2 million Minutes

The video two million minutes looked into the lives of high schoolers in three different parts of the world and what and how they pernt thei high school careers doing. It looked at three different places in the world; the United States, China, and India. For each place it looked at one boy and oe girl and folloed them around and showed you how they viewed education and what they spent their time doing. In the United States the video showed how the kids have no need to try really hard to make it likethey do in ther parts of the world becuse there is not a really a biug danger fo their well being if they do not have a highly educated lfe. In the United States you could also see that there is more emphasis on sports and social interaction. In China the kids have more help at home because of the one child policy that China has. The kids in China also have no summer breaks and longer days so they do not lose any of the information over th summer like we do in the United States. In china education the school is the top priorety for the kids because they are competing mre with other people unlike the kids in America. In India the kids have alot of motivation because ifthey do not get an education they will not be ale to get a good job that will help them survive. Also, like china, there is more parent involvement, so more time, energy, and money is being put into their eduation. Also in bot China and India global competence is very important and emphasised in their everyday life. Were as in Americ mot kids only care and are aware of what is happening closely around them and do not care or think they need to care about the outside world. From this video I think that in order to get American kids more educated, education itself needs to be more valued and we need to become more globaly aware.

Unequal Educaton

Unequal Education is a video about the life of two seventh graders that live in the New York City distric. Although they live in the same distict the two boys have two completly different expernces in their schools. The boys, James and Lonnie, both ar in the same grade but go to different school. James goes to a middle class high school and Lonnie goes to a hgh school in a poor neighborhood. The video showed you how the two schools provided two completley different environments for the kids which has a big effect on them. In the video you could see how Lonnie's science teacher had no ideo what he was doing in his class room and the kid also knew. At James school there was computers and a few good teachers that were incouraging the kids were as Lonnies teacher seemed that he was bringing the kids don and did not believe that they could ever do anything which has a big impact on their mental development and their drive to anything productive in their future. The video turne into a debate on Couchers and publiuc school choice. They talked about the problems that no chld left behind has caused to school disticts. With NCLB it is only helping the rich schools get richer and the poor schools will get poorer. From this video you can clearly see that something has to change about th current situation that American shcools are in.

Group Four Presentation

Group Four did their presentation on chapter 7: Education Phlosophy. They started their presentation talking about the four different philisohies of what educationis about. The four philosophies were, Perennialism, essentialism, progressivism, and social reconsruction.
They explained that Perennialism is the belief that human nature is constant. So the goal of pernnialism is to teach the intellect and it is strict and focused on the academic work. Essentialism is the belief that there is basic knowledge that everyone needs to knw to survive and are focused on teaching about these basic skills. Progressivism is the belief that we should focus on te real-world problem solving and the individual development. Social Reconstruction is the belief that the schools, teacers, and the students should take the lead in addressing socail problems and improving the society.Overall I thought that the group did really good and everything was well organized.

My Ideal Teacher Prep Program

I think that the three things that would be best for a teacher prep program would first be more teaching on different cultures and their customs and beliefs. I think that being culturaly aware is very good for a teacher. As we have learned in class in a few years their will be alot mre people from different baack rounds in our schools and we, as teachers, need to have a better understanding of them so are able to teach them the best way we can.
Another ting that I think is very important to have in a teacher prep program is a second lanuage, either spanish or chinese. I think that in order to be a good teacher, you need to be able to communicate with your students in a way that the can best understand. By have teachers know a different language, spanish would be my ideal, they will be better prepaired for their students who may speak a different languag when they are at home with their family.
The last thing that I think is very important to have in a teacher prep program is learning more about how to use technology in the class room. Technology is becoing more and more used in todays socity and we need to b able to teach the students how to use these electronics so they are more prepaired for when the go out into the world. Technology is improving some much and so fast everyday and we need students to be able to understand and teach students how to use these things.

Group Three Presentation

Group three did their presentation on chapter 6 called Education in the United States: It's Historical Roots. In their presentation thy talked about education changes throughout the U.S. history. They started it with the Colonial Period, were only rich white men could go to school. Next they talked about the Early Period, were the schools followed the policy of seperation of church and state. Then came the Common School Movement, more kids were allowed to go to school and the states started to show more support for public education.
The presentation was very informative and taught alot about how the education system we have now came to be.

City is Planning Major Cuts in the Construction of Schools

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/nyregion/22schools.html?ref=education
This article is about how New York city education budget for new schools has been reduced from $9.3 billion to $2 billion. Insted of making 56 new schools like they were planning to do for the over crowding class rooms in New York city, they are no only going to make 23 new schools. Many of the school in New York city ar over crowded with roughly 4,000 students.

I think that it is sa that when a city is going into dept the first thing that they always seem to cut down on is education. Wh does no mke sense because the more educated people with degrees should bring in more money to the city. Over crowding in class rooms is a big problem for the students trying to learn and the teachers trying to teach.

Portugal's Education Lesson

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/portugals-education-lesson/?scp=1&sq=education%20europe&st=cse
This article is about how portugal, being one of the poorest countries in Western Europe, is also the keast educated. The article talks about by boosting up their education system the country could start making ore money. The article gives the example of how Ireland, howit used to be oe ofthe poorest countries in Europe but when they boosted upthe eduction system, Ireland is now one of the richest
nations in all of Europe.

The article talks about hw education is very important to the success of a country and I agree, you can not have a success full country if you do not have a well built eduction for your people. By making education better in poor countries you shoud b able to make the country moreoney in the long run.

Second Presentation

This presentation was on chapter 5, "Student Diversity".  In the beginning of the presentation they had everyone stand up if what they said applied to them, while it did get me to pay attention, they did not do anything with it after we were done and I did not understand the point of it. Next they showed a video of what someone with a learning disability can go through, it was a good video, but I was a little dissaponted when I realized it was fake. Then the group gave alot of information on the special needs of students and how the teachers are involved with the lives of their students. I thought it was a good presentation, I was given alot of infomation on the topic of the chapter that they covered.

First Presentation

The first presentation was on chapter 4, Student Diversity. They started off their presentation with a clip with pictures. Then they talked about multicultural education, were they asked a question to the class about not celebrating holidays in schools. They then showed us a video called "Did You Know" and that was a really good video because it caught everyones attention with all of its surprising statistcs. Overall the presentation,  I thought, was very good because it was able to keep my attention and stayed interesting.

The Global Achievement Gap - Chapter 4

In chapter four, Wagner focuses on how the future teachers are being taught and prepared for teaching. In this chapter he talks about how we have to improve how we are being prepared to teach.-In the chapter he talks about how teachers are not being evaluated enough to improve the teaching. He says that in most places the princple will come into a classroom and oberve how the teacher is teaching for about 15 minutes then review the evaluation later on. The reason why Wagner does not believe this is helping the teachers, is because the princples are not suppling valuable feedback.-Wagner gives a few ways we can improve getting future teachers ready for teaching, one way he talks about is giving the students a clear understanding of what they need to know and be able to do. -Another way to improve the teaching is by, learning walks. Learning walks help teachers talk to each other about what they want from their students and other teachers can help and give insight to help their students. - Near the end of the chapter he uses a really god analogy on how people are being taught to teach, he says that we should not teach future teachers how to memorize, like having someone memorize the parts of a car, we should teach the future teachers by atually having them try it out, like actually having them drive. I agree with this analogy because you can't expect someone to be a good teacher it they have never had any actual experience with it. It would be like someone learning all the parts of a car and then execting them to be able to drive it.

The National Center on Universal Design for Learning

http://www.udlcenter.org/
The National Center on Universal Design for Learning is a new site that helps teachers learn how to better help students that have to learn a different way than other students.  I think this website is a very useful tool for teachers who need to help children who are unable to learn in the way that most kids do. I am looking forward to using this site when I get into teaching because in the line of work I am going into I will be needing sites like this all the time. It will not only help me but it will also greatly help the kids that I will be teaching.

Chinese Immersion Program

In class we watched a video about the Chinese Immertion Program. I think it is a very good program and more schools should be doing it and more people should be educated on how it woks because many of the people that are agianst the program do not really seem like they fully understand hw it works and what it does. Many of the people against it in the video thought that children in America should just learn how to speak english because they live in America, but they do not seem to understand that we have to be able to communicate with people outside of our own country so we can better work together on things. People that are against the Chinese Immersion Program also think that the kids in the program will be behind in school because they think that they are learning how to do things in english. What those people do not know is that the kids are not fulling behind and are fully able to speak english and can read and write in english to just as fast as the students who are just learning english, I also learned in the video that the kids that are bilingual actually are using more of their brain. What the parents that are against the program do not realize is that the kids that are bilingual will be able to find jobs really easily because many jobs are looking for people who can speak different languages. After watching the video I really wished I had been in one of those programs when I was little because I am now just trying to learn Spanish and I have learned that once you turn 13 it is pretty much impossible to become fully fluent in another language.

Extracurricular sex lesson draws rebuke at Northwestern

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/04/education/04northwestern.html?ref=education
This is an article about a Human Sexuality class at Northwestern Unversity, with nearly 600 students in the class. The classes teacher, J. Michael Bailey, had a women come on the stage after he was done lecturing and had her show them very explicit things. He did not get n trouble because he had warned the kids multiple times before hand and what he was showing was not going to be part of any of his quizzes or tests. Around 100 of the students stayed to watch the demonstration.
This article really surprised me that he did not get in trouble for it, I guess at least he warned people but I do not see a purpose for having done it if it was not part of th cirricullum. I do not think it was necessary and is very unprofessional for a teacher to be showing his students something like that.

Hidden camera shows beating and reigiuos segregation inside Muslim faith schools

http://www.eutimes.net/2011/02/hidden-camera-shows-beatings-and-religious-segregation-inside-muslim-faith-schools/

This article is about how a hidden camera inside one of Britians most influential Islmic faith schools. The hidden camera shows first, a man talking to his students about how other religions were wrong and and the children were being taught social segregation. Another hidden camera showed a teacher hitting and kicking his kids at random many times throughout the days, some of the children were only six years old.
This article surprised m because it ws happening in the UK and I was just shocked that something like that could be going on in the UK without the govenment knowing about it, because I know if something were to be going on like that in the United States it would be a very big deal.

Intercultural Development Inventory

The IDI is a test designed to measure the stage at which the person taking the test is at for intercultural deelopment. The diversity in public school is going up every year and teachers need to be multiculturaly aware and by taking this test they would be able to see where they are at and what they need to improve on so they can be prepared to teach kids that are not of the same culture. In the results you get three scores, the first is your perceived orientation score, this score has five categories; 1 is denial, 2 is polarization, 3 is minimization, 4 is acceptance, and 5 is adaption. I scored 120.48, which is in the acceptance stage for my percieved orientaton score. The next score is the developmental oreintation score, I got a 94.76 which is inbetween polarization and minimization. The last score you get is the cultural disengagment score, it 1-5 score, 1 being unresolved and 5 being resolved, I scored a 4.8 on it. The IDI is a really helpfull tool and has opened my eyes to how much farther I have to go to become more culturally aware. I need to be able to relate to other peoples cultures if I am going to become a teacher.

The Global Achievement Gap - Chapter 3

-In the beginning of chapter 3 Wagner showed some questions that the 10th grade students from Massachusetts had to take for the Massachusetts standerized tests. In those questions he talks about how some of the questions could be taked in two diffeent ways and he also talked about how some of the math problems were to complicated and required more time to answer than the time they are given to complete it.-He goes on to explain how these tests do not teach the kids how to survive in the outside world. He talked about how the tests only teach the kids how to take tests and nothing else, what they study for, for the tests, they will not remember after the tests because their main purpose was to pass the test and notto actual remember it for later in their lives.- Later in the chapter he talks about some of the requirements for colleges, specifically he talks about the advanced math requirment for many colleges. Wagner talks about how the colleges say that by taking the advanced math the students would be a better prepaired for college life but Wagner has not found evidence that supports their claim. He goes on talk about insted of advanced classes in college kids should be taken challenging classes in high school because that would better prepair them for college.- Wagner then when on to talk to students that took AP classes in high school, they told him that the classes helped them with being prepaired fo college but they also did say that most of what they did was merize the material. I personially have taken AP classes and I think they greatly helped me with being prepaired for college and I think students should be required to take at least one AP course before they graduate from high school.