My Summer As A Breakthrough Teaching Fellow

An equal and high quality education for all students in the United States is crucial to its economic progression. Access to a proper education leads to the acquirement of jobs and opportunities which overall will support the development of a society. Unfortunately, there is a large disparity between ethnic groups, regarding their ability to equally succeed and obtain the same opportunities as their counterparts. This is otherwise known as the attainment gap, which more specifically, refers to the distinct academic achievement differences between groups of students; often times between minority groups and their White peers. This is

To close the achievement gap I have to seek the help of many people within the school community. First, before the beginning of the school year I will meet with the teachers in my building and discuss ways to close the gap. The staff and I will look for patterns and once patterns are determined, we will look for research based options for our professional development focus for the school year. Secondly, I will

bright young students who were not able to succeed to the fullest given their background

I teach first grade at Lowe Elementary School; my class is made up of twenty-four very diverse seven year-olds; they come from all over the city of Louisville, from a variety of socio-economic situations. Each student brings a unique personality to our classroom community, and they all work hard to become “smarter and smarter” and to “go to college”. Thirteen students are boys and eleven are girls. Of these twenty-four students, three of them are English Language Learners. Additionally, eight students receive tier two interventions and two receive tier three interventions in reading. In math, five students are tier two and four are tier three. I also teach one student who receives ECE services for a developmental delay. Within my class there is a wide achievement gap.

First, Duckworth argues that a growth mindset transforms failures into learning opportunities that make individuals achieve more. In Grit, Duckworth tells a story about David, one of her students whose growth mindset helped him become increasingly successful. Duckworth saw his desire to learn and immediately asked for him to be placed in an accelerated course that provided more challenges and failures. When asked about how he dealt with these new failures, David responded that “I did feel bad - I did - but I didn’t dwell on it. I knew I had to focus on what to do next. I basically tried to figure out, you know, what I did wrong. What I needed to do differently” (Duckworth 19). David’s approach to obstacles in class allowed him to achieve greater things in the future. He later graduated from Swarthmore College and earned a PhD in mechanical engineering from UCLA. David learned from his mistakes, and

Carol Dweck’s Brainology sets forth the “growth mindset” as the only factor in a student’s success. However, Alfie Kohn’s The Perils of ‘Growth Mindset’ Education: Why We’re Trying to Fix our Kids When We Should Be Fixing the System, proposes another view. Also, Home Life is a third factor that impacts a student’s success. I believe all three of these are integral to a student’s accomplishments.

In the book And Still We Rise By MIles Corwin, we hear the stories of students childhood and upbringing. We also hear about their aspirations for the future but each of them seem to have extensive barriers that try to stunt their growth. Throughout the book we see how it’s not how someone is brought up that dictates who they are, but it’s that person’s perseverance that makes them who they are.

The twenty-five stories that are contained in the book, My First Year As A Teacher, are about real teachers and their experiences during the first year of teaching. Each story is different. Some are about memorable students while other stories are about some of the hardships that are encountered as a novice teacher. The diverse sampling of stories in this book gives insight of what kind of problems one might encounter as a teacher, yet they also describe how rewarding the profession can be. I found it rather difficult to choose only ten stories as my favorite but after much consideration and rereading I decided on the following stories because in many ways I could relate to the students as well as the teachers that are given life in these stories.

accomplished through education. Education is the fundamental key to a child's success. Whether it’s in academics, athletics, or community service, my experiences create

Ravitch?s discussion on ?achievement gaps? points out that African American students academic scores have progressed remarkably since 1990 to 2011. She also states that the Hispanic and Asian have progressed as well. Achievement gaps will continue to be an issue, as long as there are different races, ethnic groups, the poor and the wealthy. The more disadvantaged one is, is going to lack in education and prosperity. To solve an issue like the achievement gap, we need to take action and begin at the root. These children are suffering because lack of proper education in the school system, which stems from the poverty in the segregated neighborhoods. Low income

Development can be described as a change over time in any a structure, thought, or behavior that have been adapted by biological or environmental influences. In my definition of development, the crosswalk tool is an excellent resource to help with this progression in students academics. There are differences in from child to child in the timing for reaching developmental milestones. Henceforth we as counselors will come in contact with a wide range of students. This tool will help us focus on areas the student need to pay more closer attention to inevitable become a high achieving student. In the Martin’s article it discovered that, "This study also found that over a 3-year period, students showed better academic performance in schools with CDG programs, even if the programs were not fully implemented” (Martin, 2009).

A widespread issue for Americans, the achievement gap is a significant inequality that young minorities face. Directly correlated with the societal injustices of poverty and racism, often resulting in limited opportunities and socioeconomic stagnation, the achievement gap encompasses the disparity in education performance of students by race and income. As the basic values of a democratic government include justice and liberty, it is imperative that a democracy and democratic citizens provide equal opportunity for all, especially in the realm of education.

He argued that it was the teacher’s perceptions and their expectations of the students that continues to keep the gap wide. This view is a controversial one because of the underlying tone that somehow racism could be causing the gap. However, it has been stated that sometimes teachers form a preconceived notion about their students and that notion ultimately affects how they treat their students, what is expected of their students and how the students begin to perceive themselves. He suggested using the proper amount of “wait time”, proper feedback, and mirroring the “Great Expectations” initiative for implementing a teaching approach that black students will excel under (Ferguson,

The achievement gap is a term that has evolved over the past decades to describe

My greatest contribution as an instructor has been the time I have spent off the podium. There are several subjects that I may not be familiar with or maybe seen as the tougher subjects or perhaps even boring. The time that is spent preparing outside of the classroom is extremely important. As an instructor first and foremost you have to spend countless hours researching a subject, analyze it, and anticipate questions. It is not a comfortable to be in front of students and not fully knowing the subject. Not only does the material have to make sense to you, you then have to take that material and think about how to explain it so that every different Soldier from every different background can make sense of it. Practicing teaching methods using different comparisons, developing training aids all takes a lot of time outside of the duty hours to deliver the best level of instruction possible. Then there is the time spent improving on the lesson plan. The lesson plans we receive are often times missing information, they order they are in doesn’t make sense and sometimes they are completely blank a give use nothing to go off of. That means dedicating the hours outside of the class room to improve or even completely build that lesson plan. Time must be spent to ensure that every piece of information the students need is included. This is not always possible we could easily spend an entire week breaking down the components of an automatic transmission and go into