Blog F

I think that the SED and EDU classes that I took this semester were really great classes to take. I enjoyed attending both of these classes because they both pertained to my major and I have a very strong interest in everything that we learned about in terms of the special education information that I learned in the first half of the semester, in addition to the regular, general education information that I learned in this last half of the semester. These classes have both taught me many things, not only about those topics in general, but I also learned a lot about this university. I had always heard about how devoted this university is to providing an above-average education to its students and turning its students into devoted, well-educated teachers. The SED and EDU classes this semester were the first things that have proven and shown me that the university’s devotion that I have heard so much about is very true.

In the SED 125 class that I took for the first half of the semester, I learned a lot about different special education disabilities and special education students that I didn’t know before. I was very glad that the class focused on the different kinds of things we should expect if we have a special education student in one of our classes one day. I learned what I should do in certain situations and I learned some very specific dispositions that some children with certain disabilities may have. I found this to be very helpful and affective because if I had just learned about the disabilities and not about how to deal with the symptoms of them, I fell as though I wouldn’t have learned anything that could be useful to me in the future, but I did learn many things in that class that I feel will be very useful to me when I become a teacher someday.

In the EDU 125 class, we learned a lot about the history of education and the impact that certain events have had one the way that education is today. I found all of this information very interesting and I was glad to learn about the different ways that past events have shaped education over many years. Another topic that we learned about in EDU that I found to be very interesting was the different philosophies of education. I thought that learning about this was very useful because I was able to differentiate between the philosophies and decide which one I agreed with and which one I disagreed with. This helped me to start to think about how I will want to conduct class when I become a teacher and also how I will want to teach my students.

I believe that another very important part of both SED and EDU were the professors that taught the classes. Both of them have very good senses of humor which helps to create a very relaxed, informal atmosphere in the classroom. Both are very nice and all around great people and, in my opinion, they taught all of the material very well. Overall, being in both of these classes has been a wonderful experience for me in many ways and I have enjoyed it very much.

Diversity

When I first read the topic questions for this blog, I thought to myself, “Well, this is going to be hard, I haven’t dealt with very much diversity at all.” When I was thinking this, all I was thinking about in terms of diversity was the difference between races and color of people. A very large majority of the people that I went to school with, from elementary school until high school, were white. Finally, the more and more I thought about it, I realized that I have been surrounded by different kinds of diversity throughout my life that I never even realized. The first kind of diversity that I thought of was an obvious one – gender. I went to a regular public high school with just as many boys as there were girls; so needless to say, there was plenty of diversity in that aspect. Then I thought about it more in depth than I had before and thought about how other kinds of diversity have existed in my life before. For example, I have a friend from back home that is gay, which obviously has to do with sexual orientation. I never really thought of him as a form of diversity in my life because I was just so used to him being around and it seemed so normal for me to be around him that diversity was never in my mind. I never thought until now about how different sexual orientations and even different genders do make people so diverse and different from each other. Even things that sometimes are, or sometimes aren’t, important to certain people can be diversity, such as heritages or ancestors. One of my best friends is one quarter Japanese and to me, she is just the same as I am. She doesn’t look very Japanese so I don’t think of her as Japanese when I see her. Another large diversity that I never considered to be diversity is the socio-economic standings of different people and different families. People all around the world have a large array of incomes and come from a variety of different classes.

I think that teaching diversity as a subject in school is a very good idea. I believe that all children should learn very early in life that diversity does exist in our world, and not only that, but they also need to learn the different types of diversity and what each kind of diversity means or represents.

I believe that teaching diverse students in the same classroom is very effective to help all of the children learn first hand about diversity and about the different kinds of people that live in this world. I believe that as a whole, diversity is different people that come from all walks of life and have different background and different moral beliefs. If diverse children are all taught in the same classroom, it will give all the children the chance to interact with different children that all have different stories to tell and maybe different traditions to share. I think that diversity should be a very important subject in education today.

Dewey and DuBois

John Dewey

John Dewey was born on October 20, 1859 in Burlington, Vermont. His oldest brother died when he was just a child, but Dewey attended public schools with his three other brothers. Dewey graduated from the University of Vermont in 1879. Dewey’s three other brothers attended the University of Vermont as well (I.E.P., 2007, para. 2).

After he graduated from college, Dewey became a high school teacher for two years. Eventually, Dewey turned his interests to philosophy and stopped teaching. He borrowed two thousand dollars from his aunt and enrolled himself in graduate school. Dewey received his Ph.D. from the School of Arts & Sciences at Johns Hopkins University in 1884. He became part of the University of Michigan faculty after he received his Ph.D. In 1894, Dewey joined the faculty at the University of Chicago. This is where Dewey first started to form his belief in pragmatism. People who believe in pragmatism are people that “consider practical consequences or real effects to be vital components of both meaning and truth” (Wikipedia, 2007, para. 1).

Dewey had the belief that learning should be something that is active. He believed that school was unnecessary for children, too long and restrictive. He thought that children should be involved in real-life experiences and challenges. He had the idea that children could learn math, for example, in everyday tasks, such as cooking. Or, children could learn history by understanding how people lived during a certain period of time (Wilderdom, 2005, para. 1).

Dewey was an incredibly influential philosopher and educational reformer, not only for his time period, but also for many time periods after his, all the way up to the present day. Dewey was a professor of philosophy at both Columbia University and Teachers College, Columbia University, until his death on June 1st, 1952 (Wikipedia, 2007, para. 2).




W.E.B. DuBois

W.E.B. DuBois (William Edward Burghardt Du Bois) was a very prominent African American civil rights activist. DuBois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts on February 23, 1868. DuBois did not have contact with his biological father, and he blamed his maternal grandparents for his father leaving, because they did not like his father. DuBois did not feel different from the rest of his classmates while he was in school because he was black. After he graduated, DuBois was enrolled in Fisk University in 1888. By 1890, DuBois received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College. After, he became a student at the University of Berlin, and traveled all over Europe (Wikipedia, 2007, Childhood para.).

In 1895, DuBois was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. at Harvard University. DuBois established the department of sociology at Atlanta University, which is now called Clark Atlanta University (Wikipedia, 2007, University Education para.)

DuBois was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (America’s Library, para. 1) DuBois believed that African Americans should not fight for political power, civil rights, and higher education. He believed that African Americans should focus on “industrial education” (Hynes, Easing on Down the Road). DuBois had the idea of the “Talented Truth,” who, according to DuBois, could use their knowledge to lead the rest of the African Americans into a higher civilization (Hynes, Easing on Down the Road).

DuBois moved to Ghana in 1961, and became a citizen of the country in 1963. After his health declined in 1962, DuBois died on August 27, 1963, one day before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech (Wikipedia, 2007, Later Life para.)



Sources:


John Dewey

Fishman, Stephen M., and Lucille McCarthy. John Dewey and the Challenge of Classroom Practice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 1998.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/d/dewey.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dewey

http://wilderdom.com/experiential/JohnDeweyPhilosophyEducation.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatism



W.E.B. DuBois

Provenzo Jr., Eugene F. Dubois on Education. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMire Press, 2002.

http://www.duboislc.org/html/DuBoisBio.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois

http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/aa/dubois

Teach for America

Teach for America is a non-profit organization, created in 1990, that involves college graduates and professionals teaching in low-income communities for two years. Teach for America relies on their “corps members” that it recruits to carry out its mission to shut the gap of academic accomplishments between children with different socio-economic backgrounds. Corps members do not have to be a certified teacher, however, certified teachers can still apply. Corps members attend a five-week summer session that helps them to prepare for their commitment to the organization. Teach for America provides these teachers to the highest-need schools in hopes to considerably impact the students’ academic accomplishments. More than 17,000 people have joined Teach for America in the past 17 years. More than 5,000 corps members teach in over 1,000 schools in 26 different urban and rural regions, reaching approximately 440,000 students in the United States today. There have been more than three million students impacted by the organization since it started.

Teach for America was founded by Wendy Kopp in 1990. She had the idea to “eliminate educational inequity to the United States,” which was her senior thesis at Princeton University in 1989. At age 21, she raised $2.5 million for beginning funds, hired a “skeleton staff,” and started to build what has now become one of the largest providers of teachers for schools in low-income communities.

The effects of this organization are seen in education today in a big way. This organization has made a huge impact on the lives of children all over the country. By these recent college graduates giving their time, children have considerably improved their academic accomplishments. This organization has provided these children with the education that they deserve. The corps members make a short-term impact by teaching in these schools day to day, and a long-term impact by having made such a difference in the past 17 years that the organization has been running. Teach for America has most certainly been a very positive thing from all aspects since it was created.

Hyperlinks:

http://www.teachforamerica.org/index.htm

http://www.changingthepresent.org/nonprofits/show/99

http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/Press%20Releases/Past%20Releases/teach4amerrel.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_for_america

Blog 1

My informal education curriculum has been ongoing since I was at a very young age. I consider all of the things that my parents taught me even before I was enrolled in the school system to be part of my informal education. Even before I was in school, my parents taught me how to talk, walk, and I was even toilet trained. I consider this educational because it is something that is learned. If I hadn’t been taught and shown how to do all of these things, there’s a pretty good chance, I wouldn’t be able to figure them out on my own. Another thing that I would consider to be part of my informal education would be when I volunteered last year at Jordan Acres Elementary School in a kindergarten class. This was not really formal education but I did learn a lot from this experience. Being around all of the children helped me to learn more about how children think, learn, and act in certain situations in the classroom. I think that I have had many different types of informal learning throughout my life. I would consider formal education to be the type of education that takes place in a classroom, like all throughout elementary school, middle school, and high school, and even in college. My friends and family have helped to contribute to my informal education. They have changed my life and showed me many things throughout the years.I would consider informal education to be anything that would be learned outside of the classroom, such as life lessons. I think that in a way, informal education could be more important and effective than some parts of formal thought.

First day

Hello, I'm trying a blog for the first time!