Rigor, Relevance, Career and Technical Education (CTE), College & Career Readiness, Authentic Assessment, Blended Learning and 21st Century Learning; all terms I can say I have a much better understanding for now after this course, which was certainly an objective I wanted to achieve. I can also say the Annotation Project was HUGE help for remembering how to research scholarly articles that are reliable for future assignments, especially when it comes to our Literature Review course. I think this was a perfect course for me to kick start my masters program here at TCSJ and I am excited to pursue my masters degree just because I know what it really does, makes me more money! And hopefully help me become a better teacher and coach. Now that is a large hope for me, because I know this masters program is supposed to be in education but I really wanted it in my subject matter which is Kinesiology. But it really came down to money, which is sad because it shouldn't cost a unbelievable amount of money to further your education but that's the world we live in now and our youth needs to understand that. Not only does a college education put students into a large amount of debt, but most times students who go to college don't know what they want to pursue as a career. This could be solved in secondary education, I feel like High Schools need to be more aware of preparing students for all those things I listed above so these students can actually go into a career out of high school and be much more successful earlier in their lives instead of going to college for a few years to "figure it out". Furthermore, high school students who want to pursue high education such as a four year university, they need to have plan on how that degree they are trying to get will put them in the drivers seat of grasping a career. I really believe that even for example, like a p.e. teacher trying to get his masters in education needs to have relativity to his profession, goes the same for high school students entering colleges or just trying to further their careers and/or education it needs to be relative to the end goal.
"Problems are my friends." I thought this quote was pretty hilarious, but so true because if you ever met someone who hates to deal with real life problems sound like students who don't want to think critically to solve a education related problem. Now both these problems can virtually be the same thing, but it's funny because there are many many adults who don't want to face conflicts that are apart of their job and they end op moving onto another job like the quote after this one "If we wanted it easy, we'd be doing another job." Another quote that I can't disagree with because of the importance of facing problems optimistically and with excitement instead of negativity and fear. Some other things I really liked about this chapter; is the Friends of Change; Concentration, Commitment, Conversation, Collaboration, Caring and Conviviality. All of these components are some really good things to think of when change is happening and how to accept it, because when it comes down to it, like my old administrators have told you can teach flexibility. Which is sometimes the hardest thing to do as teacher that has been "stuck to their ways" for so long they aren't flexible.
I've really learned quite a lot of things throughout this course, I felt most productive on Saturday's class time, we had a lot to work on and I felt like I was able to accomplish a ton of work. With that said, I am not looking forward to doing anymore annotation projects in the near future, but I guess I am just going to have to suck it up, because it sounds like that's what the basis of getting your Master's Degree is. I understand researching information can be extremely beneficial, and can really help especially a field like education become better, and that is goal to ensure our field that we chose to have our careers in. The main resource I felt like was most interesting that we learned abut during this course is Career Technical Education (CTE) and the different types of industry sectors. I found this resource pretty fascinating, but I didn't see any sport related industry which in my opinion shouldn't be in there because we don't need anymore billion dollar athletes than we already have in our nation.
A baseball coach doesn’t say to his player, “You earned a B today.” He says, “You took your eye off the ball today. You need to concentrate more. You need to change your stance.” The real world is built around giving feedback and showing people what they need to do to improve. Littky really got through to me on this quote, I couldn't agree more, but what I found ironic is that I have given my baseball players grades on their performances but I use it as a tool to grade the entire team not an individual performance. And I believe the few times I have given a grade for the team's performance, it was only practices not actual games. Which, like Littky says in this chapter, in the real world you don't get grades on your job performance, you receive, positive, corrective and negative feedback on your job performance. So it makes sense to why we need to get away with the grading system, but like Littky mentions in the beginning of the chapter, grades started out with someone thinking of it as a good idea, now its what everyone is just used too. But that's not fair to our student's, letter grades to determine performances aren't real, their fake, which in turn gives students false information. You have students who seek to get straight A's because that's what it takes to get into a good college, but in reality that student is trying the master the system.
This chapter was a tough read for me because it just seems unrealistic for public schools to fully get parental involvement. Now I am not saying it is impossible to get parents involved with their child's academic performance, or from my experience athletic performance as well. I've seen parents come onto our field during a game and start screaming, swearing at the head coach for taking out their kid from the game. It's unbelievable, how crazy parents can get, but I think what we need to do as educators is hold expectations and responsibilities for our student's parents. Now this chapter really talks about giving parents back the power of education, and I totally agree with Littky, but I just feel like parents nowadays either have a high understanding for the importance of education, especially for their children, but on the other hand parents don't have any understanding for the importance of education in their child's lives. So it is an extreme challenge for us as educators to reach out to our students, when their home environments don't support them in their academic endeavors.
This chapter reminded me of a story that I would like to share, so as most of you guys know I coach baseball, I am very passionate about the game and teaching how to respect the sport, which isn't easy to do, especially to students who are not academically inclined. The story starts with me talking about how kids nowadays don't use the internet enough as a educational resource, they portray it as a way to socialize. I told my players this one day at practice, when I had free time on my hands when I was an athlete in high school, we would get together after practices, games or whenever and watch different you tube videos of different professional baseball players pitching,fielding,hitting,throwing and catching. Because that's what we all wanted to be; a professional baseball player, we wanted to learn how they got there and what skills they acquired to become one. I told this to my players at practice, and they looked at me like I was a crazy person, there was no sense of wow!? I never thought about doing that... or that's a good idea! My players looked at me with confusion on where to begin that process. It was a frightening moment, but it made me realize one thing students today have no concept of what it takes to become a successful person in the real world, which is a shame and it ties right back into this chapter. Real work in the classroom or on the field can result in a job in the Real World.
"Nothing you hand a kid to learn will be as important than whats already inside them." I stole this quote from Littky, because I thought this is the most interesting component of someone learning something. Allow the student to find out what drives or motivates them and then start from there, is such a hard task to do as a teacher, because you really have to get through to one student at a time. As a high school physical education teacher, I will most likely have anywhere from forty to fifty students in each period. That's nearly over two hundred students per day! Extremely challenging in my opinion because of the way school systems are set up, it's not fair. How do you expect us as educators to reach out to each individual student when you have more students than there are days in a school year? Especially since physical education, in my opinion is just as important than any other subject in school. This topic of debate, really gets me going because there are a lot controversy over these types of situations in school.
The title of this chapter is pretty self explanatory; one student at a time, I really liked how Littky explained it and it all makes complete sense. This reminds me of a similar expression that I was taught quite some time ago and it had to do with a mental component of playing a game and how to be extremely successful at this game. This game we know as the sport as baseball, the expression that I teach to my players and that I used was "play one pitch at a time." And this expression was to help baseball players be process oriented instead of results oriented. Which is goes the same for students nowadays, how many students are grade driven ? Almost all students care only about what grade they get in the class, instead on the process of actually learning the subject matter! Which is the whole point right? To help students realize and become life long learners, well hopefully that's what were trying to accomplish as educators.
This chapter was an interesting read, once I finished the chapter, I realized how unaware school systems today, and how they are structured to go completely against the idea of supporting a well balanced learning environment. I really liked how Littky mentioned; why are their bell schedules in school that control each subjects learning segment for the day? It was a really good point he made. It made me think about what does a school look like with no bell schedules? Chaos? Who knows, I'm not sure if we will ever see that happen, but it makes me think about the intrinsic way of allowing students to learn with freedom instead of a harsh set of guidelines that determine where a student goes throughout an eight hour school day. Now, with that said in the beginning of the chapter, Littky was talking about hugging and how it has been outlawed, which I thought was pretty comical, but I think what it comes down too, working for a public service, there are all these rules set because of people that messed it up in the beginning which resulted specific rules for everyone else.
"Would you take a kid who’s been standing in front of a hoop practicing free throws by himself for a year and then put him on a basketball court and expect him to know how to play the game?" I had to steal another quote, this time of course it has to do with sports, which is pretty much all I think about anyway so it made complete sense to use it. I think Dennis Littky really hit it on the nose with this one, how many of us went to high school and actually had any type of real world involvement as far as allowing students to go and observe a business meeting for example. Not too many I'm guessing, I totally agree with the author about how most schools isolate kids from the rest of the world, and expect them to know how to enter the real world when their finished with school. It just doesn't work. So from this chapter I learned the importance understanding student's backgrounds is crucial when teaching, to have high expectations for your students and always be aware of student's emotions, because student's now more than ever have more emotional issues because of all the crazy things that are going on now in the world.
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