These days, it seems that schools are stepping in for parents more and more. School handbooks mandate what students can wear. Administration is dealing with more and more behavior issues. Educators are trying to find ways to encourage students to learn and succeed. These are all issues that should be handled by the parents, but all too often these issues fall on the shoulders of administration and teachers. And, now we get to add yet another area we need to “parent” our students on. Cell phone usage. A recent survey by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children shows that “1 in 5 teens have sexted”, or sent sexually provocative pictures using their cell phones. While most of these teens have sent these pictures to people they know, 11% have sent these images to complete strangers! With the advent of this abominable practice, schools are being looked at to provide education about sexting for not only students, but their parents as well. I would assume that common sense would kick in and encourage parents, who at some point must read/hear/see the news stories, to talk to their teenagers themselves! Why is this responsibility falling on the shoulders of the school personnel? The majority of sexting takes place outside of the school. What does occur within the school is repercussions of the sexting, taunting and sharing of the image among classmates. When a student is caught in a sexting situation, one of the first questions to the parent should be if they have talked to their child about sexting and if not, why not? Isn’t that parental responsibility? Shouldn’t parents be held more accountable? Why, when something happens, are fingers pointed at the school and statements made about the school not doing enough to educate their students on the ramifications of sexting?
Another issue that parents need to be held more accountable for is students using their cell phone to cheat on tests. Twenty-six percent of students recently surveyed admitted to storing information in cell phones for assistance with test questions. Twenty-five percent stated that they used their cell phones to text message test answers to friends. This is all in spite of school bans on cell phones and the fact that cheating is wrong. But yet, only 23% of parents think that their children do use their cell phone is school when in fact 65% of those students surveyed admitted to it. Yes, this is an issue happening is school and is yet another area that school staff is now having to monitor. However, cell phone policies are stated in school handbooks. Why can’t parents, who are most likely the ones supplying students with the phone, monitor their child’s cell phone usage and discuss the rights and wrongs of such usage with their child? Lack of responsibility? I’m thinking so.
I am a responsible parent. I have discussed proper cell phone usage with my 11 year old son who does have a cell phone. I do believe my son to be a good kid, but stuff happens. He knows that I can and will check his text messages and his usage. Some may say that I am invading his privacy. My kid, my house, my cell phone, my right. Period. I am not going to make school personnel my scapegoat.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Watch out for "The Dark Side"...
Ask your students to raise their hands if they have a Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter account. Chances are good that many of them do. I myself have a Facebook account, used to keep in touch with former students, former classmates, and family. While I am careful about what I put up on my site, many do not err on the side of caution. Social Networking has dark sides and everyone needs to realize what they are.
We’ve probably all heard the story about the girl who was followed home by a stranger after a ball game. (If not, here is the link to the story) It turns out that while she hadn’t given information such as a name and address, she had given just enough information in a chat room that an undercover police officer was able to find her. We preach to teenagers about not giving name, address, and phone number to strangers, but what about other information? I used to teach in a small North Dakota town. Many of my former students have various online accounts and share details of their lives, like where they work. With access to the town name and the name of the business, it is easy to find these kids. While teenagers in cities probably don’t have this problem (how many McDonald’s are there in say, Minneapolis?) saying you work for the local burger shack in a town of 800 makes you pretty easy to find. These teens have been correct in not giving names, addresses, phone numbers…but they have made themselves just as easy to find.
The newest rage, Twitter, allows the user to keep friends and family up to date about one’s daily life, including job prospects. According to one example in the article The Dark Side of Social Networking by David Gewirtz and found at EducationNews.org, one such user was excited about a job offer and posted about it on Twitter, along with their complaints about the job, such as a long commute and not liking the work itself. The decision to take the job was made for her when her prospective employer saw her Twitter post and deemed her unfit for the position. Who wants to hire someone who has publicly denounced the work aspect of a position they have been offered? And yes, I said publicly. While the Twitter was most likely aimed towards family and friends, anyone could subscribe and that is what the prospective employer had done.
Therefore, due to the availability of today’s technology to put you “out there in cyberspace”, privacy and safety are seriously lacking. People using these online networking programs should be concerned not only for their safety, but for their future career prospects and reputations. Excited about a job prospect but need to hash out the pro’s and con’s? This is best done over a soda in the privacy of your living room with your friends, not over Twitter for prospective employers to see. Also, having a great time at last weekend’s party is fine, but keep the photos of you running through the sprinkler topless to yourself. Once those hit the Internet they can be hard to stop, and applying for that teaching job or that position with the well-known law firm just got more difficult. Or better idea yet, keep your shirt on.
We’ve probably all heard the story about the girl who was followed home by a stranger after a ball game. (If not, here is the link to the story) It turns out that while she hadn’t given information such as a name and address, she had given just enough information in a chat room that an undercover police officer was able to find her. We preach to teenagers about not giving name, address, and phone number to strangers, but what about other information? I used to teach in a small North Dakota town. Many of my former students have various online accounts and share details of their lives, like where they work. With access to the town name and the name of the business, it is easy to find these kids. While teenagers in cities probably don’t have this problem (how many McDonald’s are there in say, Minneapolis?) saying you work for the local burger shack in a town of 800 makes you pretty easy to find. These teens have been correct in not giving names, addresses, phone numbers…but they have made themselves just as easy to find.
The newest rage, Twitter, allows the user to keep friends and family up to date about one’s daily life, including job prospects. According to one example in the article The Dark Side of Social Networking by David Gewirtz and found at EducationNews.org, one such user was excited about a job offer and posted about it on Twitter, along with their complaints about the job, such as a long commute and not liking the work itself. The decision to take the job was made for her when her prospective employer saw her Twitter post and deemed her unfit for the position. Who wants to hire someone who has publicly denounced the work aspect of a position they have been offered? And yes, I said publicly. While the Twitter was most likely aimed towards family and friends, anyone could subscribe and that is what the prospective employer had done.
Therefore, due to the availability of today’s technology to put you “out there in cyberspace”, privacy and safety are seriously lacking. People using these online networking programs should be concerned not only for their safety, but for their future career prospects and reputations. Excited about a job prospect but need to hash out the pro’s and con’s? This is best done over a soda in the privacy of your living room with your friends, not over Twitter for prospective employers to see. Also, having a great time at last weekend’s party is fine, but keep the photos of you running through the sprinkler topless to yourself. Once those hit the Internet they can be hard to stop, and applying for that teaching job or that position with the well-known law firm just got more difficult. Or better idea yet, keep your shirt on.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Do we need the Common Core State Standards?
On page 91 of our class textbook, Teaching Strategies: a Guide to Effective Instruction, the author criticizes state education standards, stating that “State standards cover a wide range of topics, concepts and subjects. Most appear to be randomly generated…” (Orlich, 2010) There are currently fifty different sets of state education standards being used in this country, each state having their own idea of what their students should learn and when. Oftentimes the standards are vague and nebulous, leaving educators to determine just what the standard entails. In addition, standards do not indicate how to progress from one area of learning to the next, instead just stating what a student must accomplish. Another issue with the standards of many states is the fact that they leave no leeway. Each student is to meet every standard.
As a country, why haven’t state education departments collaborated together to regulate education standards? Wouldn’t it make sense that all of our students be educated similarly, learning the same materials during the same grade, regardless of what state they live in? It is quite possibly because up to the advent of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), states felt that education should be a state issue, not a federal one. With NCLB being introduced, it became obvious that the federal government was not going to sit back and allow states to control how the nation’s youth were educated. The process wasn’t working and change needed to be instituted. Granted, NCLB was probably not the best format for improvement of the nation’s educational system, but its launch made apparent the need for accountability in schools. With this accountability comes the need to define exactly what is proficient in terms of skill mastery. Each state has had its’ own guidelines for proficiency. It has since been determined that in order to define proficiency, each state needs to be on the same page. Hence, the development of the Common Core State Standards Initiative in response to this need.
Currently, forty-six of the nation’s fifty states are on board with the initiative with Alaska, Missouri, South Carolina and Texas not having joined in. The thought of the majority is that with having uniform educational standards, it will be possible to have a solid idea of how American students rank academically. It will also allow a standardized testing program rather than the fifty different programs that are used by each individual state, saving money.
Will this initiative save the nation’s educational future? While I believe it has promise of administering aid to the issues plaguing education, I do not believe it is the only answer. I believe that additional state and federal programs are needed to reduce class size, allow for additional staffing in special education classrooms, and promote parent involvement in education, just to name a few areas of concern. The Common Core State Standards Initiative could be a good program if developed correctly with input from those in the education field. The initiative, in hand with other helpful programs, may just help rebuild our education system.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-06-01-state-standards_N.htm
As a country, why haven’t state education departments collaborated together to regulate education standards? Wouldn’t it make sense that all of our students be educated similarly, learning the same materials during the same grade, regardless of what state they live in? It is quite possibly because up to the advent of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), states felt that education should be a state issue, not a federal one. With NCLB being introduced, it became obvious that the federal government was not going to sit back and allow states to control how the nation’s youth were educated. The process wasn’t working and change needed to be instituted. Granted, NCLB was probably not the best format for improvement of the nation’s educational system, but its launch made apparent the need for accountability in schools. With this accountability comes the need to define exactly what is proficient in terms of skill mastery. Each state has had its’ own guidelines for proficiency. It has since been determined that in order to define proficiency, each state needs to be on the same page. Hence, the development of the Common Core State Standards Initiative in response to this need.
Currently, forty-six of the nation’s fifty states are on board with the initiative with Alaska, Missouri, South Carolina and Texas not having joined in. The thought of the majority is that with having uniform educational standards, it will be possible to have a solid idea of how American students rank academically. It will also allow a standardized testing program rather than the fifty different programs that are used by each individual state, saving money.
Will this initiative save the nation’s educational future? While I believe it has promise of administering aid to the issues plaguing education, I do not believe it is the only answer. I believe that additional state and federal programs are needed to reduce class size, allow for additional staffing in special education classrooms, and promote parent involvement in education, just to name a few areas of concern. The Common Core State Standards Initiative could be a good program if developed correctly with input from those in the education field. The initiative, in hand with other helpful programs, may just help rebuild our education system.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-06-01-state-standards_N.htm
Thursday, June 4, 2009
What will NCLB and AYP mean for my school?
No Child Left Behind. Four words that can make an educator shudder. Even worse could be three letters…AYP. Educators, school administration, and school boards wait with hearts pounding to hear whether or not their school has met AYP, or adequate yearly progress. Recently, a news release from the Bismarck Tribune (http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2009/05/30/news/state/186327.txt) stated that 115 of the 465 public schools in North Dakota did not meet AYP. According to the following North Dakota Department of Public Instruction link (http://www.dpi.state.nd.us/dpi/reports/profile/index.shtm) my school was not among the winners and has not been for the past few years. What now?
As stated in the following article from the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/education/02educ.html?_r=1&ref=education), President Obama’s education secretary wants to institute thousands of school “turnarounds”. That is, closing schools that do not meet AYP, dismissing the administration and teachers, and reopening them with new faculty the following school year. He did this to schools in Chicago while the chief executive of that public school system and now wants to take on schools nationally.
What does this mean for our school? While there are some changes that could be made for the betterment of the district, I don’t think firing the entire staff and bringing in new is going to be the answer. We have a strong teaching staff, some of which have been there for years. The staff constantly strives for betterment of the student body in the hopes that many will decide that the problems that plague the reservation are not for them. Poverty, alcoholism, assault, drugs, homelessness, abuse…just a few of the issues that some of our students face on a regular basis. We have students who will show up for class intermittently, missing good portions of each of the four quarters of the school year. Yet, our school’s performance is judged based on test scores produced by students who face bigger hardships than whether or not they pass a test that is given to them multiple times a year. Do all of our students face these hardships? Thankfully, no. But the students who have relatively stable home lives are indirectly affected in other ways. Behavior issues in the classroom, for instance. It is difficult for a teacher to complete a lesson and focus attention on all of the students if that teacher is dealing with a student who doesn’t want to be in the class at that point in time and is doing everything in their power to disrupt the learning process.
Comparing this school to the last school I was at (which met AYP), they are two different worlds. Other needs have to be met before we even have the remote possibility of making AYP. Completely removing the staff and bringing in new will not meet these needs whatsoever and will in fact cause strife throughout the community. While we do have a few programs that work to strengthen the community and foster positive parent involvement, we do not have the staff or the finances to fully obtain the results we strive for. There is a need for school counselors as well to become more involved in the lives of the students and help them maintain a path for improvement. So many things need to be done before our school system can hope of making AYP. But will those be overlooked in favor of sweeping out the old and bringing in the new?
As stated in the following article from the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/education/02educ.html?_r=1&ref=education), President Obama’s education secretary wants to institute thousands of school “turnarounds”. That is, closing schools that do not meet AYP, dismissing the administration and teachers, and reopening them with new faculty the following school year. He did this to schools in Chicago while the chief executive of that public school system and now wants to take on schools nationally.
What does this mean for our school? While there are some changes that could be made for the betterment of the district, I don’t think firing the entire staff and bringing in new is going to be the answer. We have a strong teaching staff, some of which have been there for years. The staff constantly strives for betterment of the student body in the hopes that many will decide that the problems that plague the reservation are not for them. Poverty, alcoholism, assault, drugs, homelessness, abuse…just a few of the issues that some of our students face on a regular basis. We have students who will show up for class intermittently, missing good portions of each of the four quarters of the school year. Yet, our school’s performance is judged based on test scores produced by students who face bigger hardships than whether or not they pass a test that is given to them multiple times a year. Do all of our students face these hardships? Thankfully, no. But the students who have relatively stable home lives are indirectly affected in other ways. Behavior issues in the classroom, for instance. It is difficult for a teacher to complete a lesson and focus attention on all of the students if that teacher is dealing with a student who doesn’t want to be in the class at that point in time and is doing everything in their power to disrupt the learning process.
Comparing this school to the last school I was at (which met AYP), they are two different worlds. Other needs have to be met before we even have the remote possibility of making AYP. Completely removing the staff and bringing in new will not meet these needs whatsoever and will in fact cause strife throughout the community. While we do have a few programs that work to strengthen the community and foster positive parent involvement, we do not have the staff or the finances to fully obtain the results we strive for. There is a need for school counselors as well to become more involved in the lives of the students and help them maintain a path for improvement. So many things need to be done before our school system can hope of making AYP. But will those be overlooked in favor of sweeping out the old and bringing in the new?
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