Pledge of Allegiance

So over the last month or so, as school has been the buzz on my Facebook feed, I have noticed many people "reposting" or "sharing" these little pictures about how sad it is that we are no longer say the Pledge of Allegiance in schools anymore.

All of my opinions aside, people who feel so strongly about these topics should really do some more research....

On several different websites, you can see where they talk about the "under God" being added into the Pledge during the cold war, and many states, especially Massachusetts have challenged it. There is a current challenge against the use of "under God" because of the first amendment and how it pertains to religion.

I teach in Missouri, and I know for sure the Missouri state law is that schools/teachers most provide a time to say the pledge at least once a week, but students are not required to say it. We asks all students to stand out of respect, but they do not have to participate in the pledge. We also teach them not to be disrespectful while others are saying it. We teach students the same if a student practices a belief/religion that is different than their own. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate holidays or birthdays, and we must teach the students who do not believe the same way as them to respect their believes (or disagree respectfully).

I came across this website that further maps out the laws in other states. I do not know exactly how accurate it is, but from the individual states that I have researched, it seems aligned to their state laws.

http://undergod.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000074#1
7 states have no law about pledge
6 states allow schools to choose whether they allow a time for students to say the pledge
37 states are required to allow a time for students to say the pledge

16 states have no law about whether students have to (or not) say the pledge
28 states allow students to choose whether they have to say it or not
6 states require their students to say the pledge

http://undergod.procon.org/view.background-resource.php?resourceID=811
Here is a website for more specific "laws" about each state

Therefore, most schools are required to allow a time, but give students the option to participate.

I did this only because I'm tired of seeing stupid little pictures on Facebook and other social media websites that say things like...

"My generation grew up reciting this every morning in school with my hand on my heart. They no longer dot hat for fear of offending someone! Let's see how many Americans will re-post and not care about offending someone!"

THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE LAW FROM THEN AND NOW IS THAT STUDENTS HAVE CHOICE
(THEN, being defined as when the people on my social media websites were in elementary school, so about 20 years ago or more)

Camping Theme

So I have decided to do a camping theme this year in my classroom. I am still unpacking boxes from moving rooms (and grade levels) and am almost at the point of starting to decorate with "camping theme" things.... but I am needing some ideas....

So far, I have...

Areas in Room

Teacher Desk: ranger station

Guided Reading table: reading island

Writing center supplies: supply control

Front carpet: pondering pond - maybe i don't really want a pond and lake)

Library: literacy lake

Safe seats: A picture of a skunk with "Don’t be a stinker, follow the rules"

Student desks groups: campsites

Back carpet: Campfire stories??

Side table: ?? (students will do some sort of independent work here...centers/needs a quiet spot)

Backpacks  - bunkhouse

Bulletin boards inside the classroom

I have 2 boarded up windows in my room (they lead to the new addition of our school, so they are perfect bulletin boards...

Far left window  - “s’more good work”

Bulletin boards outside the classroom

Parents – Spotlight  news (with a calendar)

Leader of the week - thought about camper of the week, but didn't know if others would get it, so i think i'm just going to leave this as leader of the week

bulletin board for students writing - campfire stories

Other areas of the room

Where the math manipulatives are: Math mountain

The actual area where students write: Writing waterfall

Jobs: Busy beavers

Rules: Lodge Rules

Birthday wall - Birthday bugs (looks like mason jars, one for each month, then their names are on bugs and they are put in the jar of their birthday month

Word wall – word woods

Bathroom passes (if i do them) - Outhouse passes

Center time - “Campers choice”

 One of the classrooms doors may say  - "The Learning Lodge"

By the other door: A camper with awning...

Anyone else have any other great ideas?

"Hello, Ms. Bruns?"

So I'm sitting in my office reading page 128 of Educational Foundations: An Anthology of Critical Readings and I get to the part at the bottom that says, ""Why am I a teacher, anyways?" I pause from reading and drift off into the realm of deep thought. I know why I am a teacher, but I begin to examine the way I taught last year and if I taught from my heart or I taught from mandates, stress, and all the other excuses that cloud teachers mind. At that moment, my phone rang. The number did not have a named saved with it. I let it ring a couple of times, I wonder who in the world is calling me on a Wednesday evening in the summer. I answer.

"Hello, Ms. Bruns?" I can tell it's a kids voice. I say "Hi." And I hear this little voice say, "do you know who this is?" I admit that I did not. "Alyssa" I was so surprised to have a student calling me. We don't give out our personal cell phone numbers at our school, but I did to this mother for a field trip last September. The next words brought a large smile to my face, "I can't wait to see you again Ms. Bruns. Did you hear that I got in trouble over the summer? I scratched someone, I know it was wrong, but she pushed me over a chair and I got really mad, I won't go back to the support room again, you wouldn't have ever let the pushing happen, when does school start?" and the excited rambling continues. 

Now, completely side tracked from anything in the book or anything I had been thinking about, I look down, and I see that question again, "Why am I a teacher, anyways?" I feel like that student calling answers the question without saying anything at all.

Mentor Program

I was reading the chapter by Washor, particularly the part about the students at MET and their Learning Through Internship (LTI) mentoring program in Educational Foundations: An Anthology of Critial Readings. As I was reading the part about program, I stopped at made this facebook post...

Food for thought: I'm reading my Educational Foundations book for graduate school. It mentions a program at a school on the east coast which provides each student a mentor from the community....
I'm wondering how difficult it would be to find 22 people willing to sacrifice 20 minutes to 2 hours a week to be my students mentors. To have my students know that someone OUTSIDE of their family and school cares about them would be so powerful. Even if it is someone who gets emailed progress reports and writes letters back to the student. Or someone who can come read to them one day a week.....
My mind is now spinning with ideas....

I instantly had a response volunteering to do it... a teacher. Then another response saying that she thought mentors could actually learn from students.... a daycare worker. 

I know the post is only minutes old.... but these are the questions spinning through my head...

1. Do non-education world people care about our students?

2. I believe they do, but what is stopping them from wanting to do this? or are they?

3. Are there schools or teachers that are already doing this?

4. Could this far fetched though become a reality for my students.

I truly would like some feedback on this topic. I think the idea of my students knowing that people (non-educators) from our community care about them that it would or could make a powefrul difference in their lives. As I said in my post, I don' t expect or want it to a monetary mentor, a mentor for intellectual and emotional purposes. A mentor to ask for advice, to share successes, to explain their challenges. A mentor to show the students that they are cared about.

Who is educated?

I was given a handout in one of my graduate classes....

1. Has your education give you a sense of empathy with all good and humane causes -- and help motivate you to support them?

2. Has your education helped you become more public spirited?

3. Has your education helped you become a defender of the week?

4. Has your edcuation helped you learn to make friends -- and keep them?

5. Has your edcuation helped you know what is to be a friend yourself -- and to yourself?

5. Has your education helped you become an honest and trustworthy person?

6. Has your education made you human enough so that a lonely dog will follow you home?

8. Has your education helped you become more optomistic and cheerful with the "drudgeries" of life?

9. Has your education helped you be happy alone?

10. Has your education helped you become more understanding of others -- no matter what their circumstances? Has it helped you see anything to love in those who may not be easy to love?

11. Has your education helped you see a wordl view that is greater than the accumulation of money, power, and prestige?

12. has your education helped you look into a mud puddle by the wayside and see anything in the puddle but mud?

13. Has your education helped you look at the stars and see anything beyond?

14. Has your education helped you begin to believe that old George Bernard Show quotation that RFK ended up with in many of his speeches, "Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?"

As I read these questions, I wonder what we do in our educational system that teachers these things. How do we foster classroom environments to provide well educated, well rounded, individuals?

What is Educative?

We were asked to read Experience and Education by John Dewey

We were asked to think about

1. How does Dewey compare traditional vs. progressive education?

2. What consitutes a genuine "experience?"

3. What is "freedom" according to Dewey?

4. How do children learn "social control?"

Then...Write about: Do you think ALL experiences that a person has are educative, or just those that lead to growth? Feel free to agree or disagree with Dewey in this regard. 

Dewey said “…Education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative. Experience and education cannot be directly equated to each other. For some experiences are miseducative”. I understand that Dewey meant not all education is the education we want people to learn or maybe the information is not accurate. However, learning from mistakes can sometimes outweighs formal education.

Dewey goes on to say, “No experience is educative that does not tend both to knowledge of more fact and entertaining of more ideas and to a better, a more orderly, arrangement of them.” As I mentioned before, if someone is given false facts and makes a decision based on that, they usually have a consequence (natural or given). Because of the consequence the person endures, since they followed false knowledge of facts they will learn from this mistake. Although it usually is not the course most educators want students to travel in order to learn, it happens quite often.

Lastly, Dewey says, “But what has been said is organically connected with the requirement that experiences in order to be educative must lead out into an expanding world of subject-matter, 1 subject-matter of facts or information and of ideas.” Again, I disagree that experiences have to be based off of subject-matter of facts or information. Sometimes the best qualities within people are because of a mistake they learned from.

Being educated in the educator world, typically means the knowledge one learns through some form of formal education (this definition is also slightly different than it once was). However, being educated to most people means acquiring knowledge, and whether a person learns something from a blog they read, a Facebook message someone posted about Miley Cyrus, a erratic driver on the interstate, or from the history text book in school, knowledge was transmitted, thus the experiences are educative. Whether that educational experience was positive or not, it is all about how the learner perceives information. 

Virtue

We were asked to read....

Meno by Plato

Nicomachean Ethics by Aristole

We were asked to think about...

1. Where does Plato believe virtue is derived?
2. How does Aristotle define virtue?

Then we were asked to write about "Can virtue be taught?"

I think that virtue is both indirectly taught and taught by the affects of virtue. As Aristotle stated,

“ By doing the acts that we do in our transactions with other men we become just or unjust, and by doing the acts that we do in the presence of danger, and being habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become brave or cowardly. The same is true of appetites and feelings of anger; some men becometemperate and good-tempered, others self-indulgent and irascible, by behaving in one way or the other in the appropriate circumstances.”

The last line says, we behave appropriately within circumstances. I think that we indirectly teach students what “model” virtue is by our own actions.

However, more than we teach students virtue, they learn it from their experiences. Students act based on emotions and circumstances and based on the consequences (good and bad) of their actions, they learn to adjust their actions (virtue). Meno said “virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do”.  I think that students react to different circumstances differently as they grow older, because they have adjusted their virtue throughout time as they have been through experiences.

I think that teaching virtue is difficult though because many virtues are based off of morals and beliefs which teachers should not impose on students, although we indirectly are all the time, by our actions and reactions.

For example, a student of mine lost a parent suddenly at the end of the school year. Two of her classmates attended the funeral services and between their parents and I we discussed being open about their feelings and feeling free to talk to them or to me when they are sad or have a question. Although neither student asked me a question in the last three weeks of school, they watched how I interacted with the child that lost her father and based on how I acted, is how they acted.

                Again, most virtue is taught through experience, but although the two classmates didn’t lose a parent, they were able to learn to have empathy for their classmate and to a certain degree learned how to behave based on my actions (taught indirectly). I would agree with Plato though, it is hard to say still whether it is taught or learned.

Segregate or Educate?

After reading Fire in the Ashes and A Hope in the Unseen, I answered these following questions...
Should society work toward creating schools that are racially integrated or work toward creating solid neighborhood schools? In other words, should we abandon the goals of Brown v. Board of Education (desegregation) and instead just make sure the schools children attend -- even if they are monoracial -- are of high quality? What do you think? Why or why not?

 Although having racially integrated schools would be ideal for getting students to learn from others and learn from other cultures, I think it is still undeniably impossible at this time. As I was driving my friend, who was visiting from rural Nebraska, around Kansas City this week showing her where I work, she asked me why schools are so “white” or so “black”. She said the thing she loves about coming to Kansas City is how many different types of people there are. So she wanted to know why people do not embrace that. This led me to discussing what I learned from Tanner Colby in Some of My Best Friends are Black and how realtors, like JC Nichols, set up a segregated cities through the bylaws in their housing contracts. Leading to several cities being divided and causing segregated schools and neighborhoods. Since then, people have self-segregated for years. I think that all schools, no matter how racially integrated or monoracial they are, they need to be quality.

In Fire in the Ashes, Kozol says that we cannot hold children accountable for where they were born and raised or for the failings of their schools. (302). However, we can blame our education system for letting so many schools to be failing today. This continuum of failing schools and neighborhoods is only going to get worse if we don’t intervene now. In A Hope in the Unseen, Suskind describes Cedric’s life and part of that is uncovering how poor some of the neighborhoods are just blocks from our nation’s capital. It can go without saying, that neighborhoods and schools, all over this country, need help reviving its existence.

            Although I think the intention of Brown v. Board of Education was good, I don’t think it is yet a realistic scenario. Consequently, the only solution is to make sure that we have high quality neighborhood schools. With that, schools should still focus on cultures and diversity, so that we can instill a respect amongst cultures within our schools and society.

I ponder the idea of quality education everywhere leading to people naturally desegregating over time, which then would lead to more diverse schools. I honestly do not know if this would happen because of how many years of turmoil we have put some neighborhoods through. But I do know, that no matter where people live, they deserve the best of the best education.

Failing Schools

The class I am in asked us to read Fire in the Ashes  by Jonathan Kozol.

While we were reading, our teacher asked us to think about...1. What is Kozol's view of urban school in the United States?2. Why do segregated and/or poverty-stricken neighborhoods exist in our country? Who's to blame?

Then...We wrote whether we agree or disagree with the claims Kozol makes on the class discussion board.

So I wrote....

According to Kozol, inner city schools, with a few expectations, are “underserved and underfunded” (314). Through Kozol’s writing, research, and time spent with these children and families, you can tell he cares deeply about their livelihood and welfare. Due to circumstances, as Kozol mentions, no matter how hard we [society] hold kids “accountable for their success or failure” (302) we cannot control the outcome of their lives because these children had (nor have) no choice about where they were born, raised, or went to school.

Kozol also unwraps the truths about the schools in the Mott Haven, “the single poorest neighborhood in New York” (15). A mother, Vicky, mentioned that “An A-plus on a book report doesn’t mean a whole lot at this school she [my daughter] goes to.... I don’t think that they can give her what a girl with her potential ought to have.” She goes on to say, “I don’t accept it – yet I do, because I don’t know any choice I have” (21).

Even the headmaster at the boarding school in Massachusetts told Kozol, “The truth is that the school he’s [Jeremy] now attending has not served this young man well. But he saw a spark in him, an appetite for learning” and upon his acceptance into this boarding school, they set a condition, to “repeat a grade because the school believed he would need the continuity of three full academic years to graduate successfully” (225). Kozol uses the parents recognition of failing schools and their kids receiving less than average education as evidence to the history of failing schools in New York, and this nation. He repeatedly brings up occurrences in the lives of these children where education has failed them.

Kozol replays the idea of segregation reappearing to schools and cities. Upon reading Some of My Best Friends Are Black by Tanner Colby and digging into the history of segregation in Kansas City, it is hard not to question whether mandates on federal and state housing are still being used to control where groups of minorities live. Thus controlling the types of schools these children can attend, and the quality of education they receive their, consequently keeping the poverty cycle going. Kozol mentions in his epilogue that charter schools started to form in the Bronx, but they “serve only a small fraction of the student population, and students who do not conform to what the charter schools demand are frequently encouraged to go back into the public schools they came from” (313). I agree with Kozol’s claims and I think they portray a clear picture of the education system as it is today, where the cycle has only continued.

My Educational History

When I think about my educational history, I instantly reflect on where I came from. The location of my childhood has had a great impact on who I am today as an educator. I grew up in Superior, Nebraska, small rural town in South-central Nebraska. Let me paint a picture--I grew up being surrounded by old elegant Victorian mansions on the same city block as dilapidated houses, rows of crops, dusty bumpy roads, the sight of semi’s barreling down my street, and the train blaring its horn conveniently at 3am. The movie theater’s newest movie actually came out two weeks ago. Everything closed at 8pm, there was not a McDonald’s, matter of fact the only drive-thru was at Dairy Queen and the liquor store. We did not rely on AAA or MoDot when our car broke down, we walked. No one was in a hurry to go anywhere. Tractors caused traffic jams, we had one stop light, and there were no one-way streets. We traveled at least an hour to get to the nearest mall or Walmart.

We  lived about a mile outside of town in a small neighborhood. My parents were never farmers, but my neighbors were, and now, my brother is. My dad went to college, dropped out, became a alcoholic and married my mom. My mom never went to college, and worked low-end jobs most of my life. About the time I was starting school, my dad was diagnosed with Chrones disease which forced him to change his lifestyle. As time went by my parents worked on finding better supporting jobs. My mom became owner and manager of a few apartment complexes and my dad became the head of plant operations at the hospital. Because they struggled so much to make a life for themselves and to support their family, education was always stressed and made a priority in our life.

                I attended Happy Times Preschool at a local church then attended Superior Public Schools for my K-12 education. Preschool and Kindergarten was filled with sweet teachers, musical chairs, puppet shoes, and snack time. First grade was much different than Kindergarten. The teacher always sent me in the hallway because I was talking in class. My brother was having similar problems with talking that same year in school. Our parents were told and asked on many different occasions to see if we could get medication for ADD, but my mother refused, but she also did not tell them anything that was happening at home.

            Although school started to get easier, most of third, fourth, and fifth grade was a blur, but then I met Mrs. Corman in sixth grade. She sang, she danced, she laughed, she wore funny hats, she talked in weird accents, she yelled, she cried, and she became the only teacher who could make me interested in learning things I hated before.

Leaving sixth grade meant I was about to enter the Jr.-Sr. High School (grades 7-12). I loved having more freedom. I had time to talk to friends and socialize and my academics became less important causing my grades to slip. Second semester of my seventh grade year, Mrs. Corman (that dancing sixth grade teacher) became the new seventh and eighth grade English teacher. I was held accountable again, and while I hated it, it changed my attitude towards school all over again.

When I was a senior and had made it through all the struggles I was given the opportunity to become a teacher’s aide for the first grade teachers at the elementary school. Here is where I started to really know that I wanted to be in education. I was allowed to work with small groups, teach whole group lessons, and work individually with struggling students. One of the teachers, Mrs. Aldrup, gave me many opportunities to try new things and talked to me about things that did not go well.

During my senior year, my parents also made it very clear to me that college was a non-negotiable. I ended up coming to Kansas City for reasons besides education. I started college at UMKC to get my Bachelors in Elementary Education. The second year, I was accepted into the Institute for Urban Education and a new path of my life began. After completing my degree, I taught for a year then I went through the Greater Kansas City Writing Project that following summer. The administration recognized my work and had me work with a few teacher’s who wanted or needed some guidance in their teaching of writing. I then decided that teaching other teachers was a career path that I was excited about and decided to enroll for my Masters in Curriculum and Instructional Leadership.

The Unseen in Education

For the class I am currently in, we were asked to read A Hope in the Unseen by Ron Suskind.

While we read the book we kept these questions in mind...

1. How does Cedric survive life in high school?

2. Should he be accepted to MIT -- why or why not?

3. What role does religion play in Cedric's life?

4. How does Cedric develop his identity (How does he become who he is)?

5. Why does Cedric succeed when so many others don't?

Then...

We told our definitions of education and how we think Cedric was "educated"

This was my response....

If I were to write a new definition into the dictionary for education, I would simply say “the source of learning”. Most dictionaries and scholars would agree that education is getting instruction from a school. On the other hand, most educators would probably argue that to be educated doesn’t always come from some type of institutional teaching. In Cedric’s case, I would say he was educated through his experiences or perhaps the lack of experiences.

Ballou High School was filled with “Dreambusters. [with] their favorite lines ‘you cannot’ or ‘you will not’” (136). Ballou didn’t give Cedric the type of educational experiences that most American’s expect high schools to give. However, because of Cedric’s drive to become someone and to defy the odds, he was able to recognize ways in which he was not educated. Although MIT gave Cedric a great learning experience, I don’t think that Cedric would have grown nearly as much if he would have been accepted to MIT by the grace of “feeling sorry” for him. I think the admissions at MIT did the right thing by holding him the same standards that all of their students need in order to accepted into MIT. Cedric too, had to learn from failure in order to be educated. When he went off to Brown he knew it would give him the “upper hand” in regards to education and success. (173). Unlike at Ballou, he would be encouraged to “Indulge your curiosity, challenge yourself, [and] experiment” (173).

Suskind says in his Afterword, “What makes Cedric’s cross-border journey so bracing is precisely the gap between how lives unfold in two different countries he has inhabited, both called America” (384). I think that because Cedric was educated through life’s experiences in two different “worlds”, while pushing to get his institutional education at an Ivy League college, offered Cedric a different level of being “educated”. Which most people in this country will never have, nor never understand.