Here I have found a blog in the opinion section of the NY times website. In it, the author talks from his perspective of the environment in which our education system now lies. As a whole, the ideas are about student input, but also about why or why not teachers choose to teach in lower income areas. For the first point, the author uses an anecdote from his life about how kids in his school were supercharged into activity when they were given the option to help organize class plans. As for the second point, the author recounts his perspective as a teacher/principle (the article doesn't elaborate which). As he sees it, there are many teachers who are promised by political groups that teachers in the schools of the big cities will receive more pay. He says that there are teachers who want to help people in these areas, but that vice versa that there are teachers who just want to escape from these schools. Now I ask you to comment. What do you think about education, and how do you see politics playing into it?
Article: http://lessonplans.blogs.nytimes.com/?scp=6&sq=Lesson%20Plans&st=cse
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2 comments:
I think that education and good teachers in low income areas are definitely needed, but i do think that many teachers stay away from these areas, despite higher pay. These teachers probably want to teach in a school that has a high reputation and well-behaving students. Therefore, it is very hard for low-income areas to turn their schools into good ones because until they get good teachers, there school will not have a good reputation, and a lot of teachers will not teach there. I think the government is adding higher pay to teachers at these school because it gives them an incentive to help out.
I agree fully with Mara. In order to have lower income schools become as good as others they need teachers who are committed to help change the school and who really want to make it a better place.
As for the part about the kids getting to help with the lesson plans, I agree with what statistics showed. For the second half of my fifth grade year our teacher let us and a partner make our own lesson plan for the week. He would tell us what needed to be done, go over the key points of the math and social studies and let us get to it. I thought this was brilliant because then we had basicaly all of our subjects with that one teacher. This allowed kids who could breeze through math do that and then take more time in english, where they struggled. The idea was to give each student the oppurtunity to learn at their own pace while our teacher helped out where needed. I appreciated that and learned a lot, not only about the different subjects but how to manage my time. We get more involved and interested in what we're doing if we have some control over it.
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