A Bumper Crop of Questions

For last week, we read about block scheduling in Best Practices and the handout, and about what happens when states invest strategically (or don't) in The Flat World and Education.  I was most fascinated by the idea of block scheduling.  I came from a high school where we had seven periods a day, five days a week, and I thought it was the best possible system.  But reading about block scheduling, it actually sounds much, much better to me.

What did anyone else think?  Ultimately, is one better than another?  When would it be better to have a traditional schedule, i.e. what demographics, and vice versa?  That is to say, would a block schedule be better for students who are disadvantaged somehow?  What do we value more, depth in a subject or breadth in a subject?  Should we have to choose?

Doing What Matters Most: Developing Competent Teaching

The section we read for this last class was about the teacher preparation and how that is important for the environment of a school. I think that what I most liked was the idea behind the prompt for last week’s reading response. The quote talked about how when you really think about it education should boil down to the actual learning that happens between the student and teacher in the classroom. More often than not when I talk to my friends about the education system in the United States they all try to chime in on how they think it needs to be changed. Either funding or size or location or jobs need to be changed or created and every time they give me advice as to what needs to be changed about our education system they never once mention the teachers or students in regards to the actual teaching and learning that takes place in the classroom. Now this always confuses me because I think that at the base of it all education in the United States should be about learning and not that the other things are not important or do not affect the learning, it just seems that people are so quick to find solutions within these areas except learning and teaching as to how we can better our education system.

My question is do you notice this whenever you talk about education? What is your reaction to this? What do you think that we can do as teachers to show people that the most important aspect of our job is the relationship in learning we develop with our students?

The Perception of Teachers and Teacher Preparation

This chapter on teaching and teacher preparation made me think of some of the comments that I have heard other people make about teaching.  When I tell people that I want to be a teacher, I get a wide range of responses from "Wonderful, that is such a worthwhile to profession" to "Why do you want to do that? You could do so many other things. Your starting salary as a _________ instead would be so much higher."  There seems to be this negative perception of teaching in certain places, and a view that teachers' jobs are easy.  The common phrase "if you can't do, teach," makes it seem like teaching is a person's last resort as a profession.  But, look at our classroom filled with aspiring teachers and the other education students at Trinity who want to be teachers before all of the other professions that other people might tell us are "better."

How might this idea of teaching as a last resort effect the many aspects of teacher preparation that are described in this chapter?  

How can future teachers be supported in the United States?  Do you think the view of the teaching profession is different in the other countries that are mentioned in this chapter?