Final reflection

For my philosophy assignment, I put together a book of collages representing my philosophy of education. The process of completing this project was very time-consuming but also very rewarding for me, as I got to witness a bunch of different pictures, mediums, and ideas come together to make something that was whole and cohesive. As I reflected on this process, I realized that the collage was somewhat like Paideia II. Our class consisted of people of all different majors, education and otherwise, different interests, and different backgrounds, and this really added to the value of our class discussions and activities. I think that is the great thing about a class like Paideia -- when the environment and classroom relationships are structured in such a way that people can share their thoughts without fear of being negatively criticized, the learning that results is much more valuable.

I am happy with my experience in Paideia II and I am glad that my final project opened my eyes to the way the class can help us, future educators and future parents, grow when it comes to U.S. schools.

Homeschooling

Yesterday in class we had a panel of homeschool students and parents speak to us about the benefit of homeschooling. Before the panel, the most exposure I had to this educational approach was that I knew several of the people in my high school choir who were homeschooled. Otherwise, I didn't know much about homeschooling going into the panel.

I thought the session was interesting overall, and I really appreciated that fact that many different viewpoints and experiences were represented in the panel. It gave me a better idea of the reasoning behind the decision to homeschool your children, and it exposed me to other factors that I hadn't considered before. While I am still struggling a bit with how exactly this topic fits into our "Decisions for U.S. Schools," it is nice to have a better grasp on the education alternatives that exist in our culture. And though I don't think I will ever consider homeschooling as an option for my own children (for many reasons), I can understand why other people might make that choice.

Why not white milk?

After the extended discussion on chocolate milk last week in class, I have been thinking more and more about it. I guess the part of the situation that bothers me the most is the fact that the contest did not involve regular white milk as part of it. I think that if the contest was passed of as a tool to increase kids' drinking of milk, white milk should have been counted, too. Students should be aware of the nutritional benefits of drinking milk in general, and they shouldn't be, as was mentioned in class, "conditioned" to drink chocolate milk only. If the contest had been about BOTH types of milk, or even just white milk, I think the students would have still been motivated to drink more milk than they used to. Using chocolate milk, which is hardly any healthier than soda when consumed in such large quantities, is doing nothing good for the students themselves. It is only beneficial to the dairy industry. We as educators need to be aware of the decisions these contests are teaching our children to make. And, as was mentioned during today's book presentation, the reward the school received was just another way of enforcing positive rewards as motivation to do "good things." Overall, I don't think I agree with the contest, but maybe if there had been some small changes made to it, I would have found it a little less upsetting.

Global Citizenship

I've been thinking about the topic of global citizenship that was brought up in class yesterday. I think it is important to stress this in schools, especially as the world's borders continue to dissolve. Our country is no longer isolated from the rest of the world; socially, economically, we are connected to many other countries. Our country is involved in a war that we started overseas! It is impossible to overlook the impact the U.S. has in other areas of the world.

I think that civic education needs to improve if we want to form responsible citizens, but it also needs to expand to focus on more than just our responsibility as American citizens to our country. As global citizens we have a responsibility to the rest of the world, and as citizens of a "big name" country, our students should be aware of the interconnectedness of these issues.

Education across the globe

Hearing the stories of two international students today was very eye-opening for me. While I wasn't impacted as much as I thought I would be by their stories of assimilation, I found it very interesting to hear about two different countries' models of education. Obviously, in the United States we are aware of an increasingly global community and workforce, and we know there is a serious lack in the achievement of our students compared to those overseas. But it seems to me that we pay too much attention to those "gaps" and not enough to the way others do things. It got me thinking that maybe if the education policymakers of America sat down with students and teachers from other countries, kind of like we did today, maybe we'd have a better idea of what we need to change. There's nothing wrong with taking ideas from other communities/societies, building upon them, and fitting them into our own system. I also think that those of us in the teacher education program don't get enough exposure to different models of education. Perhaps that is why I found the examples of Ghana and Japan so interesting. I'd love to learn more about how other countries educate their children and maybe try to find things we can incorporate into our seemingly inadequate education system.

Allow me to speak honestly for a second...

Okay, so I'm going to rant just a bit. But I feel that I can do this on a blog. I'm supposed to be sharing my thoughts, right? Well, these are the recurring thoughts I've been having. Read on if you dare.

This past unit has frustrated me. I know that as a future educator and a person who is genuinely concerned about the future of our nation's youth, I should be taking active steps to learn about and change the enormous inequalities of our education system. I mean, it's practically impossible to read all of these books and articles and not feel a mixture of anger and sadness at the apartheid that still plagues America's schools. But...part of me wants to just throw up my hands and say, "I'm done." Not done with pursuing teaching of course, but with trying to find solutions to these problems. As I try to examine the situation from the eyes of myself as a first-year teacher in a year and a half, with a heinous amount of debt accrued over my four years of midwestern liberal arts education, I can't imagine myself trying to make a difference. Not right away, anyway. I mean, I'll be the first person to admit there is no way I am prepared to teach in an inner city school where I am in the minority. We've been reading and talking about how there is a serious lack of qualified teachers in these schools, and well, I guess when I think about that on a personal level, it makes a lot of sense to me. And, to be completely honest, it's overwhelmed me to the point where I feel like settling down in a nice suburb, where the property taxes may be high but the schools are good might be just what I feel like doing. I don't want to exhaust myself in a teaching situation like the ones we've been reading about during my first years as a teacher. And, as a future music teacher, I especially don't want to be teaching in a district where arts funding is so low that my students don't even have access to instruments.

Maybe when I'm an experienced teacher, with a settled home life and less debt, I will be able to give back by teaching in a more difficult position. But right now, I know I'm not ready for that step yet, and reading about the injustices put upon so many American students just makes me feel guilty for not wanting to jump right in and help them as soon as possible.

Teaching Teachers to Teach Multi-Culturally

"Teachers must not merely take courses that tell them how to treat their students as multicultural clients, in other words, those that ell them how to identify differences in interactional or communicative strategies and remediate appropriately. They must also learn about the brilliance the students bring with them 'in their blood.' Until they appreciate the wonders of the cultures represented before them -- and they cannot do that without extensive study most appropriately begun in college-level courses -- they cannot appreciate the potential of those who sit before them, nor can they begin to link their students' histories and worlds to the subject matter they present in the classroom." (Delpit, 182)

For the most part I agree with what Delpit says here, but in some sense I don't think her expectations are realistic. Sure, it would be great if all teachers were prepared to teach in a multi-cultural setting, both through college coursework and personal study, but I think about the backgrounds of most of the people in the Luther teacher education program and it seems a little hard to put those expectations on today's graduates.

Let's face it, a small liberal arts college in the midwest isn't the most diverse campus you'll come across. And most of the students here (not all, but quite a few) come from towns and schools where the majority of the students were white and middle class. Naturally, these future teachers need more preparation than their own "real life" experiences in order to teach multi-cultural students. However, when I think about it, we are only required to take one class that centers on diverse learners (Ed 221). While that course was enlightening and certainly informative, it didn't specifically connect multi-cultural education with my own subject matter, and there are no music ed courses that revolve solely around diverse learners. In this case, Luther education students are then expected to gain further knowledge about diverse classrooms through personal experience. But how many of us are going to find that in our student teaching experiences in the midwest?

Granted, a lot of this is based on generalization, but I guess I just find it hard to apply Delpit's "solution" to an area of the country where it may be difficult to gain access to diverse learning experiences and integrate those into teaching.