Disparity

Knowing the suburban and urban schools are different is by no stretch of the imagination a new concept for me; I witnessed a lot of that both in my own education and further work in schools. I just never cease to be amazed at the vast difference in schools. In Enora R. Brown's article I actually had to go back and read about the Mountainview school because it was hard to believe that it was actually a public school.

This concept of militarism is something that worries me quite a bit. When I was in high school I worked with students from Bradley Tech high school in Milwaukee and was shocked when they told me they have a full time military recruiter in their school. And obviously, my suburban school still had a military recruiter in our lunch room several times a year, having push up contests to try to drum up interest in the military; but to think that they have someone in their school everyday pushing for students to join the military. There are obvious racial targeting for the military and it really sickens me; if you go to any of the world festivals at the Summerfest grounds over the summer you will notice that the only two that have a large military recruitment presence are African World Festival and Mexican Fiesta. Meanwhile, John Kerry gets chastised a couple of years ago for saying:

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq."

This is the hiring practices of the military, as well as recruiting people of color, yet when anyone in the mainstream media says anything he's labeled as unpatriotic. Now, I understand that the military is an option and it gives opportunity to many people that otherwise couldn't afford to go to school, but when schools are treating students like they're soldiers from the time they are very young, like they do at the school that I work at, then its time for someone to say something.

Especially, after listening to John Mccain the other day state in the same debate that he said he wanted teachers to be held more accountable, that he wanted to support the troops to teachers movement. Yet, when he stated that, he made it sound like a way to get around pesky examinations and certifications. So let me get this straight, we train our black students to act like soldiers, then we send them to Iraq and when they come back they teach in our schools; sounds like a great way to keep an entire group of people from moving up in the world.

Behavior issuses

Our project is dealing with behavior issues in the classroom and involving parents, guidance counselors and social workers in dealing with behavior management. For my portion of the project I am planning on presenting some of the literature on classroom management that has been studied, either formally or anecdotaly. Then our group plans on presenting the information as a role playing of ways in which to deal with a certain situation. I'm really looking forward to addressing some of the things I have seen in schools that I've worked in (like support staff hitting children) and instead focus on more positive ways of dealing with classroom management. There are just so many ideas out there about ways to get students involved in class and getting through the school day productively. Hopefully we can all find something to take away from this presentation and we can work on taking away Milwaukee's title of having the most suspensions out of any school district in the country!

Do our students know how to think critically?

The ability to think critically is essential to higher education. I have a history professor who constantly told us she had to unteach us how to think and instead learn how to analyze. My question is, why didn't we just learn it that way to begin with. There are so many times in education where there are two roads a teacher can take, an easy road that may get the student through a task more quickly, or there is a road which while may be more difficult, leads to lifelong learning. So many times we see that education is made easier so that teachers can quickly move on to the next unit. In the school I work at the kids do Internet research, but they are told exactly what website to go to and what exact information is needed. Just like in the first article, this method of teaching never allows the student to become responsible for his/her own research and because of that when they sit down at a computer in high school they will be lost at what to do. I think it is so important for students to start thinking critically because the more practice they get at it the better they will be at it in college.

What goes hand in hand with the lack of critically thinking skills being taught is the amount of time being spent preparing students for standardized testing. I think NCLB would be hard pressed to find even one teacher that would go on record saying that he/she loves standardized testing. As a future social studies teacher I think about the effects of standardized testing all the time. Will I have a career after I graduate considering schools are shrinking their social studies department and reallocating resources to something that is tested on standardized tests. We given up on desiring our students to be well rounded, as long as they know exactly how to fill in those scantron sheets it doesn't matter if they don't have music or art or history. The author of The Future of Middle Level Education says that "as the obsession with standardized tests runs its course, America and her policymakers will come to realize the obvious limitations of current reform efforts and recognize that the full education needed by today's young adolescents requires much more than that which is assessed by tests," (184). I would really like to believe that, but on this subject I am still a bit of a pessimist.