After reading the article "Yes We Can" I felt both encouraged and discouraged. I feel strongly that it is extremely important to set high expectation levels for our students and that we should force students to work slightly outside their comfort levels so they can learn as much as possible. There were two points in the article that I would like to address, first that districts with a high proportion of minority students fail to recruit teachers that are highly qualified and experienced. This statement is supported by lots of data but I hope that over the next few years some change will occur within this statistic. Take NEAG graduates for example, we were all supposed to have at least one urban placement, hopefully some students enjoyed their urban placement enough to seriously consider teaching in an urban district. If more teacher prep programs had similar requirements I wonder if the number of highly qualified and experienced teachers would increase in urban districts. However before this occurs it may be necessary for higher teacher pay scales and benefit packages to mimic more affluent districts in order to entice more teachers. Second the article brings up the point that all schools should be receiving equal funding for students. I wholeheartedly agree with this point, and in actuality some districts with failing test scores should not have funding stripped but should receive more funds. If you need to increase student performance levels, especially in reading, shouldn't there be more funds to provide resource programs and additional support personal to teach struggling students? I also remember hearing a statistic that said that some urban districts spend a higher percentage of their budgets per pupil than suburban districts. However if you take a look at what these funds are being used for it makes sense. When a school has a higher proportion of students qualifying for free or reduced lunch programs it would make sense money must be spent to feed students. Also when you have a higher percentage of students receiving ESL/ELL support, qualifying for special education services, and more students requiring additional instructional support the extra expenditures are not only needed but expected.
I think that this article was valuable to read, I just wish that more people would understand that the widening achievement gaps begin in elementary school and differences are only compounded throughout time in a school district. I believe that it is important to find ways to support students early in their education to prevent the drastic differences in ability levels seen in high school.
Somehow and for some reason within a one week time period the topic of teaching evolution in a science classroom came up in 3 different classes and 1 time in the Daily Campus. For me this is even a rarity and I am BIOLOGY teacher.It began last Friday when we read an article from the NY Times about a teacher who taught evolution as part of his curriculum and how he dealt with the conflicts and opinions his students felt toward the concept of evolution. This was an excellent article, it gave some great points about some ways to help students understand that while the subject must be taught, as science teachers we are not out to force people to change their beliefs. The discussion of the article allowed for a decent debate about the subject and allowed us science education majors to share our viewpoints, and to help explain why it is an important concept to teach. Also we were able to explain that while evolution is widely accepted to be true among the science community it is only a theory and therefore can be proved false if data comes along to support that claim. Overall a very positive discussion regarding evolutions place within public science classrooms.Then Monday rolled around and the topic was brought up in our class. As we all know we talked about how evolution is taught because it has foundations in SCIENCE - it is a question that can be TESTED! You can collect data and make observations and inferences...all leading to the theory of evolution. Multiple data sets exist to support the idea of evolution so it is generally accepted as truth but at any point it is possible for the theory to be falsified by data. Again a valuable and fitting discussion of the topic.Then it was Thursday - time for multicultural education. Already I had not been looking forward to class since we usually spend a majority of the time listening rather than discussing with our peers about the concepts we are covering; and that is just not all that exciting of a way to spend 2 and 1/2 hours. My teacher was talking about the effects of religion on students. She mentioned that she would not know our religions unless she asked; and she said that religion can have a huge impact on students. This idea makes perfect sense to me, religion while separate from the classroom plays a huge role in student behaviors and actions. Then one quick story that was quickly mentioned and passed over quickly (thankfully) perked my attention in a not so positive way. My teacher proceeded to mention that a friend of hers teaches in a private high school and is terrified to make the switch to teaching in a public high school because he cannot fathom teaching evolution...because he believes in creationism. Now I guess that I should mention that he is supposedly a science teacher. Then my teacher says that she believes that the topics of creationism and intelligent design should be taught in public schools so that students can understand multiple viewpoints regarding the theory of evolution. However this cannot happen since religion does not have a place in public schools. If this topic had not been dropped so fast I was likely to explode! All that was running through my head was "are you serious?", "she has got to be kidding she cannot be honestly telling me that I should teach intelligent design and creationism". It took all of my self control not to scream across the classroom that she must have gone crazy because the reason that creationism is not taught in public science classrooms is simply because IT IS NOT SCIENCE. There is no other way around it. The existence of a god and therefore creationism does not provide a TESTABLE question in which you can gather DATA or CONCRETE FACTS. I simply cannot teach these because they are not founded in the principles of science and for that reason have no place in my public school science classroom.Then after reading a lovely commentary piece in the Daily Campus after class I was confronted with the idea of teaching creationism and intelligent design again!"The lack of tolerance in education is another appalling situation. Students receive one end of the story. In science, it's evolution. No time for expanding students' knowledge and explaining other possibilities. A study in intelligent design or creationism could produce thoughtful discussion and learning, but education of that kind is not tolerated. There are many well-educated, intelligent, professional scientists who believe in intelligent design. Should they not receive attention in a lecture or space in a textbook because their theories "aren't complete or scientific enough?" The fossil record is an incomplete jumble of information, yet scientists are instructed to answer difficult questions like the origin of life with it?"
From Tolerance must be practiced, not just preached. By Colleen Kopp. Daily Campus, 9/11/08. http://media.www.dailycampus.com/media/storage/paper340/news/2008/09/11/Commentary/Tolerance.Must.Be.Practiced.Not.Just.Preached-3425920.shtml Again the problem with this is the lack of scientific fact to support these claims. These ideas are not allowed space in lectures or textbooks for the simple fact that no data exists to prove creationism or intelligent design. If at some point in time evolution was found to be incorrect and some other theory becomes widely accepted due to legitimate data and facts then I will have no problem adjusting my position, but as of right now there is nothing to support these claims.All I can hope is that by teaching science well from a younger age rather than leaving all of the work to high school teachers hopefully we can help to produce a more knowledgeable, skeptical, and critical generation of adults that know when to question ideas and when to accept ideas. It makes me sad in a way that there is still such an inability to accept facts as facts.When the question of the legitimacy of evolution versus the biblical interpretation arises in my class I tell that student to think about the biblical story; is that there is any way to determine the length of time described as a "day" in the bible. Our 24 hour day may be drastically different from the time scheme referenced in the bible. Who knows, the Bible's time scheme may align with the age of the earth as 4.6 billion years old. One never knows!Hopefully future students can help to debunk the misconceptions surrounding the ideas of creationism and intelligent design, and help to convey that neither have a place in science because they simply are not scientific concepts.
