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