A child educated only at school is an uneducated child. George Santayana

What is really fair and how do we provide this to all people? I do not believe that we can put a dollar sign on fairness. Sameness, on the other had is a different story. I want the same as you! That is easy to understand, but when you put them together fairness as sameness, it is hard to explain. This is because not all children are the same, no two students learn the same way, so providing them the "same" things is not always "fair".

Our readings this week all touched upon the idea of providing a level playing ground for all students. This came to us in many different ways. Ladson-Billings wants us to push our students using creative methods that they can relate to. Jackson and Cooper define literacy to include “[fostering] engagement of behaviors vital to adolescents... [incorporating] authentic literacy—literacy relevant to students... and [recognizing] the critical role of a student’s frame of reference in literacy development” (248). They suggest using High-Interest, High-Level remediation programming with At-Risk OSSLT Writers. The Abbott School District believes that if they have more money they will provide a better education to their students. I do not believe this to be true.

These are great ideas, for the students that they target. That does not mean that they are great ideas for all students.

If all the insects were to disappear from the Earth, within fifty years all life on Earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the Earth, within fifty years all forms of life would flourish. Jonas Salk

      My wife is fascinated with this class and finds everyone’s blogs to be fantastic and entertaining. I read them once or twice and she browses when she has time.   We usually have depth discussions regarding the information.  This is great for me, as the student, since we are not able to chat about the material in class.  This week was very different, she was angry and sad and had a lot to say.  My wife, went to a small, all girl, Catholic High School and small, Catholic college.  Her educational life was much different than mine and it has effected her teaching.  Let me tell you why. 
    When she was in high school, having 36 girls in her entire graduating class, she had to make her own cheerleading outfit, costume, whatever you call it.  This project became a class, there were NO exams, NO papers to write, NO Child Left Behind.  She simply had to follow the directions and make her outfit.  Of course there were guidelines: it had to fit, the process had to be followed correctly,  there were time constraints and...wait for it....she had FUN!  Not only that, my wife can sew anything.  She internalized the lessons and learned a skill for life.  Isn’t that what our job should be?  Not to teach our students so they retain information for enough weeks to pass a test.  What is the point of that?   In Delpit’s chapter No Kinda Sense the Hair Braiding lesson followed this same vain.  Find something that the students can relate to and build up on it.
    This weeks readings focused on assessment.  It was the video of Ken Robinson that affected me the most.  His discussion of how our schools are squashing the creativity of students was dead on.  He believes that creativity is as important in education as literacy and we should treat it with the same status.  Luna would agree with this.  She tells us that the education system is failing so many children because they are not in the “mainstream”.  Our education system must educate the whole being.  We must understand that intelligence is unique to each person.  There are so many people who need to move, doodle, even hum,  in order to think.  I am one of those people. 
    Robinson brings up a great point. That children are not frightened of being wrong...”if you are not prepared to be wrong you will never be original”.  As adults we have lost this capacity.  We are afraid to be wrong, we are taught not to be wrong.  Assessments are a perfect example of this.    We are again, teaching to the test.  We are educating people out of their creativity, and so many students learn most effectively through the arts.  “Highly talented people think they are not smart because what they are good at is not valued”.  How sad is that?  
    We have shifted the way our system works since NCLB.  We no longer teach our students we assess them.  We are not taking the time to hear them.  We need to talk about life and what interests them, how else are they going to respond to us?  studetns see us as talking heads that spew out facts and expect them to be thrown back at us.  The story of Renata a high school teacher was touching.  I could relate to how she felt.  Constantly telling her class “we need to know this” for the test is wrong in so many ways.  We want our students to love learning, but if we do not love teaching they will know, and it will affect them.
      I began by saying that my wife's schooling has effected her teaching.  I would have loved to be in her class.  She incorporates fun where ever possible, and when time allows.  She was sad telling me that the "time" for fun has been seriously decreased and she can see the strain on her second graders little faces.  She told me she is bringing ice pops tomorrow...she wants to have some fun!

“Pass the damn test”!

“One of the greatest mistakes is to judge a policy on its intentions rather than its results.”

-Milton Friedman

            “Yeah, but you still ain’t said why my progress wasn’t adequate”(Beers, pg 2).  The idea of neoliberalism does not allow for this student to be excited about his own progress because he did not “pass the damn test”(Beers, pg 3).  To the outside world, the idea of just hiring a company to come in and “fix” any and all education problems makes sense.   But to those of us on the front lines of education this is a ridiculous idea that cannot work.  And it has nothing to do with revising textbooks or providing new reading materials, its simply because students are children who need to be reached in more ways than one.  Big business does not get this, and in reality, they don’t want to.  If they “got” it, their materials would “fix” an issue and that would be the end of them. 

            Neoliberalism’s main agenda is to privatize the education sector.  This way for-profit companies can make lots of money while quietly wishing that students fail the next state test. Guess what happens then?  These for-profit companies will be called back in to reassess the “problems” and provide another expensive program that should help the students “pass the damn test”! 

             The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, also known as “NCLB” is a US federal law that was originally proposed by President George W. Bush in 2001.  The intent of NCLB is that all children will meet state academic achievement standards to reach their full potential through improved programs. In 2003, author Jack Huberman argued that the NCLB was specifically designed to make schools fail in order to clear the road for voucher and charter schools. Charter schools are neoliberalism’s logical conclusion for education, where schools would become for-profit institutions (Trammel 2005). During the Bush administration, government actively pushed for voucher programs and charter schools.             

            Wanna know what I think would help students “pass the damn test”?  Let the teachers teach the way they know how, allow the students to learn at their own pace, stop placing stress and time demands on a population that is already close to breaking.  And maybe, just maybe, ask the teachers and students what they think will help in the classroom, because Big Business really has no idea.

‘Full literacy’ - the disposition to engage appropriately with texts of different types in order to empower action, thinking, and feeling in the context of purposeful social activity (Wells, 1990)

     As teachers, it is important for us to understand what all of our students do with their literacy skills.  How do they process the information, communicate while working alone, and how do they work within a group.  Our children are growing up in a much different world then we did.  The need to communicate in a variety of different environments is increasing. They are growing up in “globalized, networked, culturally diverse world. Increasingly, we encounter knowledge in multiple forms - in print, in images, in video, in combinations of forms in digital contexts - and are asked to represent our knowledge in an equally complex manner (Kerr,  MLP).”  And then we add the burden of not understanding the language this is all being taught in.  Haneda helps us to understand why connecting the home, school and community is so important. 

            Haneda explains how several different ethnic groups incorporate literacy practices.  Latino families often engage in the kitchen, or living room with the whole family involved (pg. 338).   Chinese or Korean parents, expose their children to cultural enrichment classes so they do not lose their identity.  They often attend academic programs to help them succeed in school.  Often religious classes are included in their week.  In both of these cultures a substantial network of support is available to help the students outside of school.  Haneda believes this to be critical for the children to become literate.  She also talks about the idea of ‘boundary crossing’ and how it increases learning at school.  Boundary crossing is to “deliberately” blur or cross the home-school boundary. Teachers should understand their students’ lives outside of the classroom in order to help them fully express themselves in it.  We must also understand that the students’ interests and purposes need to become the central theme for the development of literacy curriculum.