How does a teacher learn?

The Daily Riff presented a blog entry Ask a student, how does your teacher learn?  which explains that teachers today are found everywhere thanks to the internet which becomes personalized.  But as the article states, designing your own education or curriculum isn't easy.  But having the internet at our fingertips with educators is great because it is often "how-to" which according the the article, the author doesn't believe that is happening in our schools today.  I might have to disagree - I mean yes, it isn't done in every lesson, but it is certainly happening.  You can not possibly teach a math class and assume that just because a child can add, that they also know how to multiply.  Not at all, you must pave the path in how-to's an build their education based on what they already know.  But then he continues and makes a really great point :

This is not to suggest that the content in our classrooms is no longer important, or that the adult in the room isn't still a critical part of our kids' learning or their social and emotional development.  I want my kids to be in places where they are cared for, where they are supported and encouraged by people whom they look up to, respect, and trust. There is no question that "teachers" still have a lot to offer my children. But those "teachers" now need to be experts at only one thing, and that is learning. They need to know how to help kids become those self-directed, literate learners who can ask meaningful questions, probe difficult problems, separate good information from bad, connect safely to strangers online, and interact with them on an ongoing basis. And, most importantly, our educators need to be able to do this themselves.

I really liked that he addressed that teachers need to be experts in learning.  Teachers need to constantly update what they know and continue to educated themselves and their students.  Teachers need to not only teach classroom materials, but encourage students to be responsible, sociable, literate, and the list goes on.  It is true in my eyes - an educator is an educator far beyond subject matter.

To Love What You Do, or to Love Money?

The Twitter account that I actively follow @RenLearnUS tweeted and article from @TheAtlanticEDU which is about students majoring in "fun things" while in college.  As a college student in her 5th year, going on 6th to finish a dual degree with a BA in Mathematics and a BA in Education, it sure has me shaking in my boots.  Being that I'm in school much longer than most, my debt has certainly surpassed what the "average" student debt is of $26,500 (I really wonder how that was possible for most people?).  Those who start in a field with a lower income often struggle when paying their student loans back.  So according to this article, students who major in things such as Theater have to payback 14.1% of their paycheck, but those in energy and extraction engineering only put about 7% of their paycheck towards these student loans.  I think this is a great article for @RenLearnUS to post because this allows teachers to encourage their students even more to shoot for the sky.  Granted, those majoring in "fun things" can also shoot for the stars - it could be more encouragement for them to focus on more than one thing to have a back up plan with something else that they love.  Or maybe encourage them to apply these "fun things" to a more intensive major that could be incorporated with what they love, this way they can still feel passionate about the subject matter.  This would help out our economy as well as our futures wallets.

This week I found a new mathematics and education blog dy/dan (it is a math joke, I promise).  A few weeks ago I posted about having math connect with students in the city by embracing graffiti within the school.  They would put graffiti on the walls inside and out of their school, however they took data of students in the school and made graphs on the walls and turned this data into art.  Now on this blog, Mr. Dan Meyer writes about Coral Connor's students who creates 3D chalk charts to show that they understood trig functions.  NOW THIS IS NEAT!  Not only is it connecting art and mathematics, and not only is it turning everyday math into hands on math, but it is giving the teacher a great way to evaluate his students knowledge on the subject matter without testing them!  YOU SAID WHAT NOW? (Sounds like a red flag to the common core if you ask me - OH WELL!)  Testing isn't everything.  In math, people have always struggled because people often think the only way to evaluate ones understanding is to test them... news flash... you are wrong.  dy/dan just showed you otherwise!

Behind on the Times

The twitter account that I have been following @RenLearnUS tweeted on November 10th as follows:

"An interesting look at what happens when schools simply don't have the budget for the technology students need."

Attached to the tweet for the link Struggle to teach students ’21st century skills’ when classroom technology isn’t up to speed.  As fast as software is changing and constantly being updated,  the computers often can not keep up with the constant change under a school budget.  Just as something new comes into the school, it is already outdated.  In today's classrooms, teachers are often encouraged to utilize technology in their lessons, but as things begin to run slow and aren't compatible, it often becomes more frustrating for the teacher and the students.  The constant change in technology and lack of being able to upgrade constantly also causes trouble in areas where they may not be "well off" and in that case, their peers at the school just one county over is getting a ore knowledgable education, leaving some students at a disadvantage and basically creating a technology gap.  The article names that it is one day "a dream" for there to be a technological device for each student in the classroom, or one to one.  In my personal opinion, though this could truly be a great thing for many teachers, I do not believe that technology should be implemented throughout an entirety of a lesson and find that it should be included as a part of a lesson.  With this being said, it is not necessary for there to be a device for every single student in the school. Now BYOD can be a great thing to implement throughout the schools because many students have relatively up-to-date devices.  But not all students, so you then have to ensure students without devices have access to another there at school, which if they aren't quite familiar with them, could cause them to be at a disadvantage.  At the end of the day, it all depends on the teacher in the front of the classroom that makes the decisions that they know themselves and their students will be comfortable with, and ensure the best possible education they can deliver.

Common Core, Just Another Brick in the Wall?

Well, it seems all three blogs I have chosen to follow, have all stopped blogging in September, so in order to get something fresh, I decided to look into Diane Ravitch and what she has to say about the Common Core.  My eye was instantly drawn to her first post, a video which was created by a student in Ohio who doesn't like the idea of the Common Core.  The video give explicit reason to the distaste of the program, including data to support his feelings.  The video is a spin off of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" which is a great analogy for the Common Core.  Though it is today's curriculum, education is always changing and adapting, just adding the bricks that make the walls of our schools.  When I was in third grade... yes many many moons ago, there was one standardized test.  Now, as the video states, the average third grade student takes over 20 hours of standardized tests which is the equivalent of the Ohio Bar exam for law students to become lawyers.  The video also informed me that the creators of Common Core have their students enrolled in private school, where they won't have to take these tests.  In that case I'm quite confused because if the Common Core is supposed to move education along in a more proficient and efficient manor, than why would your own children not be going through the same program in which you came up with?  Wouldn't you want you child to get the "best education?"  Even the photo of the baby at the computer being timed on their test, reflects back to one of my other blogs about students feeling rushed and not giving them the time to correct mistakes they may have made.

What made me furious was seeing that the Common Core tests taken this spring, will not be graded until 2016.  If these tests are supposed to improve our education system, how are we going to reflect back an entire year?  Which at that point, it's almost like going back 2 years of education.  How do you evaluate students that way?  You can't send students back two full years of learning if thats what these tests are supposed to evaluate?  I just don't understand.  Plus, with education constantly changing along with society, so will the Common Core whether the program makes some changes, or the program is replaced by something more efficient.

Hate Math? Think Again!

The twitter account I've been following is @RenLearnUS tweets about "Teaching Math to People who Think they Hate it" which I of course clicked on instantly.  There is nothing I hate more than when people say they "hate math" or "aren't good at math."  At some point in your life, you did like math and you were good at it.  When you were a toddler, you played with toys with shapes and counted and games to that degree.  The tweet linked to the article Teaching Math to People Who Think they Hate it where a professor from Cornell University studies how to "make math" rather than learn math.  From the picture alone, I realized this was probably going to be a great strategy for students who are hands on learners.  Basically, this mathematician, Steve Strogatz, now offers a class to students who are non math majors because he enjoys a challenge, and he wants these students who don't particularly like math, to learn it in a new way.  A way in which they may discover a love for it.  The course allows students to engage in math through games and puzzles, much like a course offered at Stockton taught by Dr. Brad Forrest.  His students are engaged, and feeling a sense of joy when they have figured out the puzzle, much like I do when I finish a game of Sudoku.  The way Strogatz is teaching these students is by using intellectual discipline and creative endeavor which is extremely important.  Through all of the things I have learned in Instructional Technology, I have certainly learned that students engage more with hands on work which allows them to grasp the concept.  Its not something that can be done in every class lesson, but it something that will engage students more and allow them to enjoy what they are experimenting with.