6/30/13
What Matters?
This week when we were discussing
Finland, Singapore, and Taiwan’s education systems, Matt was talking about some
of the things that the highest achieving nations have in common or at least
most of them have. Some of the areas (stated by Daring-Hammond , 2010) that
stuck out to me was that these countries have access to health care, equitable
funding for schools, massive investments in teacher education and school level
support, and elimination of tracking.
I think of some of my kiddos whom
if they had adequate health care and their basic needs were being met they
could really soar as individuals. I know we all have kiddos in this same
situation. Some of these students are dealing with adult issues and academics
are the last thing they are worried about. It goes back to Maslow’s Hierachery
of Needs. Unless students’ basic needs are being met then it will be
challenging to really see what they are capable of doing.
If we had the needed funding in our
schools I feel that would also help our students. With more funding maybe we
could have some programs in place to help support struggling families so that
their kids can come to school with their basic needs being met. Some schools
have these programs, but we need all of our schools to have the same
opportunities if we want our country to be successful. Granted, parents also
need to play a role in their children (s’) success.
These other countries also make
massive investments in teacher education and school level support. Why aren’t
we doing that? In Singapore, they have the number one teacher-training
institute and their teachers get 100 hours of professional development a year.
They are required to teach children first and then the content comes second. In
the United States we focus on drilling content and the child comes second and I
think teachers do that because our system drills that into teachers. That is
how they have to teach. It’s definitely not how most teachers want to teach. I could be a
little bias, but teachers are undervalued considering that in some of these
countries teacher are ranked on top with doctors and lawyers. It’s also
frustrating that every state or even different districts have their own salary scale and some states/districts pay
their teachers considerably higher salaries. As a country I would think we
would want some kind of a general consensus.
What really matter are our students and we need to continue to be their advocates in education.
Cami,
ReplyDeleteI share your same frustrations with kids needing to have their basic needs met to learn and the way our country trains teachers and respects teachers. There are plenty of people in our country who do give teachers the respect it sounds like teachers receive in other countries, but until more of our voting citizens and policy makers value what we do in educating the future of our country, it's an uphill battle we're facing.
The professional development other countries give their teachers was the eye-opener for me. Can you imagine getting the support your first year teaching that the teacher in the video was getting? The mentorship was very impressive. It would be intimidating at first to be evaluated with videos and colleagues watching you and giving input, but imagine the results!!
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