Response to Teacher in a strange land- Bad Teacher Boogie

"I don't think America is overrun with bad teachers. I think America is overrun by poverty -- too much poverty among children."

Diane Ravitch, The Daily Show, 3/3/11

According to Guy Strickland, between 5% and 15% of teachers are "bad," and should therefore look for a new profession. Nancy Flanagan points out that while she does not understand the criteria Strickland uses to come up with his statistic, if he is correct, that means that 85% to 95% of teachers are doing good jobs. 

Flanagan goes onto to address the difficulties that come when trying to differentiate good teachers from bad ones. I agree with her that this is very subjective, and even though any principle probably has a few in mind that he or she does not think belongs in the school...that teachers dismissal would most like have mixed reactions from parents and students. The point here is that a good teacher does not necessarily have the highest class scores for standardized testing. While many parents are satisfied with being ignorant...these tests do very little to develop the majority of students in our country. 

I interviewed a teacher at Bridgeport Central, and asked him this very question... "How much emphasis do you put on teaching students...THE TEST...in the classroom?" His response was that his students, are so far behind more affluent communities because of the economic disadvantage they face. Therefore, if they are going to have any chance to get into college, they sure as hell better learn how to pass standardized tests, to be prepared for the SAT's. I observed him teach his class, and he certainly is a good teacher, that was able to balance these two teaching strategies. 

Bridgeport has the highest drop put rate in the state, and is one of the worst in the country. I agree with Diane Ravitch that economic factors play a deeper role in the success of these students as I witnessed a great teacher struggle with lack of resources, and other obstacles in his classroom.

Powerpoint is Evil Response

I do agree with most of Edward Tufte's points about...well...Power Point. I would not go to the extreme he does by claiming that it is evil, and doing serious damage to our students. However, I do agree with idea that the presenter, not the audience is receiving the benefit. One can give a seemingly, organized, and visual stimulating Powerpoint presentation, without providing any real quality information. By quality, I mean information that requires the listener to have a deep understanding of a topic, and its relationship to other criteria.

In retrospect, I can remember hundreds of powerpoint presentations in both my corporate career and education. Today I can not recall the details of any particular one that had any valuable contribution to my intellectual growth.

Check out the new website

My Website!

My thoughts on the semester

So far I have enjoyed learning about different technological platforms to incorporate into the classroom. However, I have found the work challenging only because all of this is very new to me, and I have no experience with any of the tools we are using. I find Dr. Langren, and Jerome to be both accommodating and effective educators. I appreciate the time we are given in class to explore different software and programs. I also love the class website, because of the many useful resources that are provided as well as the clear layout of coursework.

My hope is to get over my anxiety of creating this website. I have yet to dive in fully, and I feel this has increased my anxiety about producing a quality project. Now that I will be back in class I feel I am ready to   devote the proper attention to putting up the website.