Chalk

The movie, Chalk, that we've been watching in our Monday night classes has been quite entertaining, to say the least. I believe that all of these teachers, individually, are horrible teachers, but if you combine their traits, you could end up with a great teacher.

It's important to have a fun teacher who is interested in getting to know you as a person, but when that becomes their primary goal in class rather than teaching the curriculum, there's a problem. It's also important to have a teacher that isn't afraid to need to use discipline in a classroom situation, but too much of that can be disastrous.

The gym teacher seems to be the only character in this movie that is a "good teacher." She seems to be able to teach the proper things in class while also maintaining a fun environment. However, as discussed with her colleague, she can be rather pushy at times. Other than that, I think that she's a great teacher. There was one moment when she caught a student that was late to class and the teacher of the class didn't do anything about it. When the gym teacher confronted this faculty member, she said that they all needed to agree on the rules and enforce them because all of the teachers were working as a team. Although, yes, she came off as very pushy when telling this other teacher what to do, I do agree with her statement; teachers are a team and they should agree on a set of rules that should be enforced.

Amy Streck

Parents

It was interesting to hear the parents' perspective on teaching. The strongest point that they seemed to emphasize was that parents aren't our enemies and they're not trying to scare or intimidate us - we're a team! The point of school is to help kids learn. Both parents and teachers want the same outcome for their students/kids, so why should teachers be afraid of parents?

Another point that one parent brought up was that at parent-teacher conferences, they want to hear about some good things that their child does. I learned that at these conferences, you should always begin by telling the parents something good that their child does. It's incredibly disappointing if they constantly hear that their child is always doing poorly in school.

After this interview with the parents, I started thinking about the diverse students that I might have to work with in the future. I always picture my future students as replicas of my former classmates, but I can't depend on that idea for my future students. Each class I get will have unique people with different problems or disabilities that I will need to learn about and learn how to teach around such obstacles. I think that this is one of the areas that I will need the most work when I begin teaching.

Amy Streck

New Teachers

I was thrilled to connect our discussion with the newer teachers in the Decorah school district to the book that our group has been reading. In The Freedom Writers, one of the very strong points you see is that you don't need to be an older teacher to be an expert teacher. And just because you might be a new teacher doesn't mean that you're inexperienced! I was disappointed by the comments these teachers made about feeling as if they're not listened to by older teachers just because they're younger and aren't experienced. I really hope I don't have that sort of a situation!

One great thing that I heard at this interview was that we are all lifelong learners. It seems like such an obvious statement, but it's very important to remember! When you aren't constantly seeking out information or trying to improve, then you begin to level off and teaching isn't nearly as exciting as it once might have been. You start to believe that you know everything that you need to know about the subject that you teach, and this is when you begin to decline as a teacher and the school day becomes a chore, not a new adventure to help students achieve success!

I was also very glad that there was a music teacher present! Sometimes I feel like it's hard to relate this class to how I would conduct a choir because it's very different than teaching core subjects, so it was good to see how some of these ideas are applied to him!

Amy Streck

School Board

I thought this interview was good, but I didn't like it quite as much as I enjoyed our discussion with the administrators.

As always, No Child Left Behind was mentioned and discussed for quite a while. One thing that caught my attention was that they said that, even without NCLB, the schools would probably continue to give standardized tests so that they still have an idea of where their students fall and what needs to be improved in their community. This just goes to show that even if the government may not be using these numbers in the best way, they still help our schools and our teachers to improve.

When we started talking about competing academically with other countries - specifically China - I was surprised by their response. Yes, they agreed that China might be further ahead than we are, but that's because they are constantly being fed math and science and are left with little time to do other things that are common in a child's life. Because of their lack of free time, some of these students in China aren't necessarily as well-rounded as they are here or in other countries. I guess different countries value different things in school!

Amy Streck

Guest Speakers

Our latest Monday night class was, by far, the best one I've been to this semester. I really appreciated everything that our two speakers had to say about schools and their view. The most interesting portion of these questions were about NCLB/standardized tests. They brought up some great viewpoints that I don't think we discussed enough in our classes and that we probably should have.

One thing they mentioned was that the tests get teachers talking about what they can do to fix certain aspects of their curriculum. True, standardized tests may not be the most accurate way to test certain students, but if your scores in one area are consistently falling with all students, you can clearly see that there is a problem with the way that teachers may be teaching that subject and we can work to improve the students' education.

The other thing that I thought was great for them to bring up is the fact that standardized tests are just one part of the puzzle. Students are not being assessed solely on how they perform on ITBS tests or ACTs. The point of standardized tests are to get a rough idea of where students are compared to other schools or other classes. If you are teaching the right things and using the appropriate methods to help students learn, then there shouldn't be a problem with standardized tests! Students will do just fine if they're being taught the appropriate things in class, so I don't think it's fair to assume that standardized tests are completely bad!

All in all, I'm very glad that these speakers came. It was great to hear their input on issues that we've been discussing for several weeks. I really hope we get a chance to interview with other teachers in different school districts in the future!

Amy Streck

The discussion on Monday night was definitely an experience! I thought it was very creative to use this method to see different perspectives and opinions on the matter. Before we met on Monday night, I had thought that there was no way I would be persuaded to actually believe in the support for this plan, but I found myself agreeing with a few issues that were brought up to support it. (I loved when opposing views would throw excellent ideas back and forth - very fun to listen to!) I had hoped there might be more people who tried to support the plan instead of nearly everyone being against the plan. It would have been a greater debate if there had been several people on both sides, but I definitely think it got everyone thinking about the pros and cons of each argument!

Amy

Library Information

Personally, I don't believe that the Monday night meeting about the library's website was a great use of our time. I understand that some people might have trouble navigating the school's library website, but I think that our generation has a better handle on how to get around the internet. Also, we had this same presentation in our first year for Paideia, and this felt very repetitive. Last week, the review of Chalk and Wire and the requirements for the education program was a great review because there was a ton of information to remember. This informational meeting, however, dealt with issues that I don't believe needed to be discussed for an hour. It might have been a bit more appropriate to discuss the library's website for half of the time and maybe use the other half hour to discuss copyright issues, which we only got a handout for.

Amy