My level of geekyness continues to grow

Yes, believe it or not that IS possible

I am like Chris stated he was in one of his first blogs; it’s interesting (and a little sad) that eight years into teaching, this is the first time I have studied the history of my own profession. I think that every teacher should read School: The Story of American Public Education and while I agreed with little miss darling’s points in The Flat World and Education, and would recommend that book, I think that the most important element  of her book and our class is the study of different world versions of education. How can we make a plan of improvement for our educational future if we don’t know where we have been and what is working elsewhere?

Although I definitely don’t relate to the horror stories of many under-prepared new teachers, I do feel like I was missing key information concerning my profession going into it. This is why I love the idea of more required/provided/recognized professional development.  I am very thankful for the Wright Fellowship and the amazing professional development and collaboration opportunity it has provided. There has been so much that has come up over and over again throughout our classes that I had never even been aware of, and now that I am I hear about them all the time. For example, I am a little ashamed to admit this, but I had never heard of John Dewey or knew what people were talking about when they referred to Progressive education prior to the Wright Fellowship and his name has come up in EVERY class since last summer. I had also never heard of Action Research, only to find out that Korea has been having all their teachers complete action research projects in their classrooms. Then I think to myself, that it’s not like I have been stagnant in education, closing the door and repeating the same lessons over and over without knowledge of my students or the outside world. As of the end of the summer I will have 70 credits beyond my bachelor’s and have only been teaching for 8 years. While this is less than some, I know it is higher than average. And, I felt fairly prepared entering the profession, which shows just how important constant professional development is.

As I have thought about this over the last couple of weeks, I have found that the more I learn about education and study it, the more I see opportunities to learn about it and discussions pop up where education ties into the conversation. Recently, at an outdoor concert, I struck up a conversation with a man who is a civil engineer in Boise. He and my husband were talking about engineering and he mentioned that he had recently worked with an engineer from Finland. I had not told him I was a teacher yet, so I was surprised when he mentioned that Finland did so well in education. He said that he asked the fellow engineer why he thought that was and he replied that he had no idea because he really didn’t feel that kids in Finland were any more prepared or motivated for the real world than anyone else. Now, that was just one person’s opinion, but with all the positive stories and examples we have heard all summer, it was interesting to hear another perspective. I then told the engineer that we were visiting with that I was an educator and had recently been studying this very thing in my classes. He was interested in this because he had briefly worked as a science teacher in a middle school, having been hired using alternative route to certification. He said he felt that he was vastly underprepared and while he felt valued for his subject knowledge, he didn’t feel enough credit was given to classroom management and discipline skills that teachers need to have in addition to content knowledge. The underprepared alternatively certified teachers have been another topic of class discussion and here it was coming up in a getting to know you conversation with a complete stranger. A few weeks ago I would have been much more ignorant on both topics.

I also had two conversations with my brother about the pros and cons of assimilation and melting pot vs. salad bowl and the pitfalls of litigation in education, both of which started out about other topics. I honestly don’t know if the conversations naturally found themselves there or if I am just constantly thinking about our class discussions and therefore wove the conversation that direction subconsciously. Either way, I can’t seem to get away from these sub-topics of education that had honestly never had very many conversations about before. I had conversations about my career all the time, but there were previously more limited to discussing school budgets, testing, standards, and content area specific at times. It’s not that discussion education is new; it’s that I feel a new interest and curiosity to study and learn even more about my profession. I feel like I need to warn my loved ones that I will probably nerd out on the subject and incessant amount from this point of my life onward.

Also, I watched this video last night which made me think about now the fact that I have to go back to school and decide how to apply all this with my kids who may decide, in spite of all my new found interest. Although I am sure I will find that there are not all that many people  who would be interested in or honestly even benefit from my nerdy ramblings, so I will have to watch ted talks and nerd out on my own unless Keith will loan me his imaginary friends. J
http://www.hulu.com/watch/292079