A new teacher-blogger weighs in
Friday, May 30, 2008Written by: Rachel Pickett
Hello! My name is Rachel, and I’m a new blogger and also a new teacher. To begin my first post I figured I’d let you know a little about me and why I’m interested in blogging about education. I’m training to be a teacher through the Boettcher Teachers Program, and have just recently been hired for next year: I’m going to teach 7th/8th grade Humanities at Clayton Partnership (a school in Mapleton).
I’m very excited about this job! I have so many ideas of how I want to set up my classroom, and am curious about ways the
I’m currently finishing up my residency year (similar to student teaching) at
As a teacher, I’m designing learning experiences that prepare students for a workforce that is not yet in existence. Our society is changing and growing so fast that we literally can’t imagine the jobs that will be here 10 or 20 years from now. Obama was saying that, while we can’t know what these jobs are, what we do know is that they require an educated workforce.
I am wondering how to frame educational reform in a way that is relevant to this emerging society. I don’t know that higher test scores are fully reliable indicators of the learning our kids need to prepare them for the future. For example, will these tests help them to learn graphic design, website creation, and how to interact in multi-national environments? I’m not certain that the traditional way we have ‘done school’ in this country is deeply connected with the skills students will need in the future, though of course there is a basic connection in the foundation of knowledge that math, science, and humanities currently offer.
One reason kids can disengage in school is because we haven’t adequately answered their questions, “What’s the point of this? Why are we learning it? How will it help me?” My thinking is that educational reform needs to be able to answer these questions in ways that students understand, so that their own education makes sense to them and relates to their futures.
What do you think?
May 30th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Hi Rachel! How great to see you blogging on ednews. As always you are asking important questions about the purposes of education in our country. It’s easy to think about education as what happens in a classroom, but really, what happens in the classroom is a reflection of what is going on in society at large. It’s no coincidence that we have an achievement gap that is defined by race and class. We live in a society where race and class dictate the level of privalege to which we have access. What do you think it means to engage kids? And what do you think is the relationship between 21st century kids growing up in poverty and the 20th century middle-class institution we know as public schooling? Keep up the good work. anb
May 31st, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Hi Anb! Thanks for bringing up these important questions. I think you have given my next post clear direction
Race, class, privilege, and education… I’m not answering here just because of how huge a topic these are; your questions deserve their own posts.
Rachel
May 31st, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Greetings, Rachel.
I am super excited (as Boettcher fan #1 is) about your ability to articulate important questions re: the purposes of education. I find myself wondering what you might propose as the role of humanities in all of this - given that this is what you will be taking on this coming year.
k.(lo)
June 1st, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Hi K-Lo
I see the role of humanities as preparing students for citizenship. Since humanities is literacy/language arts and social studies combined, it’s a study of humanity: past, present, and future, through literature and through studying history. Since we’re all actors in a world that is becoming increasingly global, and since we’re living in the U.S.A., the choices we make as individuals and as a society have impact. So, maybe humanities is also a study of our agency, and power, as we approach life and citizenship. We can study people through books and through history, and then relate books and history to our own lives, struggles, and answers. In humanities we can study our interactions with the world around us, and how we construct societies. In these ways, I see it as very purposeful and relevant to kids’ lives. That’s a start of an answer… for now 
Do you have any thoughts on this?
Rachel
June 3rd, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Great to have you here on this blog Rachel!
How about a piece of this puzzle that is timeless - teaching kids to find the ability to not only explore and consider ideas through humanities, but communicate their own thinking to others? Honing these skills across all content areas feels much more beneficial to students than teaching content for standardized testing. Of course, then how DO we collect meaningful data to measure what kids are learning across schools, districts, states, or the nation?
JZ
June 4th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Hey JZ,
Nice to chat with you here! Communicating thinking to others is a definite part of humanities. I don’t know that it’s separate from standardized tests — maybe it could help support kids as they take these tests?
- r
June 5th, 2008 at 9:48 am
I am will be teaching in Mapleton for my third year this coming year and although I am not a hyge fan of how we have used the testing information that has been gathered it does bring a stark reality into view. Many of my students are way behind where they should be and are not on the road to being able to use the voice that they have. I see a school culture that has lowered standards (personal standards not institutional ones) to meet the middle of a very diverse student body. The middle is selling out. I myself have many times faced situations where many of my students did not have the skills to think critically about information, to analyze and synthesize. I am working on bringing up these expectations, not by throwing a test score at them but by not allowing them to do things that are too easy. I don’t yet know how but I am working on it.