Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Post 10

 Shor says that students should be able to connect what they are learning to their own lives. Not to just learn the facts but really understand in depth what there are being taught.Shor says that teachers need to kick there habit and try new methods to teaching there students. When students are only being talked to and not actually taught anything they do get bored. I'm not saying that the teachers aren't being taught. But when students are only being spoken to for lets say a 45min class they only listen to what the teacher is saying the dont actually retain any information. I know this from personal experience. I feel as though i learn better when i am interactive with what i am learning then just listening to a lecture. This is why i feel our FNED class is such a success we are able to interact with each other and learn from each other then only having the teacher stand in front on the class and talk for 2 hours. In most schools students usually just memorize what they need to for there exams and them after it is over they forget it. If teachers taught class more open in the sense that they have different ways of teaching a lesson everyday i think that this will help students learn more and retain more information. i wish all my class were this good i think i would learn and do much better in my courses if they were.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Promising Practice


                The day started off everyone signing in and waiting to be told what to do. Because I wasn’t only going to attend the conference I had to find my own folders where the presenter folders were.  The workshop started at 8:30. I and the rest of my ALLIED family went to the room in which we were going to present along side with some nursing majors. This section had to do with building a system in which students whose intended major is education could come and get support with this. The point of ALLIED is for under represented people. For all people from LGBTS as well as African American, Spanish, Asian, even American students who feel in some way under represented. As we waited I listened to the nursing students talking about there group. They talked about they are trying to achieve diversity in the nursing school. This is another point which allied is very strong about teaching. As I said before the nursing school wanted to achieve diversity within there community this is a Johnson moment because we have to white most likely middle class women talking about diversity. They want the students who are in the nursing school to join there group called the NSNA which is the National Student Nursing Association. They feel that the SON students would benefit from joining this group. They said that by the students joining this association they would be about to learn more about there future career. The students would be able to experience different things. I felt as though there whole presentation was about having the RIC students join this bigger then starting there own chapter here at RIC. To make it a more local group where the students didn’t have to be so inconvenienced with traveling so far to attend a meeting with hundred of other nursing students in other schools. I think this is a Christensen moment because he talks about we should stand up and talk back to authority yet theses women want the students to do to meeting that wont help the current students in the school of nursing the support they need to stand up for themselves.  At first I thought the whole presentation was supposed to be about diversity but they barely said anything about improving there diversity in the nursing school. How ever they did have a lot of statics about the NSNA and the amount of RIC student who are attending these meetings.  But again a presentation that was supposed to be about diversity really felt like more a recruiting presentation more then anything. After about a half an hour listening to them speak I started to get mad because I felt that they just stood there and told me nothing about diversity. They just really wanted people to join the NSNA which also you had to pay for. Coincidently they talked about how some of there students had to work full time to support their families on top of them going to school. So for them to ask these students to pay to join an association is pointless in my eyes. At the end of there lecture we had a Q&A someone asked if they had any specific classes that taught only on diversity and in there own way they really didn’t answer the question instead they said that they have diversity intertwined with pretty much every class. So in other words they don’t. After they were done, it was our turn. Or section of the conference was to educate the nursing school how we were able to make our group work. I was very excited I felt as though we were able to help them understand what makes ALLIED work. As I stated before ALLIED is a place were a student who is going to or currently enrolled in the school of education can go to seek help. Or even just go and talk about there problems. It’s set up so that no one is judged and everyone is able to give there own opinion to what ever the topic of the week is. After the workshops were over we went to the Teen Empowerment section. To be honest I think it was so boring as I sat there and they were talking about how teachers should relate to the students by telling them about something they went through when they were younger. They think by doing this that the students will react better in class when in reality this doesn’t happen. Student don’t care about what happened in there teachers life they have way too much going on in their own lives to care so by doing that it doesn’t matter at all to them. And then the rest of the presentation they did a lot of ice breakers. This just toped off how boring it made the presentation. I seriously didn’t want to sit in my seat and watch them play different ice breakers. All in all I think that this was very pointless. I also didn’t see how the youth panel helped at all either. So I guess for my first year going to Promising Practice wasn’t as fun as I was hoping but then again there next year :) 

Pictures from Promising Practice :)












Sunday, November 13, 2011

Talking Point 8

The author Finn argues that teachers in middle class school don’t care much for teaching the kids the importance of what they are learning or applying any of it to there lives. The teachers care more about keeping the students occupied and out of trouble. As I read this article I was shocked to know that there were actual teachers out there that didn’t really want to help there students progress in life. Even though that most of the students in the article were from middle class families. Finn said that teachers didn’t care about teaching the students because there parents didn’t care about what they were learning as well as that the parents just didn’t care about the students. In some way I feel like he even talks about how he himself did this as a middle school teacher he kept his students busy just so that they wouldn’t get into trouble.  He also said that the way to get the right answers in these schools was by following directions that the teacher had given you and not necessary getting the right answer. Most of Finn’s arguments were about the teacher teaching methods, and how literacy, knowledge, and understanding were important to theses teachers when they should have been.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Talking Point 6



            In the article Separate but Unequal they discuss the problems that minorities face in school. They talk about how if the school system with more of the minority populations were better equipped students would be more likely to succeed in school.  All of these schools are located in communities that are very populated and are also where there is a high rate of poverty. In this article they stated that by bringing students that are in these such schools to another school that a mixture of middle class students they will progress better.  Part of me doesn’t really feel like this is true because I grew up in a school that wasn’t in the best neighborhood but I turned out great. Most of my friends have been in the same situation. I feel like it depend one a child’s parents and what there parents want for them not on the school system only. The website Brown vs. Board of Education shows all the very important events that happened in our country during the time when we tried to end segregation.  While I was listening to Time Wise I agree with everything that he said that racism is still very permanent in our country and even though a lot of people think that racism doesn’t exist anymore. He also said that people feel that Obama is a different type of black person. Tim Wise said that no one can be like Obama but no one should actually be like Obama that all black people are all different. I like how Tim Wise said that all black people have the ability to become great but they don’t have to be like Obama they should be able to represent themselves as they want. I like how Tim Wise talks about everyone’s point not just his own

Monday, October 17, 2011

Extened Comment to what Elyssa had written

I agree with what Elyssa had written i feel that high school student rather any student should be motivated to do Community service not forced.When a child let alone anyone being forced to do something seems more like a task then a nice gesture. Then the child wouldn't want to do the community service they go into as this is going to be horrible and im just going to get it done and be able to go home and do something else. They wouldn't leave the experience with a joy in there heart that they did something good for someone else.