End Of The Semester

I can not believe that the semester is almost over. It seemed like a few weeks ago we all met for the first time sitting in groups telling each other where we are from and what we are interesting in teaching and why. But here we are three and a half months later and the semester is basically over. Im just about done with the last of my work for the semester and all I have left is a few projects, presentations, and finals. Hopefully I did well in all of my classes and I am looking forward to a nice month break from school. In the end I am glad that I was able to experience this class and got a chance to meet a group of really cool people. I wish everyone the best of luck with the long road to becoming a teacher. Happy Holidays

Inquiry Project

So its been awhile since I blogged about the inquiry project so here's a little update. I decided to join a group instead of doing the project on my own because I found it to be way to much research to do by myself added on top of the work I have for all my other classes. So our groups question for the inquiry project is, how parent involvement effects student achievement? From our groups research, field work, and observations we were able to find much info in order to answer our question. I had no idea just how much of an affect family and parenting had on and child's education until we did this project. There are so many useful ways that parents can get involved with a students education in both outside and inside of school. Most parents look at education as something that is done just between their child and the teacher, but parents do not realize that just how much or little a parent gets involved with their child's education can have a major effect ether positive of negative depending on what they do. I found this inquiry project to be very eye opening to something that I did not think was a serious part of education at first and I am glad that my group picked such an important topic. I really hope that our group did a good job on this project and well found out soon because we are presenting our project tomorrow in class.

NCBL

After learning all about No Child Left Behind, I started to think if since NCBL is causing so many problems with education in America then why is it even worth having this law??? NCLB is making school districts follow there format of basically pass or fail standardized testing in order to recieve federal school funding. And many urban school districts are having trouble meeting these testing standards yet they do not have the funding for the proper resources to teach the students what they need to know to pass these standardized tests. Then why can't the government just help with the funding of these school districts in the first place so they will have the tools needed to meet these standards instead forcing them to follow these laws first in order to then recieve federal funding. It just doesn't really make sense to me. Hopefully in the near future there will be a way to solve both the laws of NCLB and the needs of urban school districts in a manner that is somewhat reasonable.

Arts High School Full Day Observation

This past Monday I had made my trip back to Newark to do my full day observation at Arts High School. The teacher I did my observation with was Terrance Brogdon, one of the six physical education and health teachers at Arts High School. Because of the new block scheduling that they just started this year at Arts, Mr. Brogdon was only teaching health classes this marking period. The classroom enivornment was alot different from normal high school classes like math and english. His classroom was a very open, speak your opinion type of class. All the students seemed to really enjoy having Brogdon as a teacher and would look to him for advice on things outside of the classroom. Most of the students were very well mannered in his class except for one class that had about 35 students in it, this was the only class where the teacher seemed to have trouble keeping the students on track with his lesson plan, all the rest of his classes were about 20 students and he was able keep control of the entire class and get through his lesson plan easily. One thing that i really enjoyed about my day at Arts High School was that I was able to sit in on a meeting that he had to attended that had to deal with getting students prepared for the HESPA exams. Mr. Brogdon and other teachers at Arts were figuring out and brainstorming ways to use Bloom's taxonomy in a sort of test form, like done on the HESPA's, in order for students to be able to practice for the exam. Overall I found it to be a very exciting experience and it totally changed my preceptions about urban high schools. Now that I have actually observed an urban high school it has giving me much interest in someday maybe teaching in an urban school like Arts.

Community Service

For my 10 hours of community service I wanted to somethings similar for both my 5 hours in an urban community and the 5 hours in my hometown so that I would be able to compare the two. So for both community services I had helped out at small basketball camps that were being held over the weekends for young elementary school children. For my urban community service I had gone to South Orange where my friend who goes to Seton Hall was running this camp for kids in the South Orange area had allowed me to come and help out with this camp. For my community service in my hometown I had went and helped out at a similar camp that was being held over the weekends by my high school's basketball team.

From my community service hours I was able to make comparisons between the two basketball camps that I had helped out with. The one basketball camp that was held in South Orange the kids arrived on a bus and there were not that many parents in attendance while at the other basketball camp held in my hometown the majority of the children's parents were in attendance throughout the entire camp. Even though there were not that many parents at the camp in South Orange, the kids were very well behaved and were very interested in the camp activites that were well set up for all the kids to participate in. As for the camp in my hometown, it seemed to be more of a social event for the kids where they were playing with there friends and the parents were involved with much of the activities set up. Overall I found both of these camps to be very positive for the children and there it was a very enjoying thing for myself to attend being that I have an interest in coaching in the future.

School and Community Events

For my 2 school and community events I had attended the Thanksgiving Football game at the high school I had went. I had also went to a school craft sale that they had at my high schools church in order to raise money for the church. While I was at the Thanksgiving football game the school had many events going on during halftime that involved a parade for the homecoming king and queen and also the rest of the homecoming court. There was also many alumni at the game showing there support for the school. Almost all of the faculty and and teachers were at the game. This to me showed that the school was very involved with the after school programs and was showed much support by the current people involved with the school as well as people who were apart of the school in the past.

As for the school craft sale that I went to, it was more of a community event then an event just for the school. There were many people that were not involved with the school but were involved with the church. Many of the students in the school were there helping out with the sale by ether cleaning up or helping set up tables and chairs. This event seemed to be very full of energy and many of the people there werent even involved with the school and were still showing support for the school and the community. From what I heard they had raised a large amount of money for the school's church and it was a very successful school event.