on listening to what the children say

After reading this article let me give great credit to those who are elementary majors. I constantly found myself caught up in the conversations of the children which drew my attention away from the article. I had to re-read many of the conversations to get a grasp of what was going on which added to my frustration in the reading; however, I was able to gather some key insights.

The author mentions in the beginning of the article that “I was not truly interested in the people sitting around the table or curious about what they might think or say. Mainly, I wanted to keep the discussion moving and to avoid awkward silence.” Everyone at one point or another has seen some facet of this example, whether it be in themselves or in their students. It is a key point to remember that we must make sure that this does not occur amongst our students. Granted this is easier said than done but what I am getting at is this: if you see a student purposely dodging a question we have to reposition them in the correction direction, especially in a field such as science. As many of you know science is a field that builds upon itself and it is easy to fall behind. If a student is constantly “dodging a bullet” then they may hold on to their misconceptions and may never unlearn them. One example of this is the idea of why seasons occur. In the video we watched last semester many students, even college graduates, still had the wrong ideas about why we have different seasons. It is our responsibility as educators to try and remove these misconceptions and point our students in the right direction.

The author also makes a statement regarding her students by saying “he asked a question or made a casual observation, then repeated each child’s comment and hung onto it until a link was made to someone else’s idea.” This helps to show that we need to enforce the wait time notion and can then use the responses of students to build upon our question. Again this is a major factor in the science field because we are constantly working with peers and colleagues to build upon our own understanding. If we help to teach this major lesson to our students then we will start pointing them in the right direction to scientific inquiry. They will learn that a scientific burden does not necessarily have to be carried alone and that it is okay to ask for help and search for insights.

The last quote I want to bring up is possibly the best and most relevant quote in my opinion in the entire article. The author says that “real change comes about only through the painful recognition of one’s own vulnerability.” How fitting is this quote for science education or education in general for that matter. We have been beaten with the notion of accommodation and assimilation for our years in the program and this line helps to reinforce that belief. Students must come to terms with a problem then understand why they are wrong, this way they can unlearn mistakes and relearn the proper methodology; however, if the student chooses to ignore this realization then their misconceptions will continue to grow and may inevitably never be unlearned as mentioned above.

Response To capfire effect

After reading the article I began to question how prepared we really are as future educators to teach ELL students. I personally feel that the education program, while it does emphasize many great things, lacks in the field of educating ELL students. In the past four semesters we have been bombarded with theory and different types of teaching methods: specifically scaffolding and differentiated instruction. While these are just words that describe different types of teaching methods I feel we were robbed when it came to ELL students. While the majority of these discussions did work great in a traditional English classroom I personally feel unprepared to teach in a room of ELL students.

The article mentioned that proposition 203 eliminated the ability to use native language instruction in classrooms and required teachers to attend SEI training. When I was a child and moved to the states my English was not the greatest. It was proficient enough for me to be placed in a full immersion classroom without the aid of a speech pathologist. I do remember feeling out of place for a little while, but I cannot imagine what it would be like for a student who cannot speak any English at all. I remember my teachers having a difficult time and sometimes treating me differently, granted it was probably differentiated instruction, but I always felt so far behind. I decided to start working outside of school on my English by doing personal training methods that fell in line with the curricula, so much so that I was trying to read ahead just to make sure I could keep up in class. I cannot begin to fathom the difficulty an ELL student must face in a full immersion setting.

The article mentions that the student population in Public Schools is now 51% Hispanics, 36% white, 9% black, 2% Asian and American Indian and the most significant achievement gap is between English-speaking students and English Learners. In my current internship I can see this working with CAPT scores because I had to assess reading scores as well as CAPT scores and ELL students were always at the bottom. If I were the teacher of the ELL students I would feel a certain failure, although it wouldn’t necessarily be my fault I would still feel responsible for the learning of these students. The article continues to bring in some interesting and shocking statistics, especially the quotes from the preservice teachers.

These quotes reflected a lot of my own beliefs but those preservice teachers had the advantage of many more hours of cultural training that I have. This semester in an effort to help close this Gap I have specifically entered courses designed for ELL students. If we are to be future educators then we need to be armed and ready for any type of scenarios. I find it disappointing that the current education program does not reflect more ELL training and with the data from the article this adds to my disappointment. I feel it should be mandatory for at least 2 semesters of ELL education classes to be in affect considering a lot of our fellow future teachers want to teach specifically in an Urban setting where it is more likely to find these ELL students. Our educational system is also changing and the chances to find ELL students continues to rise. If we are not armed with the right tools and teaching methods then we will surely fail to aid these students in their educational enrichment.

Unemployment Training article

The article was pretty brutal in the sense that it placed a lot of blame into different aspects of our life, but the majority of the blame was placed with teachers. As others have mentioned it is not necessarily the fault of a teacher to follow a student, especially one in an urban setting, and track their every progress. A typical teacher may only see the extreme student and focus their attention onto that student while another troubled youth goes unheard of.

After teaching in many urban settings some of the items the author mentioned does make sense but it must be taken with a grain of salt. The author mentions that just by showing up students may get by without learning; although this does occur it varies depending on a teacher. I know that when i was student teaching i made sure i had the attenion of my students and had active participation, that is, i would purposely pick on the students not paying attention, to answer questions. Some of my fellow student teachers would mention they just tried to get through the day and the subject at hand though. While I have had those days it is never the object of a teacher to just get by, we want our students to learn but too much emphasis and responsibility is always placed onto the teacher.


The author goes into several other factors and though they may be feasible they are not necessarily accurate. Each teacher will have their good and bad day, and as i mentioned earlier, we do want our students to succeed, but this does not mean giving them a passing grade. I know, again back to my student teaching semester, if a student did try and put effort into my class and still did fail a quarter then i was somewhat lenient. If they scored less that a 55 but tried i would still give them a 55 this way they were never too far behind and could still recover next semester. I also believe this way the school policy so i was merely following it but i do, whole heartedly, agree with a grading system such as this.

The author tends to make a lot of generalizations about urban schools and while some of them may apply it is not absolute truth. Each school system will vary as will each teacher so as i mentioned earlier this article should be taken with a grain of salt.

9/8/08

During these past week I was asked to begin work on my research internship. The internship deals with using data to try and improve the science scores on the CAPT tests for High School Students. I was asked to compile a list of all the students, in the previous year they would have been freshman, and organize them into alphabetical order. I also had to add what level class they were in during the time of the test as well as their teacher. I was asked to create a master list using excel which was unfamilar to me. I was then left to organize the data and create a master list but my comfort zone in excel was very little. I eventually started to figure out certain parts of excel and was eventually able to create the master list but it was an extreme challenge for me since i had not used excel in almost two years.

I have always been a person who believed that students learn by doing, not by listening. I was able to examine my supervisor this week in her classroom and saw they she implemented a non-traditional way of teaching, one i plan on using. She would ask her students a question and then have then talk amongst themselves and discover the answer. This was the way i thought science teaching and learning should be accomplished and i was extremely pleased to see such a method put into practice.

Coming from a science background it is extremely crucial for me to reconize my beliefs when walking into a science classroom. When i was a student teacher this belief was put into question when it came down to the lovely subject of evolution. Students, as some tend to do, will try to say they do not believe in evolution as a way to avoide learning the topic. I explained to them that i was not asking them to change their beliefs but to consider the information as they may need it in the future. I have a strong belief, especially in science, that it is a field that builds onto itself. If our students are to succeed in the future they must be equipped with all the knowledge they can have.