Blog Post 10

Overall this semester I was able to discover a lot about myself when I evaluated my own thoughts as well as thoughts of great educators through my cumulative course blog. The blogs allowed me to critically think about the teachings of other educators and then write my personal thoughts about the theories of education that they teach. I discovered a lot about myself through these blogs. It showed me the kind of teacher I really want to be and helped me discover that my teaching style might be a little different then I originally thought. Before I read our texts for class I really never thought about teaching for multiple kinds of students and how different students like to learn differently. It showed me that I have to broaden my horizons when it comes to this. I need to learn to also teach democratically and not to teach just in the banking concept of teaching, but to also know how to liberate education. When I was able to discuss this concept from Paula Freire I looked at it really critically and realized if it was in my future classroom I would want to teach a mixture of both these liberating concepts of teaching that lean away from teaching facts, but instead more critical thinking, but also still teach part of the banking concept of learning and teaching because at some points students do need to learn basic facts and memorization that needs to be banked in their memory. The blogs also forced me to ask questions about the different concepts, so for Freire’s take on the banking concept I really wanted to know what experienced teacher thought. 

I believe that education should be offered to all students equally no matter what their social status, family income, or race. I did preliminary research on our countries education system when it comes to funding. Funding is clearly a big issue in education that you hear about all the time, which in turn is why I want to write about it. One can hear about the disparities of educational funding across the United States on a daily basis, that is how big of an issue it is. It is not just the disparities from town to town, but also state to state, that’s the real issue. It was shocking to me when I first learned what “pay to play” was here at John Carroll because it was never something I had to come in contact with in high school because I went to high school in New York State, but those kids who went to high school in Ohio all had to deal with pay to play. Because I went to school in one of the most well funded states in America I didn’t have to deal with many budget cuts of funding issues. Money was rarely an issue at my school, but if you compare that to a state like Indiana it could be a whole different situation. I feel that it shouldn’t be that much of a difference from state to state. The system we have for federal and state funding of education in The Untied States does not allow for equal opportunity for all students trying to learn. If a student is trying to learn shouldn’t we give them the most opportunity to do that?

I think my belief responds to the hopes and dreams of almost every student and parent out there. Every student working hard and putting in the effort to make themselves better and learn what they need to wants the same opportunities as every other student in the world. No student hopes it is harder for them or that they have less opportunity then someone else when it comes to their education. This goes for the parent as well. Every parent wants the best and most opportunity for their child. If a parent cannot afford to live in a school district with a highly funded school or can send them to a private school with their own funding does that mean that their child should suffer and get less opportunity then other students? Should a child that lives in Cleveland Heights have any less opportunity then a child that lives in Shaker Heights? Although, I do not have much experience in a low income school myself it is very easy to see that it is a problem. Through my time at John Carroll I’ve sat and listened to my fellow students talk about having to pay hundreds of dollars just to play a sport or be in the band. This do not seem fair to me. Expression and art are very important to the education process and it seems crazy to me that a student just trying to better themselves has to pay money to do this, and why because I live in a different state did I not have to do that? I’ve also heard about fellow classmates talking about multiple academic classes being cut. They’ve expressed that their schools did not give them the opportunity to take some advanced placement courses cause they could not afford it. I also did service at Cleveland Juvenile Detention Center last year and the young teenage girls I worked with talked about the schools they came from. These girls did not know half the things they should have know by the age they were. They came from awful schools with teachers that weren’t dedicated to their students and the progress of their students, and in turn the students did not have any motivation to learn. The schools were given such little funding and in such bad neighborhoods that it seemed like these poor girls did not even have a chance of getting the education and opportunities they deserved. I think I could connect this topics about what Bill Ayers wrote about standardized tests and how they aren’t necessarily fair because they ask questions targeted to certain demographics. My topic about funding touches on the idea of low income and diverse neighborhoods. Another reason they are not necessarily performing may not just be funding, but also their demographic and state state wide tests and curriculum does not cater to their needs. Some big questions I want the answers to is how do we fix this issue and is it even fixable? I believe some would say there’s no way to change the current system. 

Blog Post 9

Annotated Bibliography

Loewenberg, A. (n.d.). School Finance - EdCentral. Retrieved November 14, 2016, from http://www.edcentral.org/edcyclopedia/school-finance/

This article is a great source for my This I Believe essay. My essay is going to focus partly on the way public schools are funded in the United States and what I believe about it based on my findings. This article is great for further research into this topic, because it outlines the main sources of funding in schools. It breaks it up into the three main categories of funding which include Federal, State, and local funding. The article also depicts the funding in the highest and lowest funded areas throughout the country. The article goes into detail about schools revenue. The article goes into a description of courts role in this funding issue as well. The article will be extremely helpful because it has a lot of information about the array of issues facing school funding, but in an easy understandable way. Although, all the sections don’t go into great detail, they do give at least some idea and a basis of knowledge about many of the financial disparities to start my research with.

 

Federal Role in Education. (n.d.). Retrieved November 14, 2016, from http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html

This is another great source. First, it is very helpful because it is a government source, so it gives the perspective of what the government thinks of the issue or if they don’t feel there is one. This is helpful because a lot of what I am most likely to look at is probably going to be against what the government is giving schools for funding. This article is important, because it gives a different perspective then that and when doing research it is very important to have more then one perspective. The article also gives the history of the governments involvement in educational funding nationwide as well as what is currently happening with the topic. The article explains how government’s role may be small, which is what a lot of people have issue with, but it is hard worked and important to the nations educational success. This article definitely gives me and interesting perspective to work with.

 

Baker, B. (n.d.). Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card. Retrieved November 14, 2016, from http://www.schoolfundingfairness.org/National_Report_Card_2016.pdf

This article is extremely helpful because it is very detailed. It also includes a website that explains the article more in depth which I found the original article through. The main goal of the article is to study each state and identify which states get particular funding. The goal of the article or the National Report Card (NRC) is to asses the equality of funding given to each state throughout the United States. The article shows where each states money is coming from and why, based on a number of things. It provides people with a basis to see where money is going and coming from and why. Because of this article adjustments are able to be made based on the results, or at least that’s the goal. I’d like to really look into this article and see if the right adjustments are being made or if the states with the least funding are still underachieving and schools are suffering despite this NRC. The NRC is an attempt to make things fair, but I want to study if it really does. The NRC gives me a lot of information to work with as well.

 

10 Facts About K-12 Education Funding. (2005, June). Retrieved November 14, 2016, from http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/index.html?exp

This article is beneficial because it gives a basic background and knowledge as to where the money comes from in federally and state funded schools. It just gives me a solid idea of why and where certain money comes from. The article basically just goes over what you would think are frequently asked questions about school funding. I like the article because it kind of strikes me as a school funding information page for dummies, so basically everything you need to know in ten quick explanations. I will use it just as a back and forth reference, just to keep my facts straight and know that the information I’m writing about in my This I Believe essay is actually correct in its original basis.

Blog Post 7

When I think about how I want to teach and the lessons I want to teach I think of Freire's philosophy on education and the banking method versus teaching for critical thinking. I think as a teacher, based on Freire's insights about how one must teach to expand the students mind and knowledge I would want to do a combination of both. I wish to incorporate both the banking and critical thinking styles of teaching for my future students.
My teaching plan would be to:
First open up the lesson with telling the students what the lesson is about. Say it is a history lesson about World War Two, I would ask the students what they already know and think about World War Two. We would discus this for as long as it takes.
Second, I will teach the facts of the lesson. This includes going over all the memorization parts of the lesson.
Thirdly, I would go back to my first question asking the student what they think about the subject. This time hopefully there is more critical thought to it because there is factual backing to the students thinking.
I think this incorporates the positive aspects of Freire's thoughts, well at least what I gathered from them, but also the much needed factual base of learning. I think this will allow for the students to really think and understand what they learned.

Field Post 3

Thinking of the craft of teaching some questions I could come up with include, " What does a specific teacher find the most important element of teaching?", also " Does this specific teacher find teaching the facts before critical thinking important? Do they believe that one needs to first teach facts before a student can critically think about them, the facts aren't necessary if the student critically thinks, or they go hand in hand when teaching?"
I'm basing these questions off of the reading which we did for class last week. The reading by Paulo Freire discuses a lot about he banking system of education and how students need to critically think and be taught to critically think instead of just being taught facts and that learning is only about facts. I had some questions about this reading, because I think there is an element of memorizing to anything someone teaches and learns. I do not believe that a teacher can be successful with their students without teaching facts before allowing the student to critically think about them and I wanted to ask questions to see if other people who are teachers and who have experience with this agree with me. I'm only a student myself and do not know what it is really like to teach in a classroom and I might have a skewed perspective about the banking system of teaching.

Blog Post 6

In the Paulo Freire reading my group talked about a lot of our thoughts on our annotations of the chapter. We came up with a common conclusion on the reading, that yes the banking method of education is not necessarily productive, but it does have some benefits. We discussed how teachers just teaching to a test or for memorization is obviously bad, but in education there is always an aspect of memorization. For example, when one is teaching a history lesson a student must first memorize the facts before they can really start talking about what the facts mean to our history and present day problems.
I found interest in the quote, " In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed  by those who considered themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they considered to know nothing. Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry." (Freire104) From this quote, I interpreted it as Freire saying that in the banking system teachers are just throwing facts and knowledge at the student, but not really teaching them anything and allowing them to learn and discover things, but just memorize facts. Obviously, no teacher aspires to lead a classroom like this, with the banking system of education, but I think a teachers get into a rhythm over the years it is often what their teaching style turns into. I think to avoid this method of teaching, teachers just have to be conscious of the way their teaching, and as their jobs might get harder or longer that they do not phone in the way that they teach to make it easier.