Chapter 9: Involving Parents and Communities

This is a book that lays out middle school philosophy point by point and chapter by chapter. The beginning part of the chapter gives all the reasons why parents should be involved in their children’s school work. Better grades and self esteem for the students are just two of the many reasons. A big way to improve communication between the triangle of parents, students, and the teacher is to have student led conferences. The second half of the chapter talks about the link between the school and the community. Two main ways that the school and community can interact is through community service and setting students up for jobs after high school.

I know some schools have mandatory community service requirements in order for students to graduate. My high school didn’t have that and when I was in high school I remember hearing about it and being glad that our school didn’t have that. In retrospect I was already doing community service because of NHS so I think that would’ve been a good opportunity for students not involved in clubs like that. I watched a movie in a special education class that showed how the school sets up disabled students with a job to learn so they have employment when they leave high school. It would be interesting if the school did that for all students.

Chapter 15: Parents as Partners in Twenty-First-Century Learning

This chapter was about keeping parents included in their child’s education in the transition from elementary to middle school. The main part of the chapter described how teachers can use the internet to stay super connected to parents. The book lists several websites that teachers can post assignments, study guides, and notes on so the students and parents can access them from any computer. Also parents can keep in contact with the teacher through email. The book also makes the point that some students in your class will not have access to computers. The book says to make allowances for that. Also teachers can not forget how important face to face conferences are, even with the technology, an in person meeting or conference is valuable as well.

At Mount Blue High School where I did my practicum, they have a computer program called power school. This is a program that all the teachers, parents, and students can access. It’s like an online grade book. Any time the teacher grades assignments or tests students and parents can check how a student is doing in a particular class. I noticed that this has some drawbacks. Students complain if the teacher takes more than a night to put up their grade. Sometimes if a student has missing work it will skew the grade and so an unnecessary flurry of emails can ensue. However parents can never say they had no idea their child was failing a certain subject and for that reason it is helpful.

Chapter 8: A Safe and Healthy School Environment

A very important part of any school is a healthy learning environment for the students. In schools it is important that clear expectations of behavior of students is well known. The teachers of the school also promote and model appropriate interracial and inter-ethnic behaviors. Conflict resolution and peer mediation are important tools and skills for students to learn. Counseling, knowledge of nutrition, and physical activity are all important for healthy bodies and minds of the students.

Some schools are linked to health services to further assist students. I think this is a good idea in some respects because it allows students to get assistance they wouldn't normally get if they were too shy to ask their parents. On the other hand I can see how a community could be wary about something like that because the parents want to know what their children are doing. This could be a potential problem. Every situation and community is different and it depends on how it is handled by the administration.

Chapter 4: Designing Instruction to Improve Teaching and Learning

This chapter is talking about improving teaching and learning. Tracking is a phenomenon that broke up a large heterogeneous group up into smaller homo genius groups. In theory this sounds like a good idea because then the teacher can focus a lesson to target a group of students with relatively the same needs. This has negative side effects on students' self esteem and performance. There are three models for instruction in this chapter; authentic, differentiated instruction, and WHERE.
Authentic instruction makes students process the information in the higher order thinking areas. Differentiated instruction has been defined in another blog post but this book defines it as offering students different avenues to learn. The WHERE model tells students at the beginning where and what the purpose of the lesson is. So basically it works from a rationale statement. The next few sections in the chapter seem to be out of place. It mentions using technology and then reform for language minority students. The next topic is about who should teach reading... the answer to which is its the responsibility of every teacher a student has to teach the student how to read no matter what the content of the teacher is. This chapter offers some very good ideas about how to exactly put the theories into practice.

Chapter 8: Effective Assessment

This chapter was about assessment. The basic point of assessment is to promote learning not to just measure it. There are two types of assessment formative and summative. This chapter mostly talks about summative. The first point made is to make sure the assessment has something to do with the content you are teaching. This may seem like an unnecessary comment but I have had plenty of tests that had nothing to do with anything that was covered in class. The assessment should have clear goals, focus on essential knowledge, incorporate multiple disciplines, be a valid indicator of students' knowledge, use different templates, and be easy to grade.

This really just drives home the point that assessments that do not accurately express the student's knowledge of the content is worthless. The teacher in the book talked about organizing the students grades in the book not by assignments but by the standards.

Chapter 7: Differentiated Instructions- Fitting the Lesson to the Learner

This chapter talked about differentiated instruction. A few key points mentioned in explaining the definition of differentiated instruction were: evaluating students' understanding adjusting assignments, and varying instructional approaches over time. the chapter then talks about the characteristics of a teacher who is comfortable differentiating which include: risk taking, being organized, flexible, and able to collaborate to name a few. The chapter also mentions Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences. Basically the whole process is trial and error. However effort is most important and the success can be measured.

This was an in depth exploration of the ideas we have been taught since practicum. This chapter draws the line in the sand, so to speak, as teachers. Either you will be a traditionalist and teach with outdated methods. Or to be a constructivist and do your best to implement the ideas presented in the chapter.

Chapter 6; Accountability for High Standards

This chapter is about accountability. The accountability teachers should teach their students and hold them responsible for. Then there is academic accountability which is in the form of standards. As much as educators complain about standards they are necessary as a basic framework for curriculum. The standards that students are expected to ace are moving away from rote memorization of facts in multiple choice format to short response questions asking questions higher on Bloom's Taxonomy. Standards are the basic skeleton. It is the teacher that adds the rest of the flesh and details to the body.

I thought it was really interesting that the book said, "standards are not limits, they are minimums." I had never thought of it like that. Students are allowed but never encouraged to exceed the standard. So much focus is put on just meeting the standard.