Reflection on No-Pass, No-Drive Laws (week of Jan. 26, 2011)

In West Virginia, there has been a law that links teen driving to school attendance all the way back to 1988. In today's terms, the law has been adjusted to serve the purposes of holding teens accountable to having good grades in order to keep their driving privileges. This law is to encourage students to do well in school and well behaved.
In my opinion, I could see how this could be beneficial and not so beneficial depending on which perspective you take it from. In the eyes of teachers and administrators and some parents, this looks like a cut and dry strategy to use to keep students focused and ultimately help increase the school's image, and it acts an extra incentive for the students to work hard. On the other hand, if you look at this from the students' point of view, it may be a horrible idea to enforce because they are supposed to earn their licenses anyways when they are legally of age to drive.
I could see this trend to begin to spread across various parts of the country. Can it be adopted by all? Is it going to be cost-effective to implement?

Pathways Seen For Acquiring Languages (week of Oct. 27)

According to Marty Abbott, the director of education for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages in Alexandria, Va., states, "We have this national psyche that we're not good at languages". She also states, learning a language is still perceived as something only smart people can do, and it's just plain not true, we can learn a second language as well!
It was said that in the past, the ability to learn a new language shrank after the age of 7 and closes almost entirely after puberty. However, an interdisciplinary research conducted over the past 5 years at the University of Washington, Pennsylvania State University, and others suggest that the time frame may be more flexible than first thought.
A study was conducted on infants where 1 year olds were exposed to Mandarin Chinese through audio, television, and language tutors. The results showed that American infants that were exposed to a language tutor recognized 65% of sounds compared to just 55% of recognition through television and audio only.

City's Black Males Stay in School (week of Nov.3)

One of the highest groups of students of drop-out rates are Black males across the country. In this article, the focus is on the city of Baltimore; where the graduation rate increased from 51% in 2006-07 to 57.3% in 2009-10. Much of the success for this rise is attributed by an increase of reaching out to students that have dropped out by use of social media websites and increase in just the personal accountability factor. The "Great Kids Come Back" campaigns send volunteers to the houses of drop out students to come back to school, and by their efforts, there has been some progress to get those students slowly back on track. One last thing the article mentioned was the power of friendship and caring individuals. D'Antre Larry, a junior at Baltimore's Friendship Academy of Science & Technology said that if his principal and staff had not reached out and supported him, he'd be on the streets trying to make a quick dollar. I think that these positive interactions shed light on this kid to turn to different route to success! Great job staff!

Schools Integrate Dance Into Lessons (week of Nov.17)

Just like the title implies, arts education advocates are pushing for more activities into the mainstream curriculum. In a 2nd grade class at Fort Garrison Elementary School, students were grouped together to create dance movements based on their lesson on photosynthesis. This cross-curricular strategy is a neat idea in my opinion especially for a group of younger grade school kids because of their near endless amount of energy they must burn. In the process of this physical activity, they are also primed to learn one of the most basic life processes in biology and having fun doing so. In a time where budgets seem dismal, educators are using their creative minds to fuse different subject areas with each other to create more effective learning opportunities to learn!

Response to Teaching for a Shared Future: Think Global

This article opens up by stating how American students are lacking information about the world and current affairs. For example, many college-bound seniors could not even find some Middle Eastern countries on a map when compared to other students in other parts of the world! In all honesty, this is really embarassing on the global scale because the U.S. is supposedly the most powerful country and all parts of society need to reflect that image. Over the past decade however, it seems more apparent in the mainstream that many systems have experienced some sort of corruption and lack of detail and is slipping away in credibility and integrity. In a global age, students of all backgrounds need adequate knowledge in current world affairs and relate it into the school subjects and prepare these students for jobs in potentially the world market.

Yodio - Multimedia Project by joecho

I have found that I really enjoy using Yodio because it's really convenient to use and simple to learn to use as well. I feel like any person with a cell phone should use Yodio to record just about anything they want to and be an audio author on the web! In the classroom setting, this tool can give ownership and a sense of authority to a young learner and be creative with using his or her own cell phone to create fun recordings. However, with this new task, comes with responsibility to not abuse using this tool by using foul language or other negative talk directed to anyone ever. Teachers like myself will have to regulate the content in these Yodios and filter out the ones that are not up to par. In the long run, I feel like using Yodio will spice up things in the daily routine of lectures and worksheets.

School discipline inequities become a Federal Priority

There have been some inequities within school in the area of discipline issues for quite some time and have been overlooked. In this article, the numbers presented are quite staggering when comparing racial groups. The national middle school suspension rates in 2006 varied from Black males receiving the highest rate of 28.3% to the lowest group  of Asian females at 2.1%. These numbers are not a positive reflection on these students, particularly the ones that are receiving harsher punishments. There are many factors that play into these statistics and immediate change must occur in order to not feed into the current trends of playing into stereotypes.

One solution that was brought up in the article takes place in a Denver school district where they've implemented a "discipline ladder" that covers the lesser disciplinary issues. They've stressed that only larger and more serious issues such as fighting require the attention of local law enforcement.

In my opinion, schools and the surrounding community need to build relationships with one another by educating each other in cultural immersion classes and seminars and be able to teach to understand different approaches to each group so that they are more aware of the underlying reasons to the surface behaviors that seem to "cause chaos" for the learning environment and eventually reduce the number of suspensions so teachers can focus on the teaching and learning process.