Dan Grass on Five Things Educators Will Have To Accept & Embrace

For this Journal review, I will comment on each of the five things the writer claims educators will have to accept. These responses come from my personal opinion and experience.
 
Education is more PUBLIC than ever
 Boy is this true. it seems like we can't get away from the watchful eye of well, just about everyone. This is in part to social media much like the article stated, but is also in part of the overall investment in children education by their parents. Students are finding that is harder and harder to get into colleges of their choice. Additionally costs of post secondary education are skyrocketing which means there is more need for scholarship funding. This is important to note, not because what that means for the student, but for the parents. Parents are finding that it is more important now to invest in their child's college early on rather than later. This means following with great scrutiny what is happening in that child's educational life. 
 

Educators have to COLLABORATE
 I think we as educators have always been expected to collaborate, but recently it seems that it has become the corner stone of public education. Schools are being asked to add more and more variety into their class offerings. This means more dynamic classes such as music technology, engineering, and advanced literature courses. All of these take cues from other classes. To fully achieve a high level classroom education, educators must look to each other with experience in a variety of areas to ensure success. It's a game of keeping up with the jone's so to speak. 

 Educators have to CREATE curriculum
Creativity in curriculum is important for both reasons listed above. Because the heightened expectation of teachers by parents, and because classes are becoming increasingly diverse, we as teachers are being required to put more personal touches on curriculum. We can not merely take what was handed down to us by our predecessors and call it gospel. This is important in determining why we must have a personal connection to the curriculum of which we teach.

Educators will have to be serious users of TECHNOLOGY
 To be comparable to our international counterparts, this is very important. My biggest fear going forward for educators is that we are lapped even more so by our students. We as teachers are struggling to keep up with the growing knowledge that students are already arriving in. It is important to stay on top of this. 
 
 Educators need to facilitate COMMUNITY


Community involvement is an important part of developing a successful school. They are your stakeholders. They are the ones that will stay living in a community for not other reason than they trust the school system. And more importantly, they talk. They talk to each other. They talk to their friends. They create a buzz about successful schools. This brings money and students.

Dan Grass on 40 Ways to Incorporate Your Own Interests and Passions into Lessons

This blog I find very difficult to wrap my head around. I suppose it's possible for people to teach classes of which they have no interest. Band and music go hand in hand, and it is because of that I find no challenge making sure that my personal passions are invested into each lesson. I suppose the challenge I face is not really in incorporating music as my passion, but the other things. I love my dog. She's sweet as sugar. My lessons sometimes use stories that I have gathered through her upbringing. I know for a fact that I have many horse lovers in my classes, as I teach close to horse country of North Georgia. Perhaps using my experiences with my dog can parallel what some of my students have experienced in their own lives. This brings connectivity. That connectivity is important to the development of trust in a learning environment. Once you get the student's invested. It's easy to see that they will work harder in the tasks that you give them. They feel that they can connect with the information. I suppose that's why student's are more successful in subjects that they enjoy. They work harder and make more connections faster. This improves learning for all. Hopefully by adding in personal touches to lectures, students will feel those connections in all classes.

Dan Grass Response to Teaching Math to People Who Hate Math.

This calls to question many different thoughts about Math. Why is math so widely disliked amongst students? It must be how it's taught. I can't imagine the fact that they are numbers not words to be the reason. I myself am a math hater. I don't really know why. I just always have been. Perhaps if the techniques used were more in line with that of history or literature. Where pictures and images dominated the curriculum as apposed to the current state where abstract numbers are the corner stone of learning. I like to think of this in relation to my own teacher. I as a music teacher, must teach scales. For every one of my students they hate they sharp keys. They do however love the flat keys. Why is this? They are both abstract ideas. One is not longer, or more difficult than the other. But yet, they still refuse to admit that they are less difficult. I would imagine it has everything to do with exposure. Maybe if we start exposing children to the harder ideals earlier than the easier we can reverse what is considered difficult. Would we then have a whole new set of problems?

Dan Grass Response to Peer-to-peer evaluation.

This article brings up a very interesting point for me. Peer evaluations are a dangerous subject. I worry that in a situation where you have many peers evaluating many different teachers, you lose the consistency that you need to have a successful evaluation system. Can you trust a system where a teacher evaluates one person but a completely different teacher evaluates the others? What happens when evaluations become a reason a teacher is unable to get a future job? Does that then fall back on the teacher who did the evaluating? It's important that if you do this style of evaluation that you really focus on the guided questions to lean the evaluation towards a successful method. On a positive note, as an administrator, this frees up time to be able to focus on other problems plaguing the school. I'd like to see research on what the success rates are of school assessment programs that are centered around the self evaluation.

Dan Grass on "Most Freshmen at the Top Universities are Graduates of Public Schools"

This article is very interesting. I don't know if I particularly agree with it. I am one to believe that you can make data say anything you want. For instance. It says that the number of students attending top tier colleges are coming primarily from public universities. I would be interested to find out what is the percent of students applying from public schools. If more students are applying from public schools than in the past, that would skew the data. There are areas of interest such as that, that would help me form a better understanding of the situation. Additionally, what are the requirements and how have they changed for admittance to these colleges? Again this is another issue that would need to be discussed to better understand what exactly is happening within the data. I think that when you look at what public education is demanding of itself though, you'll see that it is becoming more and more aggressive to compete with the private school sector. The last aspect of this article I would want to think about is what is happening to scholarships at these institutions. Are these programs receiving scholarship funding for equal parts public and private school? Very interesting.

High school suspends student editor for refusing to print the word 'redskins' response by Dan Grass

This was a very interesting article. I am extremely surprised that the school took the stance that it did on using the word "redskins." It is my experience that schools tend to error on the side of conservative when dealing with touchy subjects such as gender, race, and religion. The fact that the school said outright that they "required" the students to use the word that some would consider racist is laughable. Someone was not thinking when they made that claim. I think that situations like this do somewhat neuter speech within schools. That being said, if a student does not want to use a particular word or language, they probably should note use force or punishment to ensure that the word IS used. This is bizarre to me. The only reason I could think they would have taken the road they did, was because they feared a snowball effect of language being deferred do to political agenda. But, on the other hand, that's what high schools make a habit of. This is a very unique situation. I would be curious to whether or not this has been addressed at other schools, you know, past the 1950's.

Can Students ‘Go Deep’ With Digital Reading? Response By Dan Grass 9/14

This was an article I could really get behind. I have a strong opinion on whether or not students should be required to use a print medium, or an electronic. This article struck a chord with me when it began talking about the study habits of students, and whether or not they preferred to use print vs. e-book during their learning. I personally have a very challenging time using electronic devices when working on school work. The biggest challenge for me, as I am sure for a high school student, is using the electronic device without distraction within itself. To me, using a laptop to read for study is like trying to write a paper in the middle of a busy intersection. There's so much to look at and mess with, that distraction comes very easily to me. Even now as I type this blog, I have to resist the temptation to scan to a different window and pull up videos of cats, football highlights, or whatever else happens to being tossed around the internet. I could only imagine that challenge becomes even greater for a student who has grown up with technology at their fingertips. Many high school children have spent more time surfing the internet then most adults will in their entire life. I suppose to a degree that means that they have an almost infinite amount of knowledge at their fingertips, but then again, it lends itself back to my distraction theory. For me personally I choose print.

I do agree with the 37% poled that note taking is much easier when you have the ability to write on the text of which you are studying. I think that if technology can provide a platform where note taking becomes equally as attainable as highlighting, and writing, then I think that number will go down.  I believe that if we could push for more successful pen to tablet functionality, students will reach out towards electronic note taking much more fluidly. Lastly, I would like to call to question the historical value of ebooks in relation to print. In a scenario where a book is published to electronic medium only, what happens when the publisher discontinues that text? Does that book simply reside on the computers or tablets for which it was downloaded? What happens when that tablet or account is canceled? I am curious to the length of availability for what could become important historical texts. Again, this is just one more reason why I feel that print should be continued as a source of education above e-books.