chapter 9- Involving Parents and Communities

My favorite line for this chapter was: that evidence shows: “when schools work together with families to support learning, children tend to succeed not just in school, but throughout life. The most accurate predicator of a student’s achievement is not income or social status, but the extent to which that student’s family is able to create a home environment that encourages learning, expresses high expectations for their children, and become involved in their child’s education.” I totally agree with this passage and believe that it can give hope to low-income areas that with hard work and a team effort, all students can succeed in learning anything they put their mind to.
I like the other facts this chapter gave, such as:
Student benefit for parent- school interactions and receive higher grades and test scores, have better attendance and more homework done, fewer placement in special programs, more positive attitudes and behaviors, higher graduate rates, and greater enrollment in college. I loved that this chapter made these points. It seems almost unreal to think that by just improving communication between parents and school students schooling and lives can be improved in so many aspects. All of these points really show how important it is for parents to be involved in school and their child’s progress. I think this is due to the child’s two separate worlds being connected and making it one. In this way, the child does not just associate learning as occurring in one environment, but both, and it provides the child with an example of how to communicate and be responsible for the job set before you. Working with willing parents can be so good for kids.
Yet I can sort of understand the other side of the spectrum that the chapter presented on parents distancing themselves more and more as teens get older. I actually have felt the same way about my brother who is in middle school. He is the type that constantly needs a family member keeping in contact with his teacher to see how he has been doing and what he needs to get done as due dates approach. My aunt was constantly helping to talk to the teacher to get problems straightened out and guide him to getting his homework done each night when he visited her house. I totally see how this is beneficial for kids and it did help my brother get back on track in school. Yet parents aren’t going to be there to call a professor when teens get to college. So when is it time for the checking in, and motivation for homework, go from a family members job to the teen’s job? On that note, I can see why parents way to back off and make their child learn to do these things more and more. I think there must be a middle ground that can be taken to help both sides as middle school students are becoming more independent.

Chapter 8- A Safe and Healthy School Environment

I totally agree with all the points that this chapter made. I really feel that a school must have a healthy environment in order to help kids succeed. If students see teachers fighting, smoking, or swearing then they view these actions as ok since their role models are doing them. “If adults can do it, then so can we”. I also think that it is important for teachers to eat and drink the right things since the kids are watching that as well. If students see that their teacher is drinking Pepsi and eating a hamburger and a bag of chips for lunch I highly doubt they will want to then go to the cafeteria and drink orange juice and eat an Italian! I rally loved that the book pointed this fact out and stressed the point that Teachers must model the proper life styles that we want students to grow up to follow, especially with the high crime rates and obesity rates in our country. Having firm role models and going to school in a safe and healthy school system can make the difference in some of the kids.

Chapter 15- Parents as Partners in Twenty-First-Century Learning

I agree with using technology to keep parents on the same page. It can be so helpful for parents to see on my wiki when everything will be due; then they or the student can click on a link to view the assignment when the want to read more detail or know the assignment if they have lost their sheet. That won’t be an excuse for not getting the work in anymore! This type of learning will also allow me to send things like parent teacher conferencing sign-ups right to parents via he internet instead of relying of the student to take the slips home, remember to give them to the parents, and then remember to hand them back in on time. By just doing this with parents over the internet, it would be faster for both of us and conferences could be planned quicker. Yet is it a good thing for students to be taken out of this process? Perhaps it helps them learn responsibility and how to do an assigned task that is important to a deadline, well in advance of that deadline.
I also liked the postcard idea that this chapter mentioned. I think that for those parents that don’t have the internet, it will be important for me to send postcards letting parents know when their students are doing a good job. Just so that I have some positive interaction with parents, and students do come to hate when school related items show up in the mail. If they read my postcard before the parents get home, they will be ecstatic to show their parents the good news and they will be proud of it, not hiding it somewhere before parents arrive home.

Chapter 4- Designing Instruction to Improve Teaching and Learning

This chapter pointed out some important information and made some points which I find will be difficult for me to grasp and implement successfully when I first begin teaching. When this chapter says: “Teachers should know both the written and unwritten instructional rules of the road that will help their students avoid common obstacles…” I immediately ask myself if I know these rules and could implement them on the whim? Better yet, how will I know if I am doing instruction in the most effective way for my students?
I did agree and find that I will have an easy time assessing with both formal and informal ways of evaluating students. This has become natural to me and I am confident that I will do plenty of both in my units that I teach. Yet another quote from the chapter that I internally groaned at when reading was: “Teachers must use equitable and excellent instructional methods that meet students where they are and get the students where the standards say they should go…” This is such a huge challenge and I worry some that I won’t challenge my high level students enough, or will not push my lower level students far enough. I ask myself when reading this: What are instructional strategies I can use to complete this? Which is what this chapter did answer on the next few pages. I am really glad this chapter detailed 3 different models for organizing instruction. This helped me a little to better understand instruction, yet I feel I really wont totally understand what I will do or how my instruction will work until I actually try it.

Boys and Girls Learn Differently

I really loved the activities that this group did, especially the first activity where each group had to figure out the chronological events on the picture. That sort of thing really engages me and my full attention was on that activity. By doing that activity, I then felt that I could better understand the points that were being made from the book as we looked at the results from how each group organized their pictures. Explaining how girls and boy learn differently was easier to grasps after trying to learn something in groups with all girls, all boys, and a mix, so that we could see the differences. I really liked that.

I also feel that each person, individually had some great points to make, which made me think some. For example, I have never really put lots of thought into dress code and school. I have always had a pretty negative view on mandatory dress code, mostly because of growing up in a school without one. Yet now that I am out of school, stepping back and thinking about all sides of this argument was interesting.
I also felt like I got some self reflecting time in at Kyle’s station when thinking back to what I did for sports in high school and how they have affected me. The questions on the sports quiz really made me have to reflect on how I feel about sports and whether or not they had any big impact on me and my school system. Sarah and Geoff’s part of the book I also found intriguing to think about and I think that learning about different ways of teaching kids is always good to keep in the back of my mind. Thanks a lot guys for your presentation. I had a lot of time to reflect on me while learning some new stuff, it was a good mix of information and the period flew by!

Becoming a Whole New Mind

There were a lot of ideas in this book talk presentation. I really liked how your group had an organized wiki that I could go and reference after your presentation was done. You filled it with a lot of great information. The information of the left brained/ right brained teaching really intrigued me and was fun to hear about since I am left handed and am usually an exception to the rule. Learning about what the book judged as qualities of left brain or right brained people was interesting to see. As well as seeing where I fell on the spectrum when taking the quiz. I also found the facial quiz interesting. I thought I could do much better than I did at telling who had a fake smile. Considering I only got about half of the faces right, I guess I am not very good at telling who has a fake smile! It was a little long taking so many quizzes for this book presentation, but I felt it was cool seeing how we, individually, fit into the information being explained. Good job.

Chapter 8 - Effective Assessment

I love the story this chapter starts out with the story of Danny’s success. I think that this example starts to answer some of my questions of how I can use differentiated instruction effectively. What I like so much about Danny being able to use his guitar, as his final assessment over the Outsiders is that this teacher pulled creativity into her classroom effectively and it produced a very positive outcome for the students. I like how the teacher said that he wanted to know if Danny understood the book. I think that is something that is so important when testing in any way, shape, or form. I want to see what my students understand, not how many bubbles can they guess on or try to fill in the correct ones. I really like what Danny did because it shows that he didn’t just quickly read the book and then forget about it. He did some critical thinking and was able to express the book in a different way that showed the underlying meaning the book got at. I would love to read this passage to my students if I ever have them read The Outsiders and show them how they can be creative yet effective at expressing the book.
I loved the passage that said: “assessment should promote learning, not just measure it”. This is now my new favorite quote and a great mentality to keep in mind. Another quote this chapter had that I don’t think is as easy to follow is: “Good assessment is rigorous and therefore motivating.” I can think of some student that I know that the second they see work that is any bit challenging, they shut down. If work is rigorous for them, it is not motivating. I think a better quote would be that good assessment is rigorous yet captivating, and therefore motivating. The hard challenge for teachers is to find a way to captivate and manipulate students into doing something by making it seem worthwhile to them and worth putting some effort into. That is the key; otherwise you will always have those 5-7 students who refuse to do any hard work and just whine saying that it is to hard. They won’t be motivated easily.