Blog 6

1) First 7 things to be changed in Education:

• Pay Teachers MORE:  For the amount of countless hours teachers spend each day preparing, teaching, taking care of students and parents, we are very much underpaid and overworked!
• Get rid of NCLB completely:  NCLB was set up to punish those schools that did not raise student test scores.  It blamed teachers and principals and it assumed that they were lazy and not doing their jobs as educators.  It believed if we only concentrate on math and reading and raising those scores, we are providing students with a good education.  NCLB came up with unrealistic goals that all children would be proficient in reading and math by 2014.  Testing cannot replace curriculum and quality instruction. (Ravitch, 111)     
• Change tenure and how teachers get evaluated:  Good performance should get rewarded and poor performance should get penalized.  Principals should have the power to hire and fire teachers who are not effective teachers.  Unions should not protect BAD teachers; instead great teachers should be rewarded for providing quality instruction and their students mastering the standards.  Teachers should only receive tenure status if they have proven themselves to be highly qualified and highly effective.  Teachers should be evaluated every year and their evaluations should be based on their performance not based on their students’ standardized test scores.
• Make sure that the schools that are attended by the neediest students have well-educated teachers, small classes, beautiful facilities, and curriculum rich in the arts and sciences (Ravitch, 229)
• Change school accountability (schools should be graded not just on test scores, but on quality instruction and teaching the standards), tests do not measure what matters most in education such as reasoning, raising questions, finding alternative solutions to problems (Ravitch, 226)
• Hazard pay for teachers that work in inner city schools:  In order to make sure the low performing schools have the best teachers, there needs to be an incentive to keep highly qualified teachers at these schools.  Schools that are in the poorest of neighborhoods and serve the neediest students, have a very high turnover rate of teachers.  It’s very hard to keep teachers there and not lose them to other schools in better areas.  In order to retain great teachers at these schools, something needs to be done to keep them there.   
• Make sure that all Principals of schools have had experience as a classroom teacher, then as an assistant principal and finally as principal.  Principals who have not spent time as teachers, they are not qualified to judge others’ teaching nor can they assist new teachers. (Ravitch, 228)

2) What has been meaningful about Ravitch?

            Ravitch has opened my eyes to the ills that plague our nation’s education system and there is not one solution that will fix our failing system.  Every president in the last couple of decades have all promised to come up with a solution to fix our education system, but not one has been successful.  Ravitch believes that many things need to happen in order to provide the quality education that our nation’s children deserve. 

            On page 225 Ravitch states, “The most durable way to improve schools is to improve curriculum and instruction and to improve the conditions in which teachers work and children learn, rather than endlessly squabbling over how school systems should be organized, managed, and controlled.”  She goes on to say that, “Congress and state legislatures should not tell teachers how to teach, any more than they should tell surgeons how to perform operations.”  As educators, we need to provide a quality education that educates the whole person not just in the areas of math and language arts.  Students should receive a liberal arts education that prepares them for college, the workplace, to take on the responsibilities of being a citizen in a democratic society.  Schools are to “educate children to become responsible people with well-developed minds and good character” (228).     

3) Given the current state of American education, what can you do as a teacher and as a citizen?

            As a teacher, I can do my best to provide the quality education that my students need and deserve.  I need to provide quality instruction, enriched curriculum and teach interdisciplinary lessons.  As a teacher I need to provide a liberal arts classroom, where students are exposed to all subjects not just focused on math and reading.  I need to provide a learning environment that educates the whole child and teaches children to be responsible individuals with good character.  It is my responsibility to instill in my students that education is important and to teach them the life skills that they will use for the rest of their lives.  

            As a citizen, I need to be an active voter and take an active role in contacting my local legislature and state senators to make sure that Education is there top priority.  I need to write letters voicing my concerns and ideas about what needs to be done to help education.  As a citizen, I need to make sure that my voice is heard and to represent those that think there concerns and opinions don’t matter.   

4) Find two national or state associations from your subject area and describe what you find from each website.

·   California Reading Association- www.californiareads.org

This is a non-profit professional organization of educators who are actively involved in all aspects of reading and language arts education in K-12 classrooms.  This website has a publication for educators called “The California Reader” and it also provides Awards and Scholarship opportunities for educators.

·   International Reading Association- www.reading.org

This association provides lesson plans for teaching ELA, provides Common Core standards resources, and provides strategies to teach ELA.  This website also provides Grants for research and Awards for achievement in promoting literacy for educators.  This association partners up with the organization called ReadWriteThink.org. 

·   National Council of Teachers of English- www.ncte.org

This council provides teachers with the ELA standards, lesson plans for ELA, list of books and resources to support the implementation of the Common Core Standards and resources to support teaching English Language Learners (ELL). 

5) 

a) Here is the list of my top 8 places that I would like to experience and visit in the Bay Area:

1)  California Academy of Science

2)  Alcatraz

3)  Exploratorium

4)  The De Young Museum

5)  Bay Area Discovery Museum

6)  Lawrence Hall of Science- Berkeley

7)  Legion of Honor

8)  San Francisco Modern Art Museum

9)  Attend a Literacy Conference or Workshop

b) Here are 5 books I would like to read in my subject area of Language Arts:

1)    Fifty Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners (4th Edition) (Teaching Strategies Series) by Adrienne L. Herrell and Michael L. Jordan

2)    Reading with Meaning by Debbie Miller

3)    The Café Book:  Engaging all Students in Daily Literacy Assessment and Instruction by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser

4)    Strategies that Work:  Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis

5)    Teaching for Comprehension in Reading, Grades K-2 by Gay Su Pinnell and Patricia Scharer

c) Journals I would still like to investigate in Language Arts and teaching English Language Learners:

1)    Barone, D. (2011). Welcoming Families: A Parent Literacy Project in a Linguistically Rich, High-Poverty School. Early Childhood Education Journal, 38(5), 377-384.

2)    Linan-Thompson, S., Vaughn, S., Hickman-Davis, P., & Kouzekanani, K. (2003). Effectiveness of Supplemental Reading Instruction for Second-Grade English Language Learners with Reading Difficulties. Elementary School Journal, 103(3), 221-38.

d) Here are some conferences I would still like to attend in Language Arts:

1)    Bay Area Writing Project

2)    Asilomar (Fall, CA Association of Teachers of English)

3)    West Ed workshops

4)    Contra Costa County Office of Education- free workshops in Fall

e) Places I would like to see and visit in the world connected to Language Arts:

1)    DeYoung Museum (San Francisco)

2)    The Palace of the Legion of Honor (San Francisco)

3)    The Huntington Library (Los Angeles)

4)    Bancroft Library (Walnut Creek)

5)    The National Library of England (London)

6)    Oakland Museum

Blogs I commented on:

Emy Zettner

Heather Richey