Blog Post 6

Blog Post-It

 

On Thursday, February 20, 2014 my education class was required to read chapter 8 in our Educational Foundations book on the "banking concept" of education in which Paulo Freire describes education being based on this concept of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This concept has been under scrutiny over the years and still today this method is being used by teachers and schools all over the world. Along with the reading, we were required to make post-it notes and put them at places in the chapter where we felt we didn't understand a term or statement or ask a question about the reading.

 

My question I posed to the teacher and the class which seemed to be the popular question of debate was on page 109 of chapter 8, which discusses liberation in the classroom. I asked, "What are liberating ourselves from? The banking concept, the way we are retaining knowledge, the way we are taught, etc.?" Many people had great answers to this question. We like to think we are liberating ourselves from the banking concept and how consistent everything is and never changing. we discussed that in the classroom we should be able to explore different ways and methods of learning and teaching.

 

I can relate to some of the teachers I used to have in high school and I have had some teachers here at John Carroll that only use this method, even though they might not know they are using the banking concept. The classes that seem to stay within the norms of a classroom, and do use the banking method, seem to be a boring and uninteresting topic or field of study. For this reason is little in part in why I decided to switch my major from psychology to education because of how it made me see clear of what the banking concept is and how it is being used and how I feel that it is not so effective. Students of all ages need to experience the world, ask questions, be creative. And teachers need to go outside the norms of society in the classroom to do all in their power to help their students succeed and be all they can be to the best of their ability.

 



Field Blog Post 2: BMS

Beachwood Middle School

 

 

On Thursday, February 2014, my education class went to Beachwood Middle School and observed the classrooms and the learning environment. To give a little background on this school, BMS is located in a commercially thriving part of the mini suburbs outside the Cleveland area, which means they are provided with a good amount of grants and funding. Not only that, but the school has a very diverse school with various amounts of culture. In this middle school, since they very financially stable, they provide every student a laptop to borrow for the school year. This school is very different from my middle school when I attended years ago. My school wasn't like Beachwood because of how more integrative they were with technology, the opportunity to learn a different language, etc. My school was very boring in comparison to Beachwood. Here are some of the observations I noticed in my time at Beachwood.

 

5th grade Art class:

• Jazz music in the background, which made the class more calm and helped sooth the mind of the students.
• the teacher was very interactive with students, when they needed help or some kind of inspiration on how to make the art they were making.
• positive comment all around from the teacher to the students
• there were big tables with multiple students at each, which helped the students socialize and help each other on their art.
• the walls of the classroom were filled with the students artwork and accomplishments; this shoed great appreciation for the students creativeness

 

5th and 6th grade Spanish class:

• very colorful; lots of posters of the Spanish speaking world
• the whole class was very interactive, the teacher would have the whole class dance and sing to songs designated to words and grammar they were learning at the time, which made it fun for the kids.
• the teacher was very eccentric and made the class very fun because she had a great personality and knowledge of Spanish to the point where she made it fun to learn Spanish.

 

Overall, my visit to Beachwood Middle School was a successful one. I learned how the learning environment differed from elementary school to middle school. Beachwood is a good school that is very diverse with vey interactive classes that make learning fun and interesting, but still challenges the students to think and solve problems. I could see myself doing more observations here in the future.

  



Blog Post 5: LGBT Commmunity

How is the LGBT community perceived in schools?

 

In class we talked about the readings in our Educational Foundations book about the LGBT community in schools and the struggles and harsh reality that people face belonging to that group. We went around the room and discussed about how each person's high school situation on this topic was. Most people high school including my high school didn't really think that the LGBT community was under too much scrutiny or was treated badly in school. It wasn't a big deal. Every school for the most part had a club for the LGBT community and wasn't really talked about in schools, but people knew they had one. Not too say there isn't bullying or inequality with the LGBT community, but schools nowadays are adapting and evolving to be more accepting of this group, which is a good thing. Then there are the schools that just are not accepting of this community like private schools. More specifically, religious schools because based the on the rules of the faith they do not believe that the LGBT community be accepted not only in schools, but in society.

 

So what do students do if they are facing adversity due to the fact that they are a part of the LGBT community or support it? They best answer according to the podcast we watched in class, is to seek out people: an adult, a teacher, a best friend, or even your guidance counselor for good advise and for great moral support through that persons tough time. Unfortunately, bullying is still in schools for people in the LGBT community and if that person that is being bullied doesn't seek out help it will only get worse.

 

 

Blog Post 4: Instutional Racism

Institutional Racism

 

What is institutional racism? How do we determine an action unintended, to be racist? I believe that institutional racism is the inequality of opportunity between races, gender, and sexuality. People are constantly being profiled as being this or being that, not deserving of this, or do not have the right. These things are surprisingly still in schools today even as we speak. It's not just in schools, but all around us in our daily life. Women make less money than men, gay people don't have the right to marry in the majority of the United States, and even religion still to this day are issues that are being questioned and criticized by the people who find offense in these wrong doings in our society. This is considered wrong because of how society has now-a-days mostly accepted these problems as social norms, but these are slowly changing and once we get this change; it is how we take advantage and see the benefits instead of the negatives.

 

Many people including myself have not only witnessed institutional racism, but have lived it. I've seen so many times in the workplace, at school, and outside in daily life or activity where people are not treated equally based on the specific features or background a person is affiliated with. I tend to see problems arise when that sort of action happens. This has been an issue for me and my family when it came to filling out the FAFSA for financial aid. You know the process is more beneficial for poor and ethnic families because of how there looked upon. For example, a big Latino family consisting versus a small white family, both have I teenager both applying to the same school. The bigger family that is Latino gets more financial aid from the government than the kid from the small white family. Now right there just isn't fair because the inequality both have on getting the same high amount of financial aid based on the difference in ethnic, family, and financial backgrounds.

 



Field Blog Post 1

A visit to Mercer Elementary School

 

         

 

On January 30, 2014 my education class went and visited Mercer Elementary School nearby John Carroll University. My first thoughts as my class and I were on are way to the school was I haven't been inside an elementary school classroom since I was a little kid. All kinds of questions were going through my head. I wonder how school has changed for elementary students since I was an elementary student? What are the teachers like now a days? How interactive are the students in the classroom? I was so skeptical about going. As we walked inside the building of the elementary school it was as I was an elementary student again. I felt like a little kid in school, with so many questions about the world and having that innocence we have being a kid experiencing the world without limits. My college professor, Dr. Shutkin, told my class to go on and take a tour of the school and go into the classroom and experience and observe how an elementary classroom is conducted. Now this school was a little different than most schools, it was an International Baccalaureate school. This meant it was class that explored more aspects of the world and learning than most schools. They had a much more hands on, creative, and open curriculum when it came to learning. They had mandarin speaking and Spanish speaking classes, which was the start to its uniqueness. The walls of most, or I think all of the school was work of the students, which spoke great measures of the school. The school teachers embraced the work of the students that put them on the walls for everyone else to see. One of our assignments our teacher was to go into the classroom and observe the basic elementary school and take notes on our experience in the classroom

 

Observations in Mrs. Polantz 3rd grade class:

1. the kids seemed very eager to learn.
2. the classroom was very organized, colorful, and full of work of the students on the walls inside the classroom. It was a fun learning environment to be a part of.
3. the teacher was very interactive with kids asking them all sorts of questions about the subject they were learning at the time.
4. the kids were very attentive every time she asked a question to the students.
5. the kids we observed were able to follow directions well in class.
6. lots of kids were willing to participate in class either by answering the question on the smart board or verbally at the desk with their hands raised. 
7. the kids were not shy at all to say or ask what was on their mind either about a question about the subject they were learning or personal questions to us or the teacher about anything.
8. the teacher seemed patient when things got either a little too loud or hectic and able every time to grab their attention back to their work they were doing in the class.
9. overall, the teacher made it fun and the kids were intrigued to learn.
10. the classroom had a comfortable learning environment and the teacher was a great one in terms of how passionate she was and seeing that she loved teaching kids and helping them succeed to the best of their ability.

This experience at Mercer Elementary school was a good one because of how comfortable and how good of an learning environment it is overall. The staff/faculty seemed to love their job and were passionate about teaching. In the future I hope to maybe do more student teaching their one day in he foreseeable future.

Blog Post 3: A Question About Teachers

What makes a great teacher?

 

I always ask myself what makes a good teacher and how can I apply that to class and my future as an educator. Many things make a teacher, but what makes them unique is what really counts. All teachers are different and have special qualities that make them not only certified to teach, but to learn. What I am mean by this is that any teacher, whoever it might be has to have a certain "passion" to teach in order to be a teacher. Without the love to educate young minds into the future leaders of this country, why teach?

 

Teachers have a certain love to do what they do in terms of either subject or the enjoyment teachers get when they see their students achieve success in the classroom. A good teacher goes above and beyond to connect with their students on a personal level that helps build relationships. If a teacher can do this it makes the student more comfortable and confident to perform well in the class. A good teacher will create a learning environment for the students that will make them interested to learn and encourage them to explore their talents and specialties.

 

I always like to remember the memories of one my favorite teachers I had in my life. Now don't get me wrong most teachers I have had were pretty good, but Mr. Murray, my sophomore English teacher was a great teacher. I remember the first the day of class when he talked about a funny story in his life, the class all laughed and that instant this was going to be an exciting class. Now English has never been my favorite subject, but how he taught it made the class more confident to express. He made the class room environment a place where he would provide positive reinforcement, but still be critical. This helped the class become more confident that they would share anything about their life or papers with judgment. I had gained a friend. Mr. Murray was so open to hear anything and I was willing to share. He always gave good advice on how to live your life and always be passionate about what you like and making good life decisions. What really made it a good friendship was that we both shared interest in what we loved. We both loved baseball. He was a Boston Red Sox fan and I was New York Yankees fan, so you know how that went. We always talk smack about each others team in a fun, but respectful way because we both had respect for each others team regardless of the long lived rivalry. Mr. Murray was a passionate, fun, caring teacher that would do anything in his power to help the student succeed in his class.

 

These are the qualities that a teacher should have to make them a great teacher. Having something in common with your students, so you can connect with them on a personal level. Have a passion of loving to teach and always enjoying knowing what your doing is transforming the nation's youth into the leaders of tomorrow.