The Blogs Influenced By Diane Ravitch

Due to an ongoing conflict between teachers at the Reynoldsburg City school and the school board, many teachers have decided to strike. When the strikers experienced a lack of support from the board, and even from the community, Emily Dillon, one of the strikers, decided to write an explanation. The primary source that she created was published on educationvotes.nea.org. Her piece is titled ‘“WHY I CHOSE TO STRIKE”: Reynoldsburg, OH, teacher shares her story.’ Throughout this primary source, Emily Dillon, an elementary school teacher and employee of the Reynoldsburg City Schools, goes into a considerable amount of detail about a day in the life of being on strike. In doing so, she explains to readers the main reasons they are striking and expresses her frustrations towards these issues. Dillon makes it very obvious that she does not enjoy striking and in fact misses her job very much, even if some of her arguments about class sizes, are flawed and or poorly written.

     If I had to recommend an essay for teachers to teach this would be first on my list. This essay was so well written that it actually interested me, even though I have only read 5 books in my life. Reading is not my favorite thing to do but if this essay was a book I would read it. I was so intrigued by the reality of it and the way that he made those “teachers” look so stupid and how he made the administrators realize how evil we humans can be.

Overall the book was a good read and touched on some various topics that are discussed in our class.

For our first Reading Response paper we listened to a podcast by Chana Joffe-Wait called the “550: Three Miles”. The podcast was about a low budget high school in the Bronx and another upper class private school up the road and how visiting the upper class high school effected the lives of the students from the lower income school. In my opinion this podcast not only shows the difference between upper and low class schools but also the different cultures between the two schools. When listing to the podcast I related it and though back to when we were talking about our single stories at the beginning of the semester. Making a connection to this in my own life reminds me of how in even the same counties in Georgia one high school could have more funding than another. Hearing their stories, it made me even more thankful for the support system and for the schools I was most fortunate to attended.

When I first saw it, I thought the title looked interesting so I decided to skim through it. It quickly caught my attention because I myself had recognized the fact that different subjects have different ways the material should be read, but I was unaware that it was an actual issue within education.

There were many diverse aspects to this book. Most of this book is a recall from either the main character, or one of his students. This book is intended to open people’s eyes to see that in order to change the world we must first change ourselves. Being able to go through this story and see the mistakes, and the good decisions, teachers in Michie’s life have made, has taught me that the best way to teach is through love, justice, cultural empathy and imagination. Some of the points brought up in this book include the positive and negative sides of physical contact with a student, classification/stereotyping, race, gangs, police brutality/lack of justice, and children not being able to escape peer pressure.

Katie Hendrickson 's “Student Resistance to Schooling: Disconnections With Education in Rural Appalachia” is a scholarly article within The High School Journal, a publication for those employed in a secondary educational facility. Being founded in 1918, it is one of the oldest peer-reviewed academic journals in education. The journal is managed by students and faculty in the School of Education at Chapel Hill and is published quarterly by the University of North Carolina Press – it 's both a current and scholarly resource. Hendrickson has quite a storied history in the teaching field as well, giving credence to her article. She has been published in another peer-reviewed academic journal, Education in a Democracy, as well as presented her finding on co-teaching at the Ohio Confederation of Teacher Education Organizations conferences. But the list of accolades doesn 't end there: she was awarded the Mabel Olson Bell Award for Outstanding Mentor Teachers from the Patton College of Education at Ohio University, in addition to awards for STEM (Science, Technology, Mathematics, and Engineering) teaching. Hendrickson, along with two of her colleagues, accepted the Governor’s Thomas Edison Award for Excellence in STEM Education in 2013, and in 2012, she received a Global Teacher Fellowship from the Rural School and Community Trust. This gave her the opportunity to travel and create place-based lessons for classrooms drawing from her experience,

I enjoyed the chapter, Mohammed Meets Madonna from the book The Middle of Everywhere and I thought the author’s journals of the students were interesting. I like that Mary Pipher wrote a little about all the students that were in the English Language Learner class. I thought this gave the audience a good idea of the variety of backgrounds and attitudes that the students had. For example, there are students who are in gangs, like Khoi and Cahn, and then there are students who are tenderhearted, like Velida and Tharaya. Some of the students in the ELL class wanted to learn and had dreams of going to college, while others just wanted to get out of school. I found this difference between these students interesting because I know that when I become a teacher, I will also have a wide variety of students. These journals made me realize some of the challenges I will have to overcome as a future teacher.

The statement about students reading on the superficial, surface level, and how they rarely reach that richer deeper meaning was very profound to me. The example of all the events that happen in the baseball game before each pitch was a great eye-opener to validate this point. Educators expect

I feel as though Katie Nolan lacks the ability to confront her problems. Rather than making a compromise with her drunken husband, she locked him away. This symbolizes that she may not be a strong willed, emotionally stable person after all. What if she only ignores her problems until they wither away into nothingness? I took a particular liking to Sissy. Although overly promiscuous, she appeared to be a very good person. - it’s just the way she solved dilemmas, through the use of promiscuity and lies. She was certainly emotionally available, however. Which is why I believe Francie and Johnny took a liking to her.

Within college classes, the teachers and students have the ability to talk more about controversial topics that are not allowed within the high school classes. Parents understand that when their children go to college, they will be exposed to more topics that they have yet to hear about. Parents do not expect the same from a high school classroom. Lake Braddock English departments officials sent a letter to Murphy stating that “society must address troubles the world faces” (The Washington Post - Shapiro). The letter also mentioned that, “ reading and studying books that expose us, imaginatively and safely, to that trouble steels our souls to pull us through our own hard times and leads us to a greater empathy for the plight of our fellow human beings” (The Washington Post - Shapiro).

It also showed us that value in education comes in different forms. For example, students like DeAndre valued education but didn’t think the education he was receiving was the best approach for him. It may appear the DeAndre was uninterested in learning but in reality he was interested in learning things that could help and resonated with his cultural history. I was enlightened by the way this article helped to highlight different types of students in a positive light. I resonate with this article because I went to a high school where students were labeled as noncompliant or “acting white”. I fell that more educators should read this article to get a well-rounded view of all their students especially those in the minority community. Furthermore, after reading this article I began to brainstorm alternatives to making school more appealing to all categories of students. According to the Boston Globe a new idea called community schools are entering discussions about better school models. The Boston Globe defines community schools as “both a place and a set of partnerships between the school and other community resources. Its integrated focus on academics, health and social services, youth and community development, and community engagement leads to improved student learning, stronger families, and healthier communities”. This idea sounds great to me because not only does it address the needs of the student

I participate in a tutoring program for elementary students in Dorchester, an underserved community in Boston. Working with the children has helped me eliminate preconceived ideas that led me to believe schools were bad because the parents did not pay enough attention to their children's educations. I now realize that the problems in education have more to do with the amount of funding that goes into certain schools. Ignorance and distance from reality caused me to believe that struggling neighborhoods inherently produce bad students. I now understand that the problems within the school do not reflect the students’ abilities.

Describe how you think this debate engaged with the course readings.  Do you think the debaters dealt with the substance of the readings? How could they have improved their use of the course readings while debating?  As you answer these questions, be sure to describe the central thesis of each of the course readings and how the debate topic and arguments related to those theses. Excellent answers will directly quote the course readings. (15pts)

Chapter 7 was enlightening and the chapter I was able to relate with the most thus far. For example, one part of the text stated that educators and families often set low expectations for students with disabilities. I can relate to this personally. When I was in the IDEA program, my classes were rarely challenging and my teachers generally set low expectations for my peers and me. I believe the reason for this was to not stress the students or push them past their limits. However, my best teachers were those who did push me to my limits, so I could set a new limit the following semester.