Quotes from Spring Chapters 3 and 10 and Kozol 9 Chapters 9 and 10

Spring Chapter 3 page 62

“Plessy v. Ferguson highlights the principle that race is a social and legal construction.”

We talked in class once about what is “white” and “black” and why we chose those names.  There is really no such thing as a white person or a black person, it’s just some names society came up with and we still use them to this day.  What did make Homer Plessy a “black” man in the eyes of the court when a majority of him came from “white” ancestry?  Is it because he has some “black” in him and that automatically makes a person “black”?  How does that make even make any sense whatsoever?  It just goes to show that society can come up with anything and everyone else will, unfortunately, follow whether they realize it or not.

Spring Chapter 10 page 279

“Another concern is teachers’ activity outside the school.  A controversial issue is whether a teacher’s membership in a radical political organization is grounds for dismissal or denial of employment.”

When becoming a teacher, a person is considered a professional and should carry themselves that way especially in public.  If a teacher joins a certain organization, I don’t think they should be fired because of said organization.  I suppose it really depends on the organization itself and what in entails, but I feel as though it would have to be something quite intense or “bad” for a teacher to be fired because of an organization.  I couldn’t imagine working so hard throughout my life to get a teaching degree/masters, spend a few years teaching, then all of a sudden be let go because of a group I had joined. 

Kozol Chapter 9 page 220

“Knowing that Indianapolis is one of the most politically conservative communities in the United States, I asked Dr. Pritchett if it would endanger his position if I quoted him by name.  “This is my last year in Indianapolis,” he said.  “I don’t know where I’ll be working next.  But I could care less what anyone might say.  If we who are working in these schools don’t advocate for children, then who will?””

This quote definitely speaks the truth.  Students from elementary school through high school speak their minds all the time, but it doesn’t voice concern until the second a teacher or principal or anyone actually working in the school system speaks.  Yet, when they do speak, they’re “wrong” and basically shunned for speaking their mind and this is clear by the way Kozol is asking Dr. Pritchett if it’s okay if he quotes him by name.  It’s so sad that people are looked down upon when trying to speak for the children; the children are our future, wouldn’t people want what’s best for them?  What’s best for THEM, not what’s best for BUSINESS.

Kozol Chapter 9 page 222

“How can one even dream of racial integration, I am asked, in a district in which 75 to more than 85 percent of students are black or Hispanic and most middle-class white parents do not send their children to the public schools, or not beyond their elementary grades.”

This is something that I feel is going to take a really long time and clearly, has been taking a really long time.  It seems like something so simply, putting a bunch of different children in one school, yet it’s quite the opposite.  I feel like a big part of this has to do with the parents because they mainly have control where their children go to school, the children just go where they’re put.  Children really don’t care who they go to school with starting from day one.  Of course, it gets harder as they grow older is they’re in a predominantly urban area and move to the suburbs and vice versa.  A lot of it has to do with people being closed mind and being stereotypical and it’s really starting to get old.  If we keep doing what we’re doing, things are only going to get worse.

Kozol Chapter 10 page 239

“”I’m still not completely at ease among white people,” he went on.  “When you walk into the centers of white dominance, no matter what you’ve done in life, you feel like an outsider.  But what my high school education did successfully was to teach me to function effectively in that environment.  I don’t think I could possibly have done this if I had not had that kind of education.”

No matter what your race or culture is, if a person is around people that are not exactly like themselves they feel uncomfortable.  It shouldn’t be like that at all, but that’s the way society has it play out.  People are self-conscious or nervous around other people that aren’t like themselves.  Everyone, for the most part, can still function and will still do what they need to do, but no one is 100% comfortable, rarely. 

Quotes from Folder 12 Readings

Quote from http://www.promiseofplace.org/what_is_pbe

“Place-based education (PBE) immerses students in local heritage, cultures, landscapes, opportunities and experiences, using these as a foundation for the study of language arts, mathematics, social studies, science and other subjects across the curriculum.”

This is exactly what needs to be in our classrooms nowadays and the education students should be learning.  This is way better than teaching to the test any day!  Children can finally have fun while learning and learn through all their subject areas in a new and exciting way.  I don’t see why something like this isn’t in the classroom of every school.  Wouldn’t the test scores sky rocket if all students were learning like this?  This is as hands on as it gets for students and it sounds fantastic!

Quote from “Toward a Culturally Informed Eco-Justice Pedagogy” page 115

“An example that comes to mind is the way in which literacy has been represented in classrooms as an expression of progress, and “illiteracy” (that is, oral cultures) as backward.”

I never really thought about something like this before until I read this quote and it really is true.  Anything that isn’t “correct” English is basically shot down and looked at as “wrong” in schools today.  Is it wrong because it’s not how something would be worded or marked correct on a test?  Is it wrong because it’s not how most people view writing everyday so it’s not “normal”?  How could schools fix something like this, in a way I feel as though it’s impossible?  Literacy on dictionary.com comes up as “the ability to read and write”.  So a child that reads and writes in Spanish, but not English is deemed “illiterate”?  Clearly, that child is literate; they’re just not literate according to the United States.

Quote from “Look into the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education” page 25

“Learning is always a creative act.  We are continuously engaged in the art of making meaning and creating our world through the unique processes of human learning.”

We, as teachers and people in general, are always learning; we’re learning something new every day!  I think this is something that teachers need to remember, especially those teachers that think they know everything.  It is okay if a student asks you a question and you don’t know the answer right away, it’s even better if you have to look it up with them!  It’s a learning experience for both you and the student; it also helps show the student that you’re just like them, a student.  It will help put teacher and student on the same level, even if it’s only for a little bit.  Wouldn’t you rather learn from someone that you can see is only human or someone who acts like they know all?  It gets intimidating after a while and may even keep students from asking questions they may want to ask!

Quote from http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/content/pages/Read-the-Charter.html “Earth, Our Home” paragraph

“Humanity is part of a vast evolving universe.  Earth, our home, is alive with a unique community of life.”

Students don’t really see much of the outdoorsy life as they did when I was a little kid, even more so when my parents were little kids; so much TV, videogames, test taking, etc.  I think lessons need to bring some of that nature back into the picture so students realize how wonderful their planet really is.  It’s important for them to learn about the world they live in vs. taking a test?  Which one is bigger and realistically more important to them? 

Quote from “A Pedagogy for Ecology” page 32

“Rather than contribute to a sense of disconnection from place by writing off the environments around our most urban schools as unsalvageable or not worth knowing, teachers can instill in children an attitude of attention to what exists of the natural world in their neighborhoods.”

Children love to talk about their families, friends, and things in their environment all the time, imagine what children would be able to write if they were able to always connect the writing to themselves.  Things that students care about, they will work hard with and produce amazing projects from.  If you had to do a presentation on rocks verses a presentation on something you’re brother/sister does that you think is really cool, which would you rather do?  Of course, those are complete opposites, but just an example.  If math, science, history, all of the subjects can have some connection to students’ lives, they will care about what they are learning more than if it has no connection at all.  This reminds me of the movie “Freedom Writers” because the students in that movie actually started to learn because they were able to express themselves and write about what they wanted to.  This also gave them a new respect/connection with their teacher.

Quote from “Look into the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education” page 26

“Understanding the depth of relationships and the significance of participation in all aspects of life are the keys to traditional American Indian education.”

I love this quote because it brings it back to traditional American Indian education and the way things used to be before all this nonsense of test taking and complications in the education system that we have today.  Teachers and students need to really get to know/understand one another to truly have a great classroom environment.  This also brings it back to nature, in a quote I used earlier where I said students need to know more about nature and the planet they live on.  The connection between teacher and students is very, very important.  I have heard stories in the past where students are called by their numbers by their teacher and I think that’s simply ridiculous.  Right there, it’s degrading to the child because the teacher doesn’t even seem I know their name! 

Quotes from "The Shame of the Nation" by Jonathon Kozol Chapter 8

Page 189

“”What a cheap investment,” he observed, “to take a boy and give him some stars in his eyes.””

A compassionate teacher with a great education and a few extra bucks goes a long way for a classroom of students.  A classroom doesn’t need a bunch of nice things to give students a great education.  Yes, these nice things can help enhance the learning experience and make things a bit more fun, but with less substance comes more creativity.  A teacher wants their students to be creativity so a teacher should learn to be creativity themselves as well when it comes to making lessons for a student.  A teacher doesn’t need to have the latest in technology, he/she just needs to care and be able to teach his/her students in such a way that they will be excited to learn.  Would you rather be in a fancy classroom with a teacher lecturing on or in a classroom with not-so-much, yet your teacher makes learning fun?  I feel as though people tend to think they need a lot of fancy, high-tech, fun things to learn.

Page 195

“An entirely different kind of promise, one that seems much easier to understand in human terms, is the high set of expectations that attach themselves to changes in the topmost personnel—superintendent, CEO, or chancellor, as they are variously known—who come and go so frequently in many of our urban systems, although personnel and program oftentimes are intertwined.”

These people are just popping in and out of the system with big ideas, yet two years later, they’re gone!  It doesn’t seem fair to the urban schools because it leaves for an unstable system.  With every new hire, there’s more learning and planning that needs to be taken place.  Why can’t they just hire someone that they know or believe will really do a good job, not just someone with good ideas?  Is it the hiring process for these individuals that is skewed?  According to the quote, it seems that mostly in urban areas this is happening.  Maybe this is because urban schools are less than suburban schools, these people have more work that needs to get done.  These individuals are introduced with such high expectations and they are expected to live up to them and that must be where the pressure sets in.

Page 199

“Education Secretary Bennett called his school “a mecca of education” after Clark threw out 300 students who were often late for class or had high absence rates, whom he described as “parasites” and “leeches.”  Two thirds of the students he threw out ended up in the Passaic County Jail, according to a teacher at the school, but average test scores briefly rose a bit because the kids who scored the lowest now were gone.”

This is basically telling students “if you don’t want to learn on time, then we don’t want to teach you.”  The 300 students that were kicked out of the schools are the students that need education the most!  This is why they’re in jail now and not at some other type of school.  Where are these students supposed to go if they don’t have much money to go to a private school?  It’s so sad that these students were just simply kicked out of school; who knows for sure why these students are coming late to school or class.  Maybe students are coming late to class late because they’re class is so boring and they don’t learn anyways.  Maybe students are coming late to school because there is family stuff going on at home that they need to tend to.  Also, to call these students “parasites” and/or “leeches” is ridiculous and no one should speak to or about students like this.  Would you want someone like this person in charge of your schools?

Page 201

“On a significantly more far-reaching scale, there are the promises made by our nation’s presidents, which in notable cases in the past (that of Lyndon Johnson, for example) have delivered very important benefits to children of low income but which, in other and more recent instances, have either been broken very quickly or else been acted upon with a degree of bullish certitude that leaves no room for sensible correction when the consequences turn out to be damaging.”

There are always “educational reforms” and promises for a better future for our students and America.  Where is it?  Yes, changing education for the better is of course something that’s going to take time and isn’t easy.  There will never be 100% of people all for a certain reform either.  But, why all of these promises and people still believing in them year after year?  It doesn’t seem fair to the students, teacher, or the schools.  Especially with what’s going on now with NCLB and Race to the Top; these don’t/are not working so why keep pushing them?  They sounds fantastic to some at first, but is there any research proving this will work or will they just push it on the schools and watch them fall?  I feel like maybe too big of steps need to be taken and they need to start small and work their way up.  Maybe even by fixing the schools first, that in itself can go a long way.

Page 213

“Experts in desegregation sometimes note that social policy in the United States, to the degree that it concerns the education of black and Hispanic children, has been turned back more than 50 years to where the nation stood in 1954.”

It’s such a scary way of looking at things, but true.  The schools nowadays are very segregated and what schools are doing poorly?  The urban schools.  Something needs to be done about this, but what?  This is what the administrations need to be talking about, not ways to “fix” our schools that are just making them worse.  Why not physically fix up the schools that are physically falling down in the urban areas and talk about the inequality and talk about the segregation and see where that brings us.  It’s silly to keep is all quiet when everyone knows it’s there.  By keeping it quiet, it’s not helping any, if anything, it’s making it worse.

Page 213

“The efficiency agenda and the notion that our public schools exist primarily to give the business sector what it asks for, or believes it needs, are anything but new; and the racially embarrassing beliefs by which these notions were accompanied a century ago, although widely disavowed today, are with us still.”

The businesses are slowly taking over our schools, a majority of our urban schools.  Why are the aims targeted on the urban schools?  Are they just simply saying these schools are failing anyways so they might as well throw them in a corporation as soon as possible?  What kind of “fix” is that for education in our schools?  Also, if there have been people that have disagreed with this, then why is it still happening?  It’s not fair to these schools, these businesses aren’t even helping them, just making things worse for the struggling teachers and students. 

"Educational Foundations" by Alan S. Canestrari and Bruce A. Marlowe Chapters 21, 22, and 23

Chapter 21 Page 198

“The message appears to be that teachers do not count when it comes to critically examining the nature and process of educational reform.”

Teachers should be number one when it comes to educational reform.  I feel as though they should have most of the say because they are the ones actually teaching the children and have to deal with all the standards, rules, and regulations the administration throws on them.  They know how their students learn the best, not the CEOs.  Why aren’t they able to have a say in anything and when they are, they’re being pushed under the bus?  Is it because everyone’s afraid to hear the truth?  Teachers have been to college and were educated to become a teacher and even go back to school to further their education.  Why “not count” the only people that know most about education and have experienced everything talked about first hand?

Chapter 21 Page 203

“With this perspective in mind, I want to conclude that teachers should become transformative intellectuals if they are to subscribe to a view of pedagogy that believes in educating students to be active, critical citizens.”

Teachers should want their students to be involved in something more than reading, writing, and math.  They should take what the students need to learn in class and turn it into something more.  In her book “Black Ant and Buddhists” Mary Cowhey, a transformative teacher, talks about how her first grade class had made pies to bring to a homeless shelter for Thanksgiving.  The day the students were going to bring the homeless shelter the pies, it snowed outside and school was canceled.  Mary Cowhey didn’t think much of it because it was snowing out, what could she do, force her 6 year old students outside on a snow day to deliver pies?  Lo and behold, the first graders themselves forced their parents to call Mary Cowhey because they really, really wanted to deliver these pies to the homeless shelter regardless of the snow day.  It’s just amazing to me that Mary Cowhey had made such an impact to her students that they still were determined to deliver those pies!  Can you imagine what our schools would look like if every classroom in our nation had the same type of inspiration?

Chapter 22 Page 206

“The culture of privacy has been ripped apart—for reasons both good and bad.  Thus, the kind of quiet, behind-closed-doors resistance that flourished during my earliest years is more problematic.  Today, the standardized curriculums and lesson plans which were always part of the traditional public schools—even when ignored—are being republished and reissued, in even greater detail.  The old regime has been reinstalled, plus.”

When you watch movies or television shows, it seems that teachers in the classroom play the game by their own rules, they get to call their own shots.  In reality, it’s not quite like that at all.  Teachers seem to have very little privacy in their classroom, especially with others coming in to constantly observe even how they teach their lessons.  It can be both stressful and time consuming, thinking of that “perfect” lesson for one’s observation, and that’s if the observation is planned and not a surprise one!  It seems like teachers are constantly being judged and practically having to always walk on their tip toes.  I’m sure there are many pros and cons to having more privacy in a classroom as well as there are many pros and cons to the way things are today.  Can you imagine how you would run your classroom today if the rules and regulations were the same as many years ago?

Chapter 22 Page 206

“In Head Start I was told teaching the names of numbers, letters, and colors was what we’d be tested on in June; but I figured if we did modestly well at that I could spend 90 percent of my time exploring more important stuff like the properties of real life.”

It seems that there are quite a few teachers out there that simply teach what’s going to be tested and nothing more.  There is so much more to learn in school than just what’s going to be on the test.  A teacher should want to go above and beyond to teach more than what’s going to be on the test because they know that these students will need more than that in life.  Children will even learn the material they need to know for the test better when it’s connected with important real life situations.  Would you rather sit in a classroom to constantly go over color names or would you want to actually do something with those colors, explore them, and make something?  Wouldn’t you want to take those colors and turn them into something huge, a better learning experience for the classroom?

Chapter 23 Page 210

“He sent Jenni to the library for a day so he could “teach” the students the necessary information to pass the test—information he was sure they had missed because they had not been involved in the traditional rote/recovery mode of instruction and evaluation.”

These students, for the past 4 weeks, were practically living in the time period where the Civil War had occurred thanks to their student teacher.  The students were unsure of their student teacher’s tactics at first because they had never done anything of the sort before, but they exceeded both their own and her expectations.   Yet, the actual classroom teacher wasn’t convinced that they learned anything great enough for the test at least so he took it upon himself to “teach” what she had missed.  This teacher, John, didn’t even give Jenni, the student teacher, a chance.  He’s so caught up in his ways of teaching that he can’t see any other way but his own.  Teaching has changed a lot from the early years until today both with how teachers are being trained and the school systems themselves.  Teachers who have been teaching for quite some time should be reintroduced to some things and take classes to see what’s new and proof that the “what’s new” actually works.  Do you think that even with proof, these teachers will change their minds on their teaching ways?

Chapter 23 Page 211

“Without thinking teachers, we do not have thinking schools.  Without thinking schools, we do not have thinking students or future citizens who can think.”

Teachers need to be able to think for themselves.  They should know what mandates they believe in for a classroom and be able to express that in the classroom.  They shouldn’t need to lean on the higher powers for support, they should lean on themselves.  They need to be able to think and know what thinking is because if they can’t, how will their students think?  Going above and beyond is hard work, yes, but if you’re not willing to do it, then why be a teacher?