Week 7

I am not able to be there for the discussion on the last part of the book, although I wish I could make it b/c that's when it makes the most sense to me. In the last part of the book, the author was discussing charter schools. He was telling how these different types of schools can benefit students who are just not succeeding in pubic schools. I was wondering where the closest charter school was to Oil City? I think that maybe I have heard of one in Tionesta, but that could be incorrect. If there is one nearby, I would like to see the research on it. I would like to see what students they are reaching, and how that school has helped them more than a public school. It seems that if this sort of information can be proven, then why are we not implementing their theories in public schools? Why should charter schools have all the fun? I understand that funding is a big part of it, but can't we receive more funding if we have students achieve success on the PSSA? What is it about these schools that make their students more successful than ours? How can we compete with that? I guess my blog contains more questions than answers. I've enjoyed the discussions on this book and look forward to future books!

Cause & Effect

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Chapter 7, p. 161 talks about education research. The current research climate is effective in finding correlations, but not in causality. A better approach, the authors say, is to understand individual students in different circumstances.



But: Maybe we are looking at the wrong constructs, or through the wrong lenses?

It's ironic that the authors want to try to understand individuals but they use a scientific method to do this. A method that doesn't allow these individuals to TELL their individual stories.
Quantitative methods only place people as numbers, objects. Their stories--the things that we can use to understand why they do what they do, what they want to accomplish, what problems they are having--those go unnoted.

Qualitative methods like phenomenology would allow resaerchers to study aspects of one 'problem' that is going on in education. They can then see all the parts, understand the inner workings, and allow the individuals involved a voice.
The authors put a lot of stress on causality. But there are some things--especially when dealing with people and politics--that do not follow a predicatable casue-and-effect line. The more we try to predict people's behavior, the more we might be wrong about those predictions.

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime. But--Why are we FISHING?" That's what my professor Ian Baptiste asks. Why are we only staying with the type of educational research methods we've always been using--and then wondering why things aren't working?

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The language dance is what I read about on the very addictive online foreign language program, http://www.byki.com/

byki's learning system is based on vocabulary rather than grammar. And memorizing chunks of conversations. Their research shows that this improves fluency.

Not sure whether the research in literacy of 1st languages is similar to learning a foreign language (at any age). Seems to have a lot of similarities, though. This repetition of parents' conversations to the child would reinforce the language chunks that the children learn. And also would give a context for that knowledge so that the child can create meaningful language.

week 6

After reading Chapter six, I felt that I understood what the author was saying...this book has been kind of hard to follow at times! I found what he said about early childhood education so interesting!! In my own family I have seen what he is saying about language dancing take form. I am 12 years older than my youngest sister, Rachael. When she was just a baby, my younger sister, Megan, (who is 11 years older than her) and I would constantly talk to her. We even have it on video where Megan was interviewing Rachael when she was about eight months old. It's hilarious to watch now and of course we make fun of Megan for making up Racheal's "voice" when she's answering the questions she is asking her.....but what is amazing to me, and i'm really starting to see it now that Rachael is in 8th grade......is her passion for reading, and i'm not talking kiddie novels, Rachael is reading everything!!!! And she gets it!! She can analyze these novels, she can see the bigger picture....she can see the authors message....and she loves it. I guess my point to this family story is that I can see the effects of "language dancing" first hand and I can see the benefits of having a child grow up in a house where she was spoken to much more than just for business. I'm sure comparing her to a child in her grade who didn't have 2 older sisters to talk to her would be like comparing the colors black and white, in some aspects. How sad we can't give every child this opportunity. What's more sad is that if they try to come up with programs that provide a child with this language dancing from someone other than a parent, will that become as disoriented as some of our programs we have out now?

Chapter 5
The Sequence of Substitution- Would parents agree to shoulder some of the costs for their children's computer based learning in a student-centric way in the initial period of substitution? Maybe the author would like to survey some of the parents here...

Chapters 2 and 3 - Getting closer to being on time with these...

I had planned to post a new reply with my thoughts on the chapters, but ended up getting out most of what I wanted to say in a reply to Laura's post. I feel that I need to be at my grade level meetings, so I will be participating via blog for at least a couple of weeks. Next weeks post will be up BEFORE the discussion. I promise.

I do have a couple of questions/comments that I would like to throw out there in case someone has a minute to respond.

1. May I write in my copy of the book? That would make my life so much easier when trying to comprehend what I am reading.

2. Comment - I found it interesting when it was stated "the definition of good parenting expanded to encompass providing enriching experiences for their children." I am wondering what feedback educators with more experience (that would be YOU) have gotten from parents regarding the push to pass the test. On our inservice day at the beginning of the year, I had a parent call and ask me what I planned to teach this year. She said her son was starting to hate reading because all he did last year was prep for the PSSA. Anyone hear anything similar?

3. Question - What did it mean when the author said we need to "implement computer based learning in places and for courses where there are no teachers to teach"? I have been over that comment in my head about a million times, and I can't make any connections.

Chapters 2 & 3

I like how the book relates education to business. I never really thought of it in that way, and am happy to be enlightened by the comparisons. In chapters 2 and 3, I would start to lose the point the author was making and at about that time, he would bring it back in and tell me why it was relevent in that discussion. I am inspired by story of Jaime Escalante. It seems if you can just find that groove with any group of students, they sky is the limit! It's just finding that groove!

Disrupting Class Intro and Chapter 1 - Yes, I am behind!!!

While reading the introduction and chapter 1 of the book, I found the section on motivation to be very relevant to the group of students I have this year in my classes. So many of them come in each day with the attitude that nothing I am trying to teach them has any relevance to their lives. I make the lessons as intrinsically motivating as possible, yet I still have students who REFUSE to do any work! We truly need to find creative ways as educators to help our students become extrinsically motivated. Helping them to see that education will provide them access to all the good things life has to offer is difficult when so many of our students are living in poverty. To them, it probably does not seem that education has served their parents well, therefore they do not see the value in it. One student came to me after the first report cards came out and said, "Guess what? My dad told me I did a good job!" She found her extrinsic motivation in the little bit of praise she got for a job well done. I wish that the rest of my students would follow suit, any ideas?