Archive | April, 2012

Undue Burden For Public Schools

29 Apr

A recent lawsuit against the district alleging sexual assault against a special needs child illustrates the need for close supervision of these students; sexual misconduct has happened before when teachers and aides leave these kids unsupervised for even a short time. Most of the incidents involve children with very low intelligence levels. They are unable to understand their sexual urges as they become teenagers; they react instinctively without the social controls ‘normal’ youngsters are taught from an early age. They will engage in sexual contact or take somebody else’s property or resort to physical violence at a moment’s notice. They are not responsible for their actions and thus must be protected at all times. It is a very difficult task for teachers and their helpers as they are required to restrain and guide these special needs kids.

 

President George W. Bush spends time with stud...

President George W. Bush spends time with students at the Waldo C. Falkener Elementary School Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2006, in Greensboro, N.C. The President visited with third- and fifth-graders before delivering his remarks on the No Child Left Behind Act. White House photo by Paul Morse (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Journal of A Mandatory State Testing Day

28 Apr
This is a Computer Fundamentals class taking a...

This is a Computer Fundamentals class taking an exam. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

6 A.M.

Thinking of the upcoming state testing; what do I take for sustenance since the school’s lunch is hardly palatable? I decide on a sandwich and Pringles

7 A.M

I drive away with apprehension; I am the official administrator of the test which entails all kinds of responsibilities. Why can’t I be a reliever, for once?

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Are We Still At Risk?

25 Apr

While the national conversation about education would never be the same, stunningly few of the Commission’s recommendations actually have been enacted. Now is not the time for more educational research or reports or commissions. We have enough commonsense ideas, backed by decades of research, to significantly improve American schools. The missing ingredient isn’t even educational at all. It’s political. Too often, state and local leaders have tried to enact reforms of the kind recommended in A Nation at Risk only to be stymied by organized special interests and political inertia. Without vigorous national leadership to improve education, states and local school systems simply cannot overcome the obstacles to making the big changes necessary to significantly improve our nation’s K-12 schools (Wikipedia)

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Is I.Q. a Valid Indicator in Schools?

22 Apr

The theory of multiple intelligences was proposed by Howard Gardner in 1983 as a model of intelligence that differentiates intelligence into various specific (primarily sensory) modalities, rather than seeing it as dominated by a single general ability (Wikipedia)

All of our students in high school have been evaluated for intelligence, and I hope you will accept my definition of the term: The ability to solve problems, acquire new data, transfer knowledge to new situations, make new associations between concepts, interpret abstract symbols, and offer creative ideas which may or may not be practical. I refuse to accept the multiple intelligences proposed by Gardner (who am I to question it you will ask? Just a guy with a major in psychology who has been writing on the education subject for the last 30 years). The word intelligence in my humble opinion does not have a plural because it takes just about five minutes of talking to somebody you don’t know to form a valid opinion as to his/her level of intelligence. And so it is for students in public schools. I can read their assessment and find out immediately what their I.Q. is; below 80 tells me that this teen requires a lot of help. Above 100 lets me know that he/she only needs some motivation to do well.

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What is a Normal Attitude in Teens?

21 Apr
  • The ego represents what we call reason and sanity, in contrast to the id which contains the passions (Sigmund Freud)

The word normal, I would much rather use the adjective ‘innocent’,  has been abused and misunderstood ever since the “science” of psychology took off with Sigmund Freud. I place the word ‘science’ in quotation marks because, again, most of it is more art and guesswork than hard facts.

Portrait of Sigmund Freud

Portrait of Sigmund Freud (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Innocent  means there is no danger to the teen or to others. Let’s face it; sometimes the adolescent goes to extreme emotional states which may easily convert into violent actions. We have seen enough cases of shootings in schools to provoke a slew of regrets as to what may have prevented the tragedy.

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Logos, Ethos, Pathos

18 Apr
Bust of Aristotle. Marble, Roman copy after a ...

Bust of Aristotle. Marble, Roman copy after a Greek bronze original by Lysippos from 330 BC; the alabaster mantle is a modern addition. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences (Aristotle)

No, I am not talking about any of the three musketeers (i.e.  Athos, Porthos) but about the new craze that has invaded both the business world and the public high schools, the last case for the English writing class in particular.  We the teachers are trying to explain the secrets of persuasive essays to our teen audience. The private sector is hiring experts in Aristotelian rhetoric to learn how to convince their employees and customers of any new policies or products and the surprise findings is that pathos is more effective than logos. In the case of students the problem is to teach them the difference between the three areas and show them how to write a persuasive essay based on those three concepts.

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No Monetary Reward, Just Satisfaction

16 Apr

We cannot motivate students; we can only create the conditions in which students can motivate themselves (Chris Wejr, elementary school principal in British Columbia, Canada)

There is an interesting concept and I wonder how many of my teacher-colleagues agree with the statement. The idea that we have the duty to motivate our students is always based on the  ’carrots and sticks’ method. In many elementary schools, teachers offer sweets, crayons, and other material rewards to impulse their very young students toward the desired academic goal. At the high school level, we have decided to stop the practice after several years of giving out ‘Walkmans’ and other electronic goodies. The recent budget crunch put a quick end to that cornucopia. Mr. Wejr adds that giving out stuff to students is depriving them of the much prized habit of doing valuable work for its own sake.

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Inclusion and Discipline

13 Apr

 

Classroom

Classroom (Photo credit: James F Clay)

Being an inclusion teacher, as mentioned in previous articles, requires a good rapport with the classroom teacher. Both must work as a team in high school (not to be confused with the academic teams at elementary and middle school levels) and both must have a very specific role to play. If either one lacks the necessary training and information, the class situation may turn chaotic very quickly. Students detect immediately the lack of preparation and/or cooperation and take advantage of it by behaving erratically, checking their smart phones, listening to their iPods, or talking loudly while the main teacher tries to start the instruction process.

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Opening the Door

11 Apr
Dayton Dark Flight gang members after a bike r...

Dayton Dark Flight gang members after a bike race in downtown Dayton, OH (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Teachers at all levels must learn how and when to talk and listen to their students on an individual basis. There is a huge difference between lecturing a classroom and establishing a communication bond with a child, whether 6 or 18 year-old. I have gang members among my students; I know that and they know that I know. Their demeanor and tattoos give them away but they don’t care. They have a grudge against society and society lets them know they are not wanted. And yet..they expect to be treated with respect by teachers and staff alike; they are capable of sustaining a meaningful conversation about the hardships of life and their immediate bleak future. At times,  I can talk to them and make them laugh; at that moment, a bond has been established. They will tell their friends that so and so (teacher) is cool. “You can talk to him and he won’t judge you or put you down just because we belong to a fringe group”.

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Functional Illiteracy, A Modern Plague

9 Apr

Literacy is a vague term that is often misapplied by politicians and academic pundits, without forgetting students who falsely believe that the ability to decode letters on a written page is the equivalent skill. We teachers often criticize the new generation’s reluctance to read “good” books; or any book for that  matter, for I have visited quite a few homes completely bereft of written text, save for the occasional newspaper. I much prefer the term, for the last example, of functional illiterate people; that is, humans who have learned how to speak, read and write (in that order), but who simply “forget” their lessons and stop polishing their literate skills.

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