

Religion in American Politics

One of the lectures I attended this year was David Domke's lecture on religion in American politics. At first, I was hesitant to attend this lecture because of the topic of this lecture; I'm not exactly knowledgable in the religion or politics department...

However, once he started on his presentation, I was immediately drawn into his lecture! Within minutes, Domke had been able to insert the occasional joke to keep the audience entertained while still engaged in his lecture. He also included a visual aid (powerpoint) into the presentation and used it in an effective manner. He included pertinent information that we wanted on the slides, but didn't read the information off word for word.

Domke also really impressed me with his ability to be able to improv on the spot. At one point, someone made a comment about his presentation and he was able to respond without appearing flustered by the interruption. He was also incredibly current on his knowledge. In fact, his last slide included information that wasn't even two hours old!

Overall, this lecture was an excellent example that I would love to follow. David Domke really impressed me with his ability to speak in front of a crowd of people and I hope to have the chance to follow in his footsteps someday!

Amy Streck