- School context: we're writing about the "urban"-ness of the school site in comparison with other school settings.
- Planning instruction: we have to create a tutoring plan and then see how it mostly falls apart. I predict a lot of falling apart, since we won't know just who we're working with or how once we get there. (Is it fair to call this "planning to fail" on the part of the course designer?)
- Working in teams: I suspect that a lot of what we do won't be purely individual; it'll certainly be done in conjunction with teachers and may well be done with each other. Plus, we have to engage in lively discussions on our course website each night.
- Meta-cognition: we're going to be analyzing our own teaching quite a bit of course, though I think this will be omnipresent in all the TE courses from here on out.
Heads up: from now on I will also be posting some reflections on the course reading material. Which sounds really pedestrian, I know; my hope is that I can shed light on what kinds of things the MSU TE program considers important reading for teachers.
2 comments:
Orion,
I share most of your thoughts about the Kozol article. I was appalled at the machinery-like efficiency that these schools have managed to implement. I thought it interesting how a program/system that was designed to combat teacher failure, lack of teachers, and poor test grades, actually had the opposite effect. It's unfortunate that rather than working to enact change, the teachers felt leaving was their only recourse.
I had a real problem with the thesis of his argument, that it is because of resegregation that all these things were happening. While I think his base argument is true, there was a marked lack of evidence for this. Instead of teasing out why this was so, how it came about (history, culture, class, etc) he gave page after page of horrifying example and then at the end restated the reason behind all this is the resegregation of schools. I require more analysis and evidence.
Mightymogirl (may I call you "mighty"?),
Totally agree that Kozol doesn't present evidence on the segregation question. From what I've seen elsewhere, segregation is really hotly contested ground as far as good or bad for social justice. That's complicated by a lot of authors talking about whether it could be good or could be bad as opposed to whether it is good or is bad. Looking forward to some great discussion about this in class!
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