Kozol Chapter 8 and Marlowe Chapter 11

Kozol page 189

“The problem, as it soon turned out, was that the program had become too cheap too rapidly.”

This program, Higher Horizons, that Abraham Ribicoff is talking about is one that made a tremendous difference in the schools that took part in it.  Although this program spent fifty dollars more per child, it quickly dwindled down to only twenty seven dollars.  Where some may still complain that the program was still costing extra money to be spent per child, it made many beneficial improvements happen within the schools that used it.  It raised students’ reading comprehension and reading levels, it lowered the number of suspensions in a year (from 30 to 11), there was better student attendance, better work habits and more self-discipline seen from the students.  This program allowed for extra instruction in reading, writing and math for each student and allowed for field trips to educational places.  This new hands-on and students-driven way of teaching was proven to help so many students to learn better and want to participate in school.  However, despite proof of improvement (academically, behaviorally, etc.) in the students, the program was done away with because they stopped putting as much money into it.  “It became too cheap too quickly.”  So here is a program that started out doing well, but the idea of it being inexpensive took over and it soon became too cheap to run functionally.  At that point, it did not help the students who it promised to help, and proved, to help at first.  Why is it that programs like this who are showing improvements in students, do things to make it so that they stop being beneficial?  Is it the money aspect of it? This makes me wonder if a price limit is put on a child’s education.  Because of these changes the program dwindled away to nothing.

Kozol Page 190

“”Despite these changes, the extent of segregation in the city’s schools was greater in 1963” than it had been in 1958.”

In cities where the ethnic demographics were very diverse and the towns segregated, some programs and attempts were made to try and desegregate the people.  These attempts were not big and they failed.  In fact, the segregation rates were even higher in schools after these programs were attempted.  In places where these programs and the compensatory education programs were put into effect, the education programs had more of an effect on the students, helping to positively affect their performances in school.  Why is it that when programs are implemented to help children learn better in their schools, they are followed through and actually show improvements but when a program to help end segregation gets put into effect, the opposite ends up happening?  Is there more involved to trying to help end segregation in areas than just trying to implement a program in a school system?  If the school’s program did not work, why wasn’t anything else tried?  Is segregation too big of a problem for an education system to solve?  Does the government and communities need to be involved in the process as well?

Kozol page 195

“An entirely different kind of practice, one that seems much easier to understand in human terms, in the high set of expectations that attach themselves to changes in the topmost personnel- superintendent, CEO, or chancellor, as they are often known- who come and go so frequently in many of our urban systems, although personnel and program oftentimes are intertwined.”

Kozol then goes on to give examples of people who come and go in the education system very quickly, usually due to stress.  A position like those stated above needs a constant person to work in it because so many decisions need to be made for the schools and problems, etc. need to be dealt with in a way that best fits the schools.  If different people are always stepping into those higher-up positions, then no one way of running everything will stay in effect.  The students and teachers need something constant in their lives for their education.  If things are constantly changing, where will the stability come in for the learners?  A child will have a more difficult time learning in an environment or system that is not constant.  Programs that are implemented with one person may be changed with the next, despite the possibility of them working.  If the stress is too high for one person to keep these jobs, how can we change things to make it so that one person stays for an extended period of time?  Is there anything that can be done to make this happen?  One possibility may be to put more than one person in that area of work to help share the workload.  Any other thoughts on this? Doesn’t an education system need stability in something good to help it succeed?

Marlowe page 11

“First, teachers today have been swamped by tasks- often, trivial and unconnected to students- that demand compliance, to the point where it is difficult for teachers to balance or to discern what is really important.”

Teachers today have so many things on their plates, not only when they walk into the school building but when they walk out of it also.  Many times, because there is so much work to be done, they bring their work home with them.  Whether this work is meaningful or trivial is a big question.  Now, because of NCLB and RTTT there are so many laws and regulations that force teachers to do extra things as part of their day.  When teachers have to focus on their students getting passing scores on the standardized tests, little room is left to do anything else.  These practices that are given to prepare must be graded and assessed by the teacher, with all of the students scores logged and assessed.  All of this extra stuff that needs to get done takes time out of the teachers day to either plan for the next day’s lessons or it takes the time right out of the learning day away from the students.  Unfortunately, these tests do not improve or prove the learning ability of the students, which means that all of the teacher preparations that are involved are a waste of time.  There are other things too that teachers are asked to do to keep up with the mandates that are given by the state and national government that have nothing to do with teaching their students.  How can a teacher teach what’s important and do all of these other “useless” things at the same time? Is there a way for teachers too not do what is useless so that their students will be given the best opportunities to learn?

Marlowe page 113

“Simply stated, when one acknowledges someone as being good (or great), there is a corresponding expectation to pay those people well. So while I have heard a lot over thirty years about teacher competency and merit pay, I have yet to hear a sincere effort to acknowledge what is the essence of great teaching.”

When most people are hired for a job, they expect to get recognition for a great job that they are doing, if they are doing it.  Also, many times, a pay raise is included in with that recognition.  However, for teachers, there is no recognition for doing a good job and there is no pay raise either.  Now, the teachers that get recognized for the good grades on the standardized tests are getting recognized as being good teachers.  When in reality so many of those teachers have conformed to the testing that they would no longer be considered “good” in terms of helping the students to learn and comprehend in their best capacity.  Now, because of NCLB, a good teacher is qualified as one that has their students pass the high stakes tests.  No longer are good teachers recognized as the ones who form a compassionate learning environment, who teach to and for the children (not the test), who help all of their students to learn in the best way possible for each of their students, etc.  Unfortunately, the definition of “good” is changing.  Those teachers, who are doing what I would consider to be a good job at teaching, are not getting recognized at all for their hard work.  So now, many of those teachers are losing their jobs or being thrown in the background because their students may or may not have passed the tests.  This definition of good is changing the way our education system is working.  The teachers who are teaching to the test will get merit pay, because their students passed the test.  But will those students have learned everything they needed to in order to survive in the real world after school?  Will those teachers have succeeded in creating a healthy environment for the students to learn in and in teaching to each child’s needs?  I doubt it.  So where have the good teachers gone?  Why is it that the teachers who are truly teaching each student in the ways that are best for them, are not getting recognized for their work?  What will happen to those good teachers if they are never shown recognition, will we lose them forever?

Marlowe page 116                                 

“Student success is also fostered by empowering students (and students are automatically empowered when they are producing!). Empowering means actively teaching students how to help themselves, how to take responsibility for their work; how to get help: How to ask for help, whom to ask for help, and when to seek help. This is a real world skill that starts and grows in class an in school.”

Unfortunately, when teachers are forced to teach students according to the test they have to take and pass, these real world skills are not being taught to the students because none of them are forced to critically think and produce outcomes that are original to their own points of view and styles of learning.  Because of NCLB, the students are not expected to think in creative ways, or independently.  They do not have to ask for help because everything is given to them in a self-explanatory way.  The students do not need to think about how to answer the questions asked, they need to read the question, come up with an answer and bubble it in.  So many times, when a student is wrong with an answer that has been bubbled in, they are not corrected because there is not enough time to go over why something was wrong.  This way of schooling is not helping our students become better and enriched people, instead, it is forcing them to become one type of person who knows how to read a paper and fill in bubble sheets.  So if this is what is happening, there is no student success in our school systems, according to this generation.  If so many people know this, then why do our laws keep changing to continue to make this a part of our education system?  Will someone listen and refuse to let this continue to go on?

Marlowe Chapters 21, 22, 23

Marlowe page 198

“But it does offer them the challenge to join in a public debate with their critics as well as the opportunity to engage in a much needed self critique regarding the nature and purpose of teacher preparation, in-service teacher programs, and the dominant forms of classroom teaching. “

In this chapter, Marlowe talks about an educational reform that is taking place unlike one our country’s history has ever seen.  This reform is demoralizing teachers by providing laws and mandates that show little confidence in their ability to provide intellectual and moral leadership for our children. Even though these reforms are demeaning to the role of educators in today’s school systems, Marlowe brings up a good point:  although, as teachers, we are talked about as puppets who cannot perform tasks in a correct manner, we are given an opportunity to stand up against it in public debates.  Only we can make other people see what we are really doing as a teacher every day in our classrooms because we are the only ones who really know.  Now is a time to use our voices and stand up not only for ourselves but for what we know is truly the best for our children, and not what the government thinks is best.  This makes me wonder, why is it that the government is making it look like our teachers are not capable of being good role models or teachers for our children?  Why is it they don’t give teachers the credit that they deserve for working as hard as they do?  Why are they portraying a teacher, in the public eye, as someone who is incompetent and unfit for the job they have?

Marlowe page 200

“Instead of learning to raise questions about the principles underlying different classroom methods, research techniques and theories of education, students are often preoccupied with leaning the “how to,” with “what works,” or with mastering the best way to teach a given body of knowledge.”

In this section, Marlowe talks about the educational programs that pre-service teachers go through in order to get their certification.  In a previous blog of mine, I talked about how I think that it would benefit pre-service teachers more to just be thrown into a classroom with someone else and learn in a hands-on way.  However, in last week’s class, Dr. Love talked about the importance of college classes in order to learn about all of the different philosophies and statistics backing up the philosophies, and come up with our own way of teaching from those. Walking out of college with a bag full of philosophies should help you create your own as you spend your first few years in a classroom as a teacher.  However, Marlowe brings us to the reality that many college programs teach all of the teacher candidates the same thing:  how to teach to a test, the best child is a quiet child, etc.  Basically, we are given philosophies and ways of teaching and are expected to perform those same philosophies and ways of teaching in our own classrooms.  We are being trained like an army of robots to sit, listen and obey and unfortunately, that is how we are being told to teach our students as well.  We are not taught to creatively think of something on our own, never mind teach the children in our classrooms to do that.  How are we supposed to overcome these obstacles as pre-service teachers?  I have been lucky enough in my own college experience to have some amazing transformative professors who have taught me to be the same transformative teacher they have become in their years of teaching.  But I am only one needle in a very large haystack.  I, as one person, can only say so much.  So what can I do, if anything, to change things?

Marlowe page206

“Survival, in other words, depends on making some decisions about what’s important, and living by them-most of the time.”

Here, Deborah Meier gives pre-service teachers some really good advice about how to get through their career as a teacher.  I think many of us worry about what we don’t yet know, which is what it will be like having our own classroom of students and having to live under the mandates of our government.  She talks about some things that my own professors have told us to do (in a safe way of doing so), like learning how to teach the children about what they need to know for the tests while teaching them other things they should be learning (outside of the testing.)  We are hearing this advice a lot, but my biggest question is how exactly do we know where we can and cannot cut corners in teaching our children to pass the test?  How exactly do we learn about “what’s important?” 

Marlowe page 207

“If parents and teachers were truly able to use their strength in a semi-united way, they’d overcome.  But, we’ve allowed a rift to exist between us that serves others, but neither parents nor teacher.”

It is very important for teachers and parents to work together because they both have the same goal in mind: a successful learning environment for their child.  I think here also ends up being where a lot of teachers and parents tend to butt heads the most.  Many parents don’t like the way teachers are teaching their children, and instead of blaming it on the source (the government laws) they blame it on the one person who happens to be implementing the laws, the teacher.  And in response, teachers get mad at the parents for not always understanding what is really happening.  If the two groups of people could learn to come together on the one thing that they both dislike so much, then they would be able to fight against the one thing causing it, the government.  However, until then, the mandates will continue to be put into play because as they stand alone, neither is strong enough to change anything.  Is there a way for us, as future teachers, to learn a way to connect with our parents and worl with them instead of against them?

Marlowe page 211

“It means to look at messages and materials through different lenses and from many perspectives; it means to be able to recognize propaganda regardless of its origin; it means to be able to “detect crap;” it means to pull apart materials, sort them, question them, reorganize them mentally, and then synthesize the pieces into a coherent understanding and whole.”

Here Marlowe is talking about what a critical voice is and how as a teacher, we need to have one.  First and foremost, we must figure out what our philosophy is in teaching.  What is it that we truly believe in and why, what is it we believe should happen in our classrooms and why, and what is it we do not believe should happen in our classrooms and why?  New mandates are constantly being made and we must use our critical thinking to analyze these mandates and come up an opinion on them, and then use our critical voices to stand up against them or for them.  It is important for us to be able to think critically during times like these, and knowing how to think critically will help us be able to teach our students to do the same. I still wonder how we will be able to speak out against these mandates if our job “depends” on following them.  Unfortunately, our students must pass these tests, or our job is on the line.  How can someone speak out against it and not worry about losing their job because they spoke up for what they believed in, or acted out what they believed in?

Marlowe page 211

“Every teacher has to have a solid grasp of his assumptions about how people learn and how that translates into the kind of environment the teacher will provide.”

Without a distinct belief on how people should learn, teachers are going to wander through their years of teaching unable to reach their students.  A belief of one’[s own allows one to do something different from the “norm,” which, at the moment, is something that is not working.  At this point, education is focused mainly on a child passing a standardized test to show how well they have comprehended material taught to them.   If a teacher does not believe in a specific method for teaching and learning, they will fall victim to having to obey the politics in our education system.  With a specific belief, teachers are still able to follow the mandates (have children score high on the tests,) but do so in a way that will help them to actually learn the material, not just memorize it.  This is where transformative teaching comes into play.  This style of teaching creates a compassionate community of learners and promotes optimal learning through critical thinking and hands-on activities.  This is my assumption of how people learn best and I plan to create this type of environment for my own classroom.  Did Marlowe mean that any style of teaching would also be good?  What if a person is a very traditional type of teacher and believes in lecturing, note-taking, etc., would he consider that to still be a “thinking teacher?”