Erin Serra
CURR 4800
Professor Callahan
11th of December 2018
Final Exam Essay
1. There are five elements of student diversity in schools. These are ability, culture, exceptionality, language, and socioeconomic status. Each one has unique and individualized strategies for the student populations in those categories. One of those is language. For language, there are many ways to help students who do not speak English or have English not as their primary language. Some strategies for language would include having dual-language instruction, which would be helping teach students education in both languages, or there is the strategy of immersion, which would be teaching in the English language alone (no native language is spoken). There is also the transitional approach, using native language to guide English instruction learning or the developmental approach, which teaches student how to develop skills in both languages (not just English). Another example of student diversity is socioeconomic status. Strategies for this can be more confusing than for some of the other elements. Socioeconomic status is how much your family makes (from poor to rich). Strategies differ from student to student, socioeconomic status to status but academic expectations should never be lowered or softer. Poorer students usually have less vocabulary so a strategy could be to work with them on gaining those words. Another strategy could be helping them learn through extracurricular activities, e.g., showing them how art can put into words what they think a book’s theme is. Never put bias onto your students, just because they have different socioeconomic status does not mean that they can’t all value school.
2. There are five philosophies of education, which correlate with how students learn and how teachers teach. Two of these are Essentialism and Social Reconstuctionism/Existentialism. Essentialism is about teaching students knowledge and how to expand it by the traditional core subjects. The formal curriculum would be the core subjects: math, history, science, foreign language, and literature and these would be the focus of what is learned by the students. The teacher is the main focus in the classroom and decides what to teach the students. The teacher also assesses learning by test scores of the students. Social Reconstuctionism/Existentialism is about using what is learned in the classroom to stop and or lessen social inequalities and reconstruct society and social order. The formal curriculum focuses more on social issues and how to analysis and figure out possible solutions based on knowledge learned (but not just core knowledge but extracurricular knowledge like art, music, ect…). The teacher creates lessons to stir the students into wanting to know more. The teacher’s role is more of a facilitator, assisting students but letting them do research and form opinions and discuss with classmates. Research reports and projects would be how learning would be assessed. These two philosophies are very different but have some similarities. There is a focus on learning knowledge but one focus’ more on expanding knowledge for knowledge sake and the other focuses more on the applications of knowledge.
3. The history of American public education is a long and diverse one. However, within that diversity there are three major trends that have occurred over time within this history. The first one is gender and racial discrimination, which was an educational practice for centuries until the last 60 years, where there were more educational rights given to women and African Americans. The second trend is educating teachers since the people teaching the next generation should know what they are teaching and how to teach and be held accountable. This has been going on since 1839. The last one was federal funding, which has been done in many different ways like ESSA, NCLB, and NDEA.
4. The 2001 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation was to help set a path for schools in America to follow to help promote education and help get every student at the same level of studies as all of their peers. One of the major elements in this legislation was that the federal government role was increased, impacting how states run their functions of the government to comply with the new federal standards. The second element is that there were common core standards for each grade, which impacted the information that student’s learned, mostly mathematics and reading. Another major element is the standardized tests to see the rate of growth in students, impacting how student’s view themselves (usually more negatively than positively) with the stress of taking the test and then the test telling them how smart they are. The fourth major element is that special focus was put onto English language learners, special education students, and low SES students, which helps them to get a better education. The last element is that is that if the states do not administer the annual test there can be consequences, which would impact how the school is run, how much funding is given to them, and even the possibility of losing their students to different schools.
5. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) would eventually succeed NCLB. One of the main elements of ESSA (and NCLB) that still drives education in Colorado is the standardized test that is given annually for 3rd-8th grade and once during high school. This will affect my future classroom, as I will need to prepare my students to take the test. Another main element is that there are required report cards telling students how well they do, which I would need to plan for as these are for accountability of the teacher. The last one is that there needs to be assurance that Title I-A funds are going to schools that have teachers who are properly certified. This is important for me to plan for as it could affect my role in the classroom if I let my certification drop.
6. There are three different parts of government that play varying functions within the school system. The first is the federal government, second is the state, and third is the local government. The federal government’s role in the school system and education is to enforce education laws but does not establish schools or have input in schools. One of the functions of the federal government is to provide funds for the states to spend on education. Another function is to collect data from schools, usually from standardized tests. The last main function is to enforce federal education laws in accordance to privacy laws and rights of students and teachers. Education is the main role of the state and local government, not the federal. The state government oversees the schools and keeps them accountable to the standards set by the state and federal government. One of the state’s functions in education is to determine the process for accrediting schools in the state. This means that they pick what hoops schools have to jump through to get accreditation. The second function is that the state establishes overall educational standards (a skeletal structure of curriculum that must be taught for each grade in each subject). The last function for the state is that they establish the length of the school year. While in contrast the local government’s role in education has more to do with how individual schools are run. This means that they determine and establish local education policy. Another function that the local government has is that they hire and fire teachers and determine employee compensation, as well as approve textbooks for classes. All three of these roles that the federal, state, and local government play are each important to how the education system in the U.S functions and is maintained.
7. For the first situation about the football game, the legal principle would be Teacher’s Private Lives. It would be Teacher’s Private Lives because the courts hold teachers to a high moral standard because we are the examples to the next and future generations. Yes, they can get away with that. From year 1 to 3, they can fire you for any reason. It also applies to the community standard that applies to teacher’s lives and your life must live up to standard at the risk of being fired, especially because being with the students is encouraging underage drinking. The second situation has the legal principle of Tort Law & Negligence. This would be because the teacher failed to protect the student when it was their responsibility, which is also the legal basis for the case. Likely result would be the parent wining the lawsuit because the teacher, and therefore the school district, was at fault. The last one’s legal principle would be Freedom of Religious (First Amendment). This would mean you do have the Freedom of Religion but so does everyone else. However, this is not the teacher promoting a specific religion, it is an equal chance for each student to show a tradition either they or their family has and that student has the same right as others – if a Muslim student wanted to speak on a Islamic tradition then they would have the same right to do that during this period as the Christina student does.
8. With my expanded knowledge of the teaching profession after taking this class, I would say that it is not a great time for me to become a public school teacher but it will be soon. What I mean by this is that right now I do not feel prepared or ready to have 30 student’s lives in my hands right now. I need more preparation and more experience with teaching before I actually become a teacher. I believe that I’m closer to being a teacher than I was last year but I’m not ready yet. Thankfully though, the teacher’s licensure should help me either get ready to teacher or figure out that I don’t want to teach. Right now, I want to teach but I don’t feel prepared enough in the current climate of the profession.