Overcoming Tracking
I am in both 310 and 311b, so I’m going to do be doing a two posts per-type thing. For 310, I am going to be looking at how to help students overcome their tracking adversity. It is my personal belief that when a problem presents itself, people spend way too much time talking about the problems and not nearly enough time focused on answering them. Tracking is a problem like this. I have discussed tracking in almost every education class I have had, yet tuesday was the first time that a professor actually discussed fighting the issue. I hate just sitting back and being like “well, there isn’t much I can do about this until I have tenure,” or saying “Well, there isn’t much to do about it because it is already well entrenched.” I think excuses like that are complete bullshit. Speaking from an action point of view, tracking can be fought. I think that arming the students against the system is the best way to fight a social injustice like this. The best way to arm them is through complete and thorough education. When they come in the door as teachers we cannot fall in the complicity of “back door teaching” and just let these kids slip through the system. We have to show them that we:
A) care
B) aren’t going to just let them slip
and C) are going to challenge them.
For this topic, I am going to be using the major newpapers across the US (NY Times, Chicago Sun, LA Times) and the Seattle Times to shake things up a bit. What I’m going to be looking for is articles dealing with:
A)demographics in classrooms of inner cities
B)teachers in the inner cities
C)what teachers are doing special in inner cities
I felt like the newspapers, rather than blogs, would be best for this topic because I want what people are doing everywhere to overcome this issue.
(PS this is an edited post re-doing my original topic for the blog)
I definately agree with you on the importange of utilizing technology in the classroom – when I talk to kids I know, I’m struck at how integrated technology has (and will continue to) become in their lives. I felt a little out-dated as I talked to my 15 year-old cousin about his Myspace, and how he and his friends just had a LAN party at their house. I had a 15 year old kid explaining, to me, the basics of setting up a LAN network! I don’t think we can underestimate the importance of using technology to actively engage learners – look foward to more posts on the subject!
Nathan
I find the idea of a SMART Board to be fantastic- the new areas and ideas it would allow both students and teachers to access are fascinating. As they said in the article, students desire to just play with the thing would greatly increase participation. I think that young adults are so technologically savvy now that the old ways of teaching—i.e. hand outs, chalk boards and poster-board projects—are outdated and boring to them. Of course, someone will have to teach the adults how to use the thing first.
The article listed some of the abilities that come with the SMART Board as “software that includes templates, maps, graphs, clip art, and virtual tools like protractors, calculators, keyboards, and rulers. Teachers also can import their own still images, video, and audio into the system and customize it to suit their specific lessons.” Think of all the possibilities and avenues of education that this will open up for us as teachers!
The biggest issue—money. Right now the cost is most certainly prohibitive for most, if not all, public schools. If I had to prioritize a wish list for my own classroom? I would want to make sure every student had access to a computer first—then I would move on to this very cool new toy.
Hey Dan,
See my comment on your 311 post.