noitcelfer lanif

I think that the best part of this class was how it affected me personally. I think a lot of how I perform has to do with my personal life and what is going on in it. Reflecting on my happiness has been beneficial. Honestly, simply reflecting on the way my life operates is not something that I get to do regularly and I think that changing a few things about my life has increased my happiness and consequently bettered my teaching.

I think that the other thing that I will take away is that we need to fundamentally alter that way that we teach students. This must involve some sort of significant reform. First, we need to think about how we can teach to the whole of a child, not just a specific standard. I think that the current educational system does little to create interest in learning or challenge students to think critically. Also, we need to include some way to give students emotional intelligence and spiral that into teaching as well. Moreover, the idea that all schools should have the same operations is also flawed. The difference between a student that walks into my room and a student that walks into a Paradise Valley school is monumental before they even enter. There is no reasonable way to make up for this fact other than to provide our students with significantly more resources than more privileged areas. Also, someone needs to come and make teachers seriously accountable for what they do in the classroom. I do not mean this in a “are your objectives in the board? Yes. You get a check mark” sort of way. Rather teachers should be paid based on performance. Almost every other profession is. Until recently, I was undecided in this area.

I think I will leave behind the idea that charter schools are good for the educational system. While BASIS definitely has a unique niche, it only solves one problem in the educational system. This is the answer to the problem of middle of the road schools accepting low standards that are in place. While this is a problem charter schools aren’t my ideal solution for several reasons. One, a charter school is not needed to do a lot of thigns that BASIS does. Rather, a systematic reform is needed. Two, the kind of perfomance that BASIS has is the result of the motivation that students have. I think that many of these students have already tasted success and are already extremely intrinsically motivated. This leaves out the students that have not felt success but can be successful like the student that I have. Also, I think that charter schools make it easy to pass the more needy students along.

As for improving instruction, I would like to see strategies for getting student (and teachers) to escape their normal roles and learn a more spiraled curriculum.

Commoditizing education: BAD.

Blog 2/23/2010

Man, lets talk about education reform. So many problems, so little time. There are a lot of things that I would change. First, I agree with the fact that American schools is an extremely inefficient beast. The fact of the matter is that the school system should be run like a business. The resources that are available are not allocated correctly. However, I do not think that turning to the private sector for solutions is the best idea. Ultimately. If we want capitalism to solve the problems that are found in education, we will find that it will create a lot of money for someone but learning will be a side product. What we do need is to have someone with the vision to go in a reorganize exactly how school work. This of course s difficult because the political capital in order to do something as beaureaucratic as the school system. That being said, here is a list of probelms or ideas that we could tackle. Schools should be reformed to more taylor to the needs of their students. Schools should be offered opportunities to change their schools, not requirements. Also, the federals government should provide a solid foundation of standards and corresponding curriculum that teachers can use. One of the problems in education is that schools continually waste money in attempt to purchase their into result for students. Rather than letting the private sector to continually make dollar after dollar, the government should create a great curriculum along with resources that every teacher can use. This would ultimately cost much less and the education system would have more money to pay teachers more. A priority. Also, someone needs to go in and find a way to make sure that teachers are being rewarded for their performance in the classroom and held accountable. But that’s a whole other can of worms to open. Anyways, I think we need to take the incentive for companies to make money out of education and simply use resources available to make resources available to everyone. If you make knowledge a commodity in education in a capitalist setting, you instantly make it more scarce because it becomes worth more

Happiness is easy ...and so is apathy.

Blog Week February 9, 2010

Geezey Louisy, How happy am I?

I like to think of myself as a generally happy person. I think that for the most part my happiness remains pretty static throughout my life. I would rank my happiness as something along the lines of a 7.5 to an 8. I think that generally, I get what I want out of life and enjoy it. I have good friends and I think that helps a lot too. But, to be honest I think that I am happy no matter who I am around (mostly because I am good at entertaining myself).

I think that what is more changing is my levels of unhappiness. (Now a 4 or 5). I think that the best way to describe why I am unhappy is frustration at wanting different things. First, I think that teaching adds to my unhappiness a lot. While I do feel like it is rewarding and draws upon my intrinsic desire to do good. However, there are a few circumstances that make me not want to do so. First, I feel frustrated at the fact that teaching involves many processes that I neither enjoy nor am proficient in. I think the planning involved simply is something that I struggle with because my mind doesn’t work in that way. The second part is that I feel frustrated with the fact that I am not sure that my struggles are worthwhile. Next year, I am not going to be teaching. So what does this mean? It means that my struggles to get better at teaching will be lost. That makes me somewhat unhappy. The last thing that makes me unhappy is that sometimes I take momentary happiness over doing things that will make my life more peaceful. In some instance, I feel like I put off certain things that would make me happy to complete.

The irony of talking about apathy while blogging for ASU is worth mentioning. Right now I feel frustrated at the current level of apathy that I have for doing ASU work. I feel like this is related to my earlier comments: I am frustrated because I cannot see the value of my actions right now in terms of it being good for me or others over a long term basis. I think this is really dangerous for me because deep down I find it valuable but completing work simply does not make me happy.

I want to be an 8 on my scale of happiness (80% mastery HA.) I think that in order to get happier I need to work on balancing different parts of my life. This means concretely that I will be more proactive in completing certain things that I would to complete like instead of putting things off. I will clean my room and complete most of my ASU and complete some random to dos that I have been putting off.

BASIS: productively advancing the middle class

Blog Week February 2, 2010

Anything about education:

Lets see I think that the idea of the BASIS program is a rather novel idea. I think that it definitely solves the problem of lower standards in the lower grades. The culture of the school seems to be one focused intensely on learning. This is good for challenging middle class students that are otherwise not challenged in school. While is think that this type of a good idea, I do not think that these types of charter schools are the beat all end all for the educational problems in the US. Specifically for my students, this is not a good solution because BASIS does not really address their situation. The thing about charter schools is that they can pass a lot of the students that have high needs along with no consequence. So what then happens to all of the students that cannot learn or do not initially want to learn? Should they be just passed off to another place. I think that this has been a fundamental problem or the education system thus far. People segregate their children from others in order to ensure their child’s education. The consequence of this is to systematically deny some a proper education.

So I changed my mind about my alone time...I like climbing

Blog Week January 26, 2010

Solitary Effort: So I actually spend a lot of time alone I think. It’s weird because most of the time I spend with myself I really enjoy. I have a very loud nature and most of the time its because I think outloud. I actually do this a lot in class. I yell out but the only reason is because I like to acknowledge my own thoughts (mostly because I find them entertaining). Anyways, the other day I put on some music and climbed on my climbing wall. And like normal I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it because I get to let go of everything else in the world and just be in the moment. Climbing is like a ballet. There area a number of different moves that are graceful and delicate. On the other hand, there are also points where it requires pure strength the balance between the two creates a situation where the balance between the two things are constantly at odds, but when worked together they create this great synergy where gravity is insignificant and you are a body moving through space. Cosmically hoakie I know, but that is what it feels like. Also, I really enjoy solving problems. When I climb, I have to figure out the best sequences s and body positions, ways to grab the holds and places to put my feet. This is like a living moving puzzle that I can unlock with min and body. It is completely intimate to myself.

Sharing a drink they call loneliness.....

1. List activities you usually do, and prefer to do, with others. These are activities that take place away from home.

The company of others is something that I usually enjoy. There are a myriad of things that I enjoy doing with other the most current in my mind is drinking, eating, climbing, watching movies, going on trips, conversating, and attending ASU classes.

2. Select from the list above one activity you will do alone in the next two weeks.

Going out to dinner.