Her next article talks about how sometimes class size doesn't determine it all. Would you rather have your kid be in a small class with a mediocre teacher, or a larger class with an excellent teacher? If you fired the least effective teachers, and let class sizes go up about 5%, your children may have a better outcome. She also speaks again about how you could save money and buy things that would positively impact the classrooms.
In her last article she talks about children needing the same schooling, or different schooling. While her article was interesting, I found that the comments and discussions afterwards were even more interesting. She was saying in a way that black children need different schooling than latino, which is different from high class, as well as low class etc. In a way, perhaps she has a point, parents have different expectations, and the children may have different needs, however, it's unrealistic, you cannot create schools that only allow students of one class or race into a classroom! The comments were saying it's not so much about who is in the class, but that the important part is to have individualized lesson plans, add something for each student. Then another teacher got on and commented:
"I have 35+ kids a class, six classes a day (we are on a 7 period schedule), and four subjects to teach.
Just how in the hell do you expect me to come up with 200+ different lesson plans…let alone teach them?"
I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this comment, at first I laughed, but as I think about it, I feel like it is our job to connect with each and every student in some sort of personal way, and make it applicable to their life. It's like we talked about learning styles in this class. Maybe just teacher things in more than one way would be your method of connecting with each children. I don't know.
Overall I found these blogs to be very interesting, and I enjoyed reading the comments/ arguments that came afterwards! :)
wow.. I was imaging with that much number of student, managing classroom, and to teach students.. having larger number in classroom..will be TOO HARD!
ReplyDeleteI really like the idea about laying off the least effective teachers rather than the newest teachers. I know that I would rather have a good teacher teaching my children over a teacher that has been teaching for 15 years and isn't very good.
ReplyDeleteThose articles brought up some great points, thanks for sharing them with us! It's important to take into account that years of experience doesn't necessarily mean that a teacher is more effective than a new one. I think individualized lesson plans would help accomodate to the needs of all of our students, but I see how that could be daunting in a large classroom setting. I think that is just one of the responsibilities that makes teaching challenging, yet incredibly rewarding. If we just take the time to get to know each student and connect with them, it will make the learning experiences more positive.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ariel. years of experience do not necessarily make a teacher effective. Some of the worst teachers that I have encountered had twenty plus years under their belts. I think that sometimes some teachers with all of that "experience" are set in their ways and are against adopting the new teaching styles. It would be very difficult to customize lesson plans for every student, but some learning styles are similar and lesson plans can reflect that. Just knowing that some students need a little more than others is a step in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteI agree that there are so many factors that contribute to the classroom needs of a child. In specific I have found that although a student may share one need or similarity with another, no child comes from the same home environment with the same needs. School is not intended to conform all children to think, behave, and expect the same behavior but rather to teach children about the world and how they can contribute. Children bring many gifts to the classroom and a good teacher is one that can take a little piece of art from every student to create a beautiful collage.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the the idea about laying off the least effective teachers rather than the newest teachers like many other class mate. newest needs a chance to show their skill. You never know, newest can came up with new idea that might be more effective toward educating children better.
ReplyDeleteThis was an interesting post to read. I agree that just because a teacher is newest, that should not automatically make them the first to be laid off.
ReplyDeleteThe problem I see is what criteria is going to be used to determine a teachers effectiveness. If this determination is made by how much the students improve over the school year, than an average teacher in a more well to do part of town would have a distinct advantage over a good teacher working in a socioeconomically depressed part of town.
I am all for retaining teachers based on performance, but it needs to be FAIRLY done, and factors like the one I just mentioned must be taken into account, in my opinion.