Blog Post 9

This week in class we took a look at "What a good school looks like" and we have came up with many different ways we can provide a good school for kids. Good schools for children should be a place where they can be themselves and explore the world through academics. There are many different things that schools are good at and it also is things that they are not good at. I have been doing my student observations at Millridge Elementary school in Highland Heights, Ohio and I must say this school is very good. The environment around the school is a very good one, the teachers and students have a good relationship together. Everything is ran very well because the teachers seem to know what works and what doesn't work. I think building a relationship with your teachers is very important because you want to know about each other and how you can get the best work from each other. Also, I think it is important to set up some type of relationship with the parents. It does not have to be a big one but one that shows the parents that their kids are in good hands. At Millridge this is the greatest example I have a good school because they are doing very well. Everything seems to be well structured and fits the kids very well. They also have a good amount of hearing impaired kids that they give them a lot of chances to interact with the other kids in the schools and this is very good because kids want to be like each other and interact with each other. Good schools really should be available to all kids no matter what neighborhood you live in and no matter your economic status. When we went on out different class observations together the three schools we visited were very good schools. They all were unique in their own way and proved to be working well for the different age group of kids that they had.

Blog Post 8

In this weeks class experience and readings I wanted to come up with the question of "If it is not about the test, why is it that the test are all we hear about?" Why is it that we base everything off of the test scores that the students are receiving. We never try and factor in the teachers, stress, outside life whether it is problems at home or living in poverty. The biggest effect this has on the school is that the state will not give them funding based on these test scores and that should not be the case. This problem they have with the test scores and funding is a big problem because the schools will get under funded and this puts kids at a disadvantage with learning because they will not have the best resources for them available. There are a lot of different factors that can prevent a kid from learning so while they are at school they should not have to worry about having the best stuff or the worst stuff. It should all be provided for them so that they can succeed at the highest level.

Field Blog 3

In our last group observation we visited Orange High School and this visit was more specific to what I really want to do with my teacher career. It was exactly what I want to do with my educational career with being an physical education teacher in high school. This was the first time I had been in a gym class since my freshman year of high school so it had been sometime since my last one. Our teacher, Mr. Shanghal, was terrific! He was very interactive with the kids, he made it a lot of fun for the kids and you could tell they were having a good time because you could see the joy on there face. The good part about this PE class was that the school gave Mr. Shanghal the freedom to run it how he wanted so as he explained the numerous different activities he had to choose from on a day to day basis he constantly would remind us of how he would meet the state requirement but then he would put his own spin on things. He invited me to join him to one of his workshops that he puts on for Physical education teachers and he even gave me a few lesson plans that he had put together if we ever needed to use them. Since the school was so pleased with how the PE program has gotten over the past years it was like almost whatever Mr. Shanghal needed or wanted for his class that they provided him with. Sometimes you might see some schools not get as involved in Physical Education but since they have gave the entire curriculum to M. Shanghal and saw what he has done with it, it has done nothing but pleased the school. Also I thought it was good that some days after school that the teachers would actually go though a PE class. This trip to the high school really made me feel good about my decision to want to teach in a high school environment and also to teach PE.