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.