final blog - spring 2006

so. i guess this is it. one semester in the school of education done. it's crazy how fast time flies.

well, i can safely report that i have completed all of my practicum hours and then some. and i can also say that i had a good time doing it. my teacher is amazing, and he has already said that he will let me steal all of his materials and make copies so that i will have something to start from. so that's pretty exciting. he is a very nice human, and seems like he genuinely cares about everyone.

i got to witness back to school night which was very interesting to see the difference between how mr. ambler interacted with his students and their parents. and it was remarkably similar, but not in a bad way. instead of treating both sets like children, he treated them like the adults that they are. he teachs twelfth grade, so most of his kids are going off to live on their own in college the next year, so if he were to demean them by treating them like children, i think he would have had a much harder time controlling them. as it was, there was a little senioritis in the classroom; the students were always performing for him. which i thought was a very good sign.

he also gave me lots of advice and ideas that i can carry over to my own teaching. needless to say, i am very excited about getting to teach more next semester. i think the worst part will be the getting up at the crack of dawn, and the being on a different time schedule from my friends. but i think i will be more prepared for the real world because i will essentially be doing my future job next year; i will still have a safety net and people helping me along the way while my friends may not have that advantage.

yeah real world. woot. i can't wait. (ew)

summerhill and sudbury

i just wanted to post these two websites because i thought that they were very interesting and revolutionary. before we discusssed these schools in class i was fairly certain that they were god's gift to education, and while i still feel that they are wonderful, it was good to discuss them with other people. (although i did anger some people with my super liberal hippy talk.) i will admit that i never would have realized that these schools had the ability to not properly prepare children for life in the real world. i guess i just thought of it in the way i would respond to an environment like this; i would be studying and going to as many interesting classes that i could.

these schools are really just like college but for younger children, and i think that is a very novel idea. i know i did well in a structured environment, but i am also doing well in a non-structured environment. but at the same time, my brother did awful in high school, so much so that we had to convince a college to take him. but now that he is dictating his own education, he is doing beautifully. so i really think that this kind of school could work for either very structured, mature, responsible students and for students who are crushed by structure. regardless, i was glad that i was introduced to this type of school, and i am still trying to make up my mind about how i feel about it.

a. s. neill's summerhill school

sudbury valley school

this old school

so i went to this edutopia website, and there was a lot of interesting things. i wanted to get an article about history (seeing as how that is my area of concentration) and i think that i found a winner.

this old school talks about a learning project in woodstock, connecticut that allows for third grade children and teachers to go back in time for a week and learn the old fashioned way, all in attempts to teach the students about the local history.

historical accuracy is stressed so the students are required to: dress in old fashioned clothes (long skirts, aprons, and bonnets for the girls; straw hats, knickers, and button down shirts for the boys), write with quill pens, use rotes and chalk boards, learn crafts (they allow for some deviation from historical accuracy by teaching both male and female students the crafts), and learn how to cook with a wood burning stove.

i thought that this was such a unique way of teaching students about history, and it is so effective too. i mean what student is going to forget something that they have to live through for a whole week. and i think it is a very important cultural tool; it helps students learn the history of local traditions and cultures, as well as learning about how most of the country lived in the 1830s.

if you want to reference the article it can be found at: this old school

additionally, edutopia had another article that tried to help out teachers who may have wanted to start something similar in their area. i really think that this idea of putting students into the shoes of people who lived in that time period, or at least simulations of important events (model un, model oas, model congress, act out nuremberg trials, etc) is a very good one. students are more apt to learn the material if they can interact with it and live it. at least that is the impression that i get. (my cooperating teacher is currently doing a model congress, and students who normally don't participate are getting into and really understanding how congress works, and i think that is great. it brings the information alive to students, and that is how they learn.)

the additional article can be found at: how to: breathe life into history

another edutopia website to possibly check out is articles on project-based learning. it just lists different articles that could be helpful with more project-based learning techniques.