Bill 610 Introduced

By: Jessica Lusky

March 12th was a very significant and upsetting day for public education in the United States. The U.S. House of Representatives introduced Bill 610, which will effectively start the school voucher system to be used by children ages 5 to 17, and starts the de-funding process of public schools. The bill will eliminate the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESSA) of 1965 which is the nation's educational law and provides equal opportunity in education. It is a comprehensive program that covers plans for struggling learners, AP classes, ESL classes, classes for minorities such as Native Americans, Rural Education, Education for the Homeless, School Safety (Gun-Free schools), Monitoring and Compliance and Federal Accountability Programs. The bill also negates the Nutritional Act of 2012 (No Hungry Kids Act) which provides nutritional standards in school breakfast and lunch. The bill has no wording whatsoever protecting special needs kids, no mention of IDEA and FAPE. Some things the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESSA) of 1965 does for Children with Disabilities includes; ensuring access to the general education curriculum, giving access to accommodations on assessments, confirming concepts of Universal Design for Learning, includes provisions that require local education agencies to provide evidence-based interventions in schools with consistently underperforming subgroups, and requires states in Title I plans to address how they will improve conditions for learning including reducing incidents of bullying and harassment in schools, overuse of discipline practices and reduce the use of aversive behavioral interventions (such as restraints and seclusion). The results of the vote on this act will have an extremely remarkable affect on public education, hopefully they will not be too detrimental.

Source:
King, Steve. "Text - H.R.610 - 115th Congress (2017-2018): To Distribute Federal Funds for Elementary and Secondary Education in the Form of Vouchers for Eligible Students and to Repeal a Certain Rule Relating to Nutrition Standards in Schools." Congress.gov. N.p., 23 Jan. 2017. Web. 27 Mar. 2017.

Artificial Intelligence Tutoring

By: Riss Willwerth

I recently read an article about the growing use of artificial intelligence in the classroom. This is a topic completely new to me. “Third Space Learning” is a company that is for online math tutoring. They are exploring the idea of AI with this. Traditionally a lot of classrooms go off of the one-size-fits-all teaching approach. But most students do not learn like this. Most learn at different paces and have different progress rates. Teachers seem to have difficulty with meeting the learning needs of all their students and all their learning styles. Now artificial intelligence has been proving its role in numerous fields and showing a lot of transformations, so why not education?

The Al project by Third Space Learning aims to find, ”positive teaching and learning patterns.” They want to give real feedback and help online tutors become better at teaching. It is said that the program would detect if a student’s reaction to a concept follows a pattern of misunderstanding. The program having feedback will help enable it to determine the best path for students to follow towards the mastery of the topic. 

I personally have not thought much about the use of AI in education, but it makes sense with the growth of use of programs with AI in other fields. I think that if the technology keeps progressing like it has been it will become something very useful to the field. I hope that one day it won't replace certain things in the classroom such as teachers. I think that human interaction in the classroom is necessary to learning and so I hope that that does not ever get taken away. I do think that AI can be helpful and useful in this situation and with tutoring so it is an interesting addition to the education world.

https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2017/03/13/how-artificial-intelligence-enhances-education/#.tnw_5uGNA4So

Private Schools...They Aren't So Bad I Promise

By: Megan Ross  
     
Coming to a school like Michigan State, I've met a lot of new people. Through my experience, when I've met someone new they tend to ask about where you're from and what high school you went to. It's been a rarity to talk to fellow Michigan State students that attended a private school in high school. Many kids I've talked to have had huge graduation classes and much different high school experiences than I have. Furthermore, going into the field of education, you hear a lot of negativity surrounding private schools: the fact that only "rich kids" attend, underpaid teachers, spoiled students and many more stereotypes.
    
 I thought I would simply share my perspective on attending private school from kindergarten until graduation, because although there are some down sides to it, overall my school shaped who I am today and I think the positives of a private school education deserve to be heard.
    
 First of all, the small class sizes are actually pretty beneficial. I grew up with all of my classmates and they became my family. I know it was such a small environment, but honestly everyday when I went to school I was so comfortable and calm. I didn't have to impress anyone because they all knew me better than anyone. I could focus on school, sports, and friendships and not other petty high school things. Secondly, being a huge sports fan, being able to play four varsity sports and forming such strong bonds with my teammates meant everything to me. My high school would have been nothing without my teammates. Going to a small school, I could play every sport and get super personal instruction. Sports taught me so many valuable lessons that I carry into my life today.

 
 
Everyone at my small school knew me and was welcoming and friendly. Lastly, my education was strengthened because of how small the class size was and how personal my relationships with my teachers were. I knew every single one of my teachers and they knew me. They didn't care about just my grades, but they were there for me as a person.
     
Most importantly to me, I was able to strengthen my faith. I know everyone has their own beliefs and I'm not taking away from public schools and what they provide. I just want everyone to appreciate private schools and what they offer as well, instead of just bringing them down. I owe everything to my school and my community and I am who I am because of my family at Our Lady of the Lakes. Public Schools definitely have their pros, but next time you diss a private school, remember that there are probably many benefits to what they can offer too.

   

Make It Stick

By: Maddie Brosky

After reading this book in one of my education classes I decided to write a blog post explaining how this book changed my whole idea on the type of teacher I want to become. There are a few ideas that I connected with as I read. This book challenges the ideas of how teachers in today's society believe their teaching strategies work for every student, but in reality, each and every person best learns in different ways. The whole idea of learning comes from different theories, each presented throughout the book like The Memory Theory, Feedback Theory, and lastly the Cooperative Learning Theory.

In Make It Stick the authors talk about the idea that learning is deeper and more durable when it requires effort. This idea is explained in chapter four, which talks about where learning is desirable due to the idea that the brain encodes and consolidates learning when learning it’s ‘effortful’; is strengthened through mental representations associated with retrieval and making connections (pg. 73). Also, the idea that learners are susceptible to the ‘illusion of knowing’. It’s not uncommon for learners to ‘not know what they don’t know'. Being aware of what one still needs to learn, or what skill needs developing is known as metacognition, and it’s part of overcoming the illusion of knowing. Teachers play an important role in helping students overcome the illusion of knowing by providing constructive feedback (pg. 126). And finally, that learning requires a strong foundation of knowledge, which supports the idea that we do need to learn foundational concepts even in a world where we can “Google it’. It seems that when knowledge is deeply entrenched in long-term memory it supports the learner’s ability to make connections with other knowledge held in one’s memory (pg. 76). ‘Googling’ a fact or a concept will likely be stored in the learner’s short-term memory, and while useful in certain contexts, it does not replace a learner having a knowledge base to call upon when working on complex projects or initiatives.

This book takes the teaching skills that are taught each and every day and puts a twist on them. This twist allows us as learners and those as teachers to work less but makes it mean more. I know when I become a teacher I will use the skills like teaching long-term memory instead of short-term, cooperative learning in a group environment and use feedback as a main source of encouragement to my students. 

References

Morrison, ~. Debbie. "Make Teaching ‘Stick’ with Ideas from “Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning”." Online Learning Insights. N.p., 22 July 2015. Web. 26 Mar. 2017.

Should Common Core Be So Common?

Written by: Andrea Thanos

The Common Core Standards are defined as a set of high-quality academic standards in mathematics and English language arts/literacy (ELA), by the official website of the Common Core State Standards. In 2009 the state school chiefs and governors that compromised CCSSO (The Council of Chief State School Officers) and the NGA (National Governors Association) Center coordinated an effort to develop the Common Core Standards. These standards were created to ensure that all students graduate from high school with the “skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college, career, and life, regardless of where they live” (Common Core State Standards Initiative). Currently forty-two states, the District of Columbia, four territories, and the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) have adopted and are moving forward with the Common Core Standards.

In 2010 the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers released the “Common Core State Standards Initiative”, which is aimed to help teachers, parents, and students to understand what is needed for children to succeed in secondary schools and the workforce. This also allows states and school districts to collaborate on ways to close achievement gaps nationwide. This nationwide collaboration is aimed to increase our country’s academic progress of our nation’s students, since we have lost ground to our international peers in specific areas like mathematics. Many educators believe that the lost ground is due to there being an uneven idea of academic standards that vary from state to state and don’t agree on what students should know and be able to do at specific grade levels.

But, not everyone agrees with this initiative and its ability to help students. The four states of Alaska, Nebraska, Virginia, and Texas have not formally adopted the entire curriculum. These states claim that these standards do not guarantee higher test scores and is not tailored to meet all of the diverse needs of all the nation’s schools. In a video I viewed from a news report on understanding Common Core, an elementary school teacher explains to the news reporter how she teachers her students to solve the problem of nine plus six utilizing Common Core. Most people can recall back to their elementary school experiences, when they were first introduced to addition.



My experiences consisted of first grasping the concept of addition through apples and pennies, or some other tangible objects that would be used to mirror the problems. This allowed me to see that if I had, for example, two apples on my left side and five on my right, that when I pushed them all together I would have a total of seven apples. As I developed a greater understanding for addition and my teachers began increasing the numbers of our math problems, it became more about memorization verses making sure that I felt comfortable with why a number plus a number equalled the answer that it did. In the video the teacher explains the addition problem of nine plus six by first breaking up six into five and one. Next, the teacher circles the nine and the newly drawn one into a circle together. Below the circle of nine and one the teacher drew a ten and brought down the untouched five. She justifies this action by saying that the students are not comfortable with adding the numbers nine and six together, but instead they are able to respond better to a ten and a five being added to one another. I personally remember learning adding number to nine and my teacher taught my peers and I a “special trick.” This trick was to essentially do the same thing, to subtract a number from the other number being added to nine and then to add that to ten. A problem that the teacher from the video took about a minute to complete, took my classmates and I a few seconds. The question here is should the Common Core curriculum continue to be implemented in our schools?

The Privileged Sex in Education

By: Riss Willwerth

I recently read an article which discusses an interview by a feminist, philosophy professor named Christina Hoff Sommers. She works at the American Enterprise Institute. In the interview, she argues that girls and women are the more privileged sex when it comes to education and educational status. She says that overall women get better grades and win more awards, that schools have many programs to get females back on track with science, math and sports but not as much for males. It's said in the interview that she thinks men will stop graduating from college in the year 2068, which is shocking to think about. She also thinks that universities have an obsession with politics and in order to save themselves they must overcome that.

My personal opinion on this article is only what I know from my personal school experience. I disagree when it comes to girls are the privileged sex in education. I know that women have had to fight more in the past for education and rights but I do not think because of that we as women have more privilege now. Growing up in the schools I did, I never felt like I was given any special circumstances or help due to the fact that I was a girl. Any opportunities for help or improvement have always been available to all, not specific groups or sexes or individuals. As far as the politics with school, this directly applies to college, I'd say, more so than lower schooling. I have not seen much politics occur but I am sure it does exist. I do not necessarily agree with the idea that men will be officially out of college by the year 2068, it seems crazy to me that people will stop wanting to learn and be educated when education is such an important factor of income, lifestyle, and occupation. I think education will always be needed and worthwhile for both genders, and so in that way, I disagree with Sommers.

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/03/01/christina-hoff-sommers-dartmouth-review-women-educational-privilege/

Standardized Testing

By: Jessica Lusky

I came across an article that discussed the pros and cons of standardized testing in America. I have never been a good test taker so these tests have always been very frustrating and difficult for me to preform well on. I have never believed that standardized tests are an accurate representation of an individuals understanding, but this article brought up a few things that I haven't thought about.


The first pro that stood out to me explains that standardized tests are inclusive and non-discriminatory because they are given in the same manner to all students and ensure content is equivalent. While creating alternate tests for students of minorities or with disabilities would not be fair, it is challenging for the creators to ensure that the equivalent content is taught to all students taking the exam in the same depth. The next pro that really caught my attention talks about how the tactic “teaching to the test” can actually be beneficial. Instead of leaving out information, it focuses the curriculum on essential content and skills. Lastly, these more strict standards and increased testing are preparing students for college better. In 1998, 66% of professors said that elementary and high school do not expect students to learn enough. After an increase in testing, that percentage was lowered to 47%(Standardized Test - ProCon.org).


A few specific cons caught my eye and really expressed some of my feelings towards the controversy. First, in May of 2011 National Research Council report found no evidence that standardized testing has improved student achievement. In fact, from 2002 to 2009 the United States math performance went from 18th to 31st place in the world, there was a similar drop in science, and no chance in reading. The next con I was focused on stated that standardized tests are not a reliable measure of student presentation. A study done in 2001 found that 50-80% of year-to-year improvements were caused by fluctuations that did not relate to any long-term changes in learning. Finally, the article noted that there is a sever increase in younger student stress levels because of standardized testing according to an education researcher(Standardized Test - ProCon.org).


Although many people have differing views and reasoning behind whether or not they support standardized testing, there is research behind both sides. I personally do not support standardized testing, but this article opened my eyes to a few pros I have not thought about in the past. I am curious to see if this issue will become an even larger topic of conversation in the future of the education field and if any changes will be made.



Source:
“Standardized Test - ProCon.org.” ProConorg Headlines. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Mar. 2017.

Playing Catch-Up

By: Megan Ross

 I recently came across an article that opened up my eyes to some of the issues facing the education of children in America. This article discusses three main reasons that we are pushing kids in America to work hard in school in order to catch up to other countries. Not only are we behind as a country, but individual states are at different levels. Of course it's not only just the states that are staggered either, but the schools themselves. We need to work in order to even out not only our schools but our states and help us to advance the education of our children as a country as a whole.

     
This article suggests that we can help get a start on this huge issue a few different ways. The first is to help families that tend to move a lot. When a child is doing well in school and then his dad gets relocated at his job, it is likely that the child will be thrown into an unfamiliar school. What if he is already behind? Now this child is wondering what he has done wrong, and he is trying desperately to catch up. If extra assistance is offered to increasingly mobile families, this problem can become less important.
    
Secondly, We need to give U.S. students a fighting chance for jobs in their own country. Right now, it is hard to graduate in America to beat out graduates from other countries because of the flourishing educations elsewhere. Lastly, the article suggests that we need to fill in the need for 21st century skills. Some think that we need less focus is areas like English and Math and more focus on the skills like computer tech. However, this is a more radical idea that will likely need plenty of time to soak in.
      
Overall, I think this article makes some really good points. It really opened my eyes to how far behind this country is and how easily education can be overlooked.

Media Sources:

https://www.education.com/magazine/article/common-national-standards/

https://daily.jstor.org/works-keep-kids-school/

Recognizing Truth Prompt #10

By: Madison Brosky

Have you ever envisioned one of your teachers to be a tall, skinny, blonde with big breasts?Well if you answered yes to that question then sure enough you have had to of seen the movie Bad Teacher. As far as i'm concerned having teachers that sexualize the act of actually educating students is definitely very misrepresenting educators as a whole. Of course having a beautiful, or handsome teacher is one thing. But the way this movie represents teaching is to the next level.

The movie opens up with Miss Halsey (Cameron Diaz) having sex on her desk while her students are out for recess. As the movie progresses we see Miss Halsey passing time showing movies while she naps, drinking and doing drugs on her desk,  and of course her sexual choice of clothing she wears each and every day. Throughout the movie we can definitely tell that Miss Halsey has absolutely no interest in actually educating her students. The most beneficial thing she did was have her students raise money for kids in need by starting a carwash, where then later we view Miss Halsey in a skimpy bikini rubbing her body all over the wealthy businessmen who show up to donate. From beginning to end this movie misrepresents teachers, and teaching as a whole. Yes, there are certainly some educators that are very good looking to some of their students. But I am almost positive that if there was a student-teacher relationship like Miss Halsey it would be very frowned upon and end up in jail time. Also the amount of drugs and alcohol this movie connects with teachers is definitely not how it goes in the real world. Teachers are never allowed to have substances like that in school, let alone in class and doing them with his/her students.

This movie is called Bad Teacher, the idea behind the whole movie is in the title. One doesn't even have to watch it to understand what happens. It is very sad especially for educators to see how popular this movie became with all of its false realities. Teachers will be compared to this movie and the techniques used in her way of educating. Teaching does not happen like it does in the movie, and teachers certainly do not act like Miss Halsey. Today education is taken very seriously for most, and there are certain rules to protect from student-teacher relationships.

You Live & You Learn

Written By: Andrea Thanos

What were you able to take away from 2016? Were you able to stumble upon an epiphany on how you wish to live your life? Did you learn something in school that completely changed your outlook on things? Did you learn to take more chances, and regret less? Or did you not come to a realization that made you want to alter something about the way you live your life?

Yes, I know that that is a lot to absorb. It might take you a hot second to think about each and every one of them. For some of you, 2016 might not have been a very influential or “life changing” year. For others, 2016 may have been a tremendously life altering year of learning who you were, and what you want from life.



For me personally, 2016 was a year of learning. Okay yes I know, each and every year since before I can even remember I have been in school learning, but I am talking about learning more than math and science, but about myself. A lot of the time we, as students, are so constantly wrapped up in learning through the memorization of facts, and equations that we forget to take time to learn about ourselves. As a college freshman, this past year was able to shape me in ways a year of high school never could have.

As we go through life we learn through a series of lessons, and not just the lessons we are taught in school. With each experience, whether it is positive or negative, we are able to take something away from it. Life is a learning experience, and we are able to learn through the mistakes we make. College is your time for personal growth and self development, let no lesson go unrecognized. So embrace each year of your life, make mistakes, take chances, and learn from everything. The best life lessons aren’t always learned in a classroom.

Communication in the Education Field (Prompt #3)

By: Jessica Lusky

I interviewed my mom who works in the education field in regards to the way she communicates with other individuals at work. Most of her responses were what I expected, but the few that surprised me were very interesting and helped further my understand of the education field. I began by asking her why she chose to pursue a job in the education field and she replied with “I always knew I wanted to work with children, specifically special education. I have a bit of a ‘servant leader’ mindset in which I truly gain the most joy helping others. My passion is to empower children to build their own identity and agency”. I thought it was very interesting how closely I could relate to her response, while going into a similar field with a very different goal. I then asked her what she finds the major

misconceptions of her field to be before getting into the communication aspects. She has found that individuals think teachers only work during the scheduled school day, teachers have their summers off, and that they teach all children the same, which are all inaccurate. Also, she has heard that teachers all teach subjects when in reality they teach human beings making their work more challenging. Next I began to ask her the communication related questions. I asked my mom what she uses writing for in her field and she responded with many more situations than I would have expected from a speech therapist in a high school. She explained that she uses writing to “log interactions with our students to document how and when we worked with the individual or group of students, observe and document student learning and thinking as feedback, to share narratives of student’s learning and growth, communicate with parents, share ideas, create lessons for students, create presentations for professional development, and for publications including books, magazines, etc.”. All of the situations that she uses writing for make complete sense, I just would not have thought about writing for publications, sharing narratives of student’s growth and learning, or sharing ideas off the top of my head. I followed up by asking how she writes in these situations to better understand the necessary circumstances for writing that I did not think of myslef. She described the way she writes in different situations which includes a variety of formats such as hand written and digital logs, commenting/noting alongside student documents while observing, emailing, social media in order to gain and share ideas, blogging, specifically Weebly, to learn as an educator, and lastly on google slides for presentations. Lastly, I asked my mom how she uses these communication techniques to address the misconceptions she has noticed since working in the education field. The main thing she does is attend and connect with educators at professional learning opportunities “as a means to collaborate, communicate, and give back to our profession”. Along with that she continues to share her stories of learning as an educator on social media and works to build relationships with parents and community members(Lusky).

Source:
Lusky, Erika. Personal Interview. 3 March. 2017.

Losing Students, Losing Money

By: Riss Willwerth

This article refers to Trumps recent travel ban and the effects of this ban on higher education. The number of international students that will be affected is over 8,000 but could expand to a million with the inclusion of just a few other countries in this ban. Universities are a great system of learning but also contribute a great deal to the economy. “International students account for one-third of the PhDs earned in the US” says the Star-Ledger Editorial Board. Millions of dollars every year stream in and out of each university and provide millions of jobs for people. Losing students means you're losing money and this indirectly will affect the economy. A degree from an American university is considered a prized export to most other countries. They want to send their kids to our schools and this ban stops that.

My personal opinions on this is that education is universal. Everyone in all countries has the capacity to learn and it is a part of all cultures. Therefore, I think that learning with people of other cultures can sometimes be invaluable. You learn things you only would if you perhaps traveled to different countries. I have a lot of opinions about this ban but I think its particularly wrong in the way it’ll affect education. Looking at politics and the leaders of the US it is clear that power and money are the two biggest demons. Everyone wants more money, all the time. I know Trump is no exception. I think that the amount of students we would lose with the ban hurts not only the spread and increase of funding and money through the economy but also the cultural knowledge we can learn from others.

http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/03/trumps_travel_ban_hurts_higher_education_editorial.html

Under Paid and Over Worker?

By Seneca Barker

I came across this picture while scrolling through Facebook the other day. It gained attention from one of my former teachers.

It honestly made me sad seeing a teacher I know and love agree with what this picture is saying, especially because I know how hard she, and many others, work. Posts like this also make me slightly apprehensive about joining the field of education sometimes.

After doing some research I learned that the average elementary school teacher gets paid about $43,571, and an average high school teacher makes about $47,727. On top of that, in many schools, they don't receive annual raises.

If you know me, then you know one of my favorite things to do in the summer is enjoy a baseball game at Comerica Park. But you know what blows my mind? Those men playing ball get paid an average of $3.2 million dollars a year. That is absolutely crazy!

Why in the world are educators paid less that someone swinging a bat? Or playing any professional sport for that matter. Teachers are the ones in charge of educating the children of the future. That is a pretty important job if you ask me.

In order to keep amazing teachers, they need to feel rewarded for doing an amazing job. Under paying educators for the time and effort that goes into this career isn't going to draw people to the education field, which will only make the students suffer.

When students suffer, the future suffers.



Sources:
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary
http://www.businessinsider.com/charts-expose-how-badly-nfl-players-get-paid-2013-9

Teaching With A Twist

By: Maddie Brosky

Click Here to read the article

Every day teachers are coming up with new ways to keep children interested in their lessons. Stacy Schmidt and David Ralph came up with the idea of "Flipping" the classroom. This includes that homework, inquiry, and investigation happens in the classroom. And at home students watch videos, PowerPoints, and complete readings.

After completing the preparation work, students arrive in class ready to solve problems, talk about the readings, and find solutions. Flipping the classroom is a fairly new idea in the education field as a strategy for better teaching. It has been used by teachers from elementary school all the way to graduate school. The real question is "Why Flip?" The term flipping comes from the idea of swapping homework for classwork (Ash, 2012). When students go home to work on homework, some of them have well-educated parents that can assist them with the work while others have parents that are not knowledgeable in the content and cannot assist them with their homework. Thus according to Ash (2012), students are able to return to class with the content and then receive assistance with the homework from the teacher during class time. The flipped classroom provides the students with in-class support for finishing work and provides more time for hands-on activities. Fulton (2012) also found that the flipped classroom causes “students to take more responsibility for their own learning”. Students also have access to the content at home so if they are absent due to illness they can easily catch up and do not miss out on important lectures.

I truly believe that the idea of flipping a classroom is the most sufficient way of teaching and I plan to participate in this when I become a teacher of my own. This idea benefits students not only by allowing them to work on time management but by holding them responsible for their own learning. I myself wish I was taught in this type of environment so instead of falling farther behind in a class because I do not fully understand something, but because then I could spend class time asking questions and have my teacher reassure what I was supposed to be learning and have it explained to me face to face to better my understanding.

                                                    (FIC, 2013)

Homeschooling

By: Jessica Lusky

My brother has been trying to convince my parents to let him transfer high schools for the past year, and recently they have been trying to come up with an alternative option. He is really not happy at the school he currently attends, but it is very costly to transfer to another school in the area. My parents brought up the idea of homeschooling and although he does not see the appeal, I thought it would be interesting to look into. I have never really heard about what homeschooling looks like on a college application or how beneficial the students find it to be.


I found an article that discusses the pros and cons of homeschooling beginning with the positives. First, homeschooled students have more educational freedom because they have the choice to study and learn what they want. They also have more physical freedom because it is easier to change up your schedule when you are not required to sit in a classroom for 7-8 hours a day. Next, they mention that homeschooled students actually have more emotional freedom than students attending public or private school. In schools there is so much peer pressure, bullies, competition, and many other factors that effect students emotionally which are not present in the comfort of their own home. There are also individuals who feel that religious and spiritual beliefs are not emphasized enough in the education system. Homeschooled parents can choose to highlight their religious education more if they wish. Being at home also provides the opportunity for closer family relationships, stability during difficult times, and well-rested students. Finally, because homeschooled students can accomplish assignments in a few hours that could take over a week to teach in the classroom, there is way less busywork. Once the student understands the information they are able to move on and do not have to wait for the entire class to be on the same page.


There are fewer negatives than positives listed in the article, but depending on how heavily each of them weighs makes the decision for a family. First, the time conmtratints on the parents is a huge topic of conversation. If the parents are both working full time it could be difficult for them to provide their child with a full well-rounded education. On that same note, if one parent decided that a full time job on top of homeschooling their child is too much, they might have to cut down on their hours which could put financial restraints on the family. Cutting down on work hours means spending more time with your kids which could also be a con for some families. Spending so much time with any individual can get to be a lot especially when you are playing the role of not only the parent, but also the teacher in their life. Additionally, it is obvious that if a child is homeschooled they are unable to participate in any school clubs or sports. Some students don't care about missing out on experiences like this, but others really enjoy being involved and active in their community. Lastly, with the social standards and pressure placed on teenagers in todays society, being homeschooled could be looked at as a negative. Some individuals don’t care about social status at all, but for others it could be a deciding factor between homeschooling and public or private school.


Depending on which factors are most important to the student and their family, homeschooling can be viewed as a positive or negative. I personally feel that I would have missed out on crucial social skills and relationships that could help me network in the future if I did not attend public school. However, I do not care about social status as much as most teenagers today so I completely understand why someone might choose to take the homeschooling rout.

Waiting for Superman (Prompt 6)

By: Megan Ross

I recently watched a documentary that I have been wanting to see since it came out in 2010. I was only eleven when it came out, so I didn't show much interest in it, however I knew I wanted to be a teacher so I always listened when I heard adults talking about it. I forgot about the documentary for a while until a few days ago when I watched a TED talk about learning the fundamentals of your field. I instantly remembered the buzz about the documentary, Waiting for Superman, and wanted to watch it and learn more about what I can do to make things better in my future field.

I'll give you a short summary of the documentary. It follows an investigation of the education system and how it has been failing children.
    
Throughout the documentary, we follow the lives of five children. It explains the repercussions of the NCLB act and discusses test scores of children in different states, also comparing scores from public and charter schools. Basically, the documentary puts all the downfalls of public schools on display.

Even though I agree that our public schools are in need of major reform, I think the documentary is harsh in many ways. For one, there is little to no positive things said throughout the film, which I think is a false perception of the school system. Secondly, there is no background provided for the five children, so we have to gauge  their level of capability, possible hardships or poverty at home, which could be leading to some of their difficulty in the classroom.

I think the main message of the film is that the answer to the problems and downfalls of public schools is charter schools. The documentary fails to mention that charter schools for the most part have the same scores as public schools. The director blames one thing for the prominent problems in the public school systems: teachers. He then goes on the say only 1 in 5 charter schools produces exceptional test results. I think he forgets this though, because he goes on and on about the things more charter schools would do for our education system. The film shows little kids in uniforms bragging about the books they have read and the test scores they have received.
     
Aside from the fact that there are unsupported claims and biased facts, the documentary fails to voice the opinion of even one teacher, which is who they are blaming in the first place. For that reason, I don't trust this portrayal of public school systems.
      
I began to watch this to learn more about how to better the education system when I become a part of it, but what I learned is that a lot of things will be put on my shoulders and blamed on me, and I can only do my very best to help be a positive resource for the students of the future.


Media Source:
http://www.takepart.com/waiting-for-superman/alliances/index.html