Task 1-3

The best practices in education that stand out for me are Differentiation, Ecology, Problem Development, Clear and Common Focus, High Standards and Supportive Learning in no particular order. Differentiation refers to attacking problems from different points of view and different levels of understanding. Not all students learn at the same rate or have the same learning styles. Offering students different ways to show they their understanding or to learn a lesson is critical. Ecology might be my favorite. It is taking math or any other material out of the vacuum of the text book and applying it to real-world problems or situations.  Making those connections are key to answer that age old question of “why do I need to know this”. It also helps when trying to engage students. Using their interests as learning experiences helps them to internalize the information. Along with this Problem Development gets students to think backwards and reflect on where the instruction can be used. It forces them to make the connections and allows for critical thinking. Having a Clear and Common Focus, from teacher, student, parents, administrator and staff makes sure everyone effected is on the same page. Teachers as well as Students need commitment from parents and administrators because they are the support system that reinforces learning. High Standards ensures that not only is everyone held to the same standard but that each person, teachers included, are working at their best level. Students who are challenged within their Zone of Proximal Development achieve at a higher rate than students who are not. Supportive Learning provides a positive, safe environment for all students to participate and learn.


“Practice can not be separated from theory” in that what we learn must be what we teach. As we as educators teach we must constantly be learning as well. This seemingly simple idea sometimes get lost as we set into our day to day routine. Learning about our students, and their worlds, learning new strategies, learning new ways to connect our lessons to the outside world, these are ways we can continue to develop as educators. Several principles for instruction that I think are important are: Allowing for errors, provide students to learn as they go. Provide for immediate relevance and make it obvious, the connections between your lesson and the your students future. And make Instruction learner centered so that students drive the learning and hopefully demand a high quality education.

About Me

My first choice for teaching would be middle school geometry teacher. This is mostly covered in 7th grade. My back ground in design and construction lend itself very well to this subject. I think this allows me to make connections between geometry and the real world application fairly easy. I have also workedein business for the past 11 years and can connect some basic business practices to mathematics.

In my free time I enjoy camping, hiking, fishing and being outdoors when the weather is nice. I am not a huge sports fan but baseball is fun to go see. My graphic design experience makes me fairly fluent on a computer and I prefer the Mac platform. I spend to much of my free time playing video games. Mostly FPS style games although sometimes a good RPG adventure game comes along. I have a dog and two cats and live with 3.5 other people.

DC Evaluations makes me wonder?

This article "D.C. Evaluations Target Hundreds for Firing or Bonuses" brings very specific questions to my mind... How does someone become a bad teacher? Where they always ineffective? Did they become complacent? Did they get burned out? How does anyone survive while being ineffective at their job? Are their these same problems in other fields? How can we as educators do a better job at helping students be successful and not go down a path that leads to unhappiness?

My point is that after 17 or more years of school young adults should be on a path to success. If a teacher enters the system ineffective then somewhere along the way the educational system has failed miserably. It's not enough as a teacher to teach their subject I feel that they should be helping students to find their strengths and weaknesses. To find their hidden talents and to get them excited about the subject they are good at and to help them find their path to happiness.

For those teachers that started out successful and became complacent or disgruntled maybe it is time for a change. I know first hand what it is like to become set in a job that you feel is ineffective and was fortunate to have the opportunity to try something new. People are living longer these days and is only natural that they go through these transitions. The higher education system has done a good job of offering programs for people such as me. It almost seams like it is too easy. But then again I don't have a family to support or am overwhelmed with bills and expenses.

Maybe moving more students into the higher education system sooner would enable them to explore more opportunities and to better find that first career and be more effective as citizens. If only we could afford it?

Testing found to have no effect on learning.

The very last line from this article in Edweek.com. is a quote that sums up this article perfectly for me- (Mr. Baron said. “That was basically accepted without evidence or support in NCLB and other government and private sector efforts to increase performance.”) All the money, time and effort put it to judging performance just makes me sad. Knowing that so much more could have been done to improve education. We all know that it is not a perfect system and all that money could have gone into things that had been proven to work. This may sound crazy but maybe school performance should be based on end results... Do the students get jobs? Are they good at them? Are they productive? Are the Successful? Maybe when a person gets to the end of their life they should look back and reflect on the relevance of their education.

Cutting Edge vs. Cutting Cost

Wow is all I have to say about the district in Florida that is buying every student in two schools ipads. It is both super cool and foolish at the same time. I like that they are giving students the next generation of learning material but at what cost. I guess it's ok because they got a grant for it? I still don't know how to react, I mean $900,000 is a lot of money and could have been a lot of teachers... That is a tough decision. The part in this article about the cell phone towers is interesting because it raises question about how schools can make extra money. Could the do more to raise funds, maybe rent out space during the summer?

Sports come under fire in local schools

After this weeks outpour of emotion regarding rumors of Salem Keizer School District cutting sports from public schools I thought it would be interesting to see what was going on around the country under the same topic. This search on Edweek.org brought up about a half dozen articles about the subject. Interestingly enough the very first article is about Oregon Schools. It's mostly about closing schools and the impacts they have had throughout Oregon. It is a very sad day when these issues are raised, because I feel they could have been avoided. Long term thinking should have been the focus since schools where institutionalized all those years ago. Maybe during the eighties we should have set aside some of the revenue from the boom years so that we wouldn't be faced with these decisions. I have never been much of a financial planner so maybe I shouldn't say anything but even I know when you have to make the hard choices education should always be first priority.

4-Day Weeks for Schools?

Two Pennsylvania school districts are considering 4-day work weeks in order to save money. Having students stay home an extra day sounds like most kids wish come true, but how about learning? Will they loose electives in order to compensate for the lack of instruction time? It seems to just be permanent furlow days for all the teachers. If you cross reference this article on Edweek.com with this one from Politicususa.com you can see why we are falling behind in many aspects of world competition, lack of emphasis on the future:( It makes me sad to see the repercussions of the last 30 years of a lack of value placed on education. 100 years ago not everyone got to school and today everyone takes the process for granted. Hopefully we figure out that eduction is the key to our nations success before we go the way of ancient Rome and implode.