This is the End

I have come to the conclusion that it is now time to lay this blog to rest. I have not run out of potential topics, nor out of passion for the subject, but I think it is already time to move on. I spend my time on this blog reading articles and posting personal opinions and I feel it is time to do more. Instead of posting my opinions I will now dedicate my time to doing actual research into these problems and thinking of a way to fix them.
At the end of my previous blog I hit a brick wall. As I looked above my last sentence to my comment about everyone blaming someone else, I realized I was doing the same thing. I will be a teacher soon. I will be influencing our future through the young and moldable minds of our high school students and my time could definitely be spent in a more productive manner. As a teacher it is most certainly my responsibility to address these issues, and I feel like now is the time to start. I feel that this blog has accomplished what I set out for it to accomplish, but it is time o move on.
So I leave you now, with a question and a quote.
I began this blog, not to educate you about these issues, I am not expert, but to share my passion for the resolution of these issues with you. I do not expect you to go out and solve these problems on your own, I don't even expect to do that myself. But I encourage you, as well as myself, to not abandon these problems as someone else's shortcoming or mistakes but as a national problem that effects everyone. And I ask you to continue your search for a solution, in any way you can. Be it through your local school, your voting rights, your voice or your children. If we all stop waiting for someone else to solve the problem then maybe we can make a difference.

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

William Butler Yeats

Cynical Schooling

I have been doing a lot of research on the difference between European schools and American schools, as well as Charter schools, Public schools and Private schools. Through this research I have come to a very obvious conclusion. The performance of each student and each school is directly related to both how the students and public view education and how difficult the school is to get in to.
Take higher education for example. You really don't see a lot of failure coming out of Harvard. Sure they may be the wealthy kids or the kids with the most advantages, but they have also had to work like mad to get into that school. They are more likely to outperform students attending community colleges because they worked harder to get there and know what is at stake. The same applies for their teachers. They have to be the authority on their subject to earn a spot teaching at an IVY league school. They aren't likely to go easy on their students because they know how hard their students have had to work to get where they are. I think the same applies to secondary schools. Education is compulsory, which means whether you want to go to school or not, you have to, and there are a lot of students in the public education system that do not want to go. When they do show up to school they often put in little effort and are not motivated. Teachers and school administrators have even resorted to bribing their students to come to school. These students don't see school as a privilege, as do some of our foreign counterparts. They see it as a chore to be suffered and escaped from as soon as possible. This is not a healthy view of education for anyone involved. If students don't appreciate their education than they are likely to get out of it exactly what they put in to it, which isn't much. The public's view of education is no better. In the news lately all you see about public school is how the system is failing our students. There isn't enough funding, the teachers are incompetent... it is always someone else's fault. You don't often see a flock of parents showing up to a failing school to help tutor failing students because they don't view it as their problem. It is their problem when the schools are not up to par, but it is not their problem to do something about it.
So I propose a change. A change in the way the public views education and the way students feel about school. I think maybe we should give up on compulsory education. If a student wants to drop out after the 8th grade, let them. Let them go out into the real world with no high school diploma and little in the way of life skills and have them fend for themselves. I am willing to bet that our test score will improve! Maybe we don't need to make it that extreme, maybe we just need to wake them up by creating a more competitive environment, again much the same as our foreign counterparts. Instead of funneling students into the same schools whether they want to be there or not, open vocational schools for students who simply wish to learn a trade, allow them to learn what they want and get out. So what if they lack experience all humanities and can't think critically and independently, at least our test scores will go up! And who cares if our democratic society is driven into the ground by an elitist model of education that only promotes free and independent thinking in the well educated of our society? It doesn't matter if students drop out because we will just be able to tell them how to think when election time rolls around, theres no need for them to develop their own opinions. Who needs equality in education when its only bringing us down? Right?

I thought so.

Publicly Private

In the news lately, one of the hottest education related topics has been the School Voucher program. This program gives students in Florida who are attending failing public schools the ability and monetary support needed to transfer schools. The schools that they are transferring into are not only other public schools, as you may expect, but to private and charter schools that are unregulated and unsupported by our public school education budget. This budget is explicitly outlined in our state constitution and it specifically states that these tax dollars are required to go to public school education, not private schools. Private schools are unregulated by anyone but those people in charge of them, which has created some unique problems in the education system. One of these problems is a school known as InterAmerican Christian Academy. This academy hands out diplomas after just 8 days of enrollment, for only $399. The transcripts from these easy-to-come-by diplomas are actually legitimate and are earning some students admittance into local colleges. While $399 may seem like a steal compared to the average $7,000 per pupil expense of public school, we have no way of monitoring what, if anything, the students receiving these bogus degrees are learning. As a private school, it is free from government control, but is it still free from government funding?

That is where the problem arises. Even if private schools are better in the long run for our students, can we really ignore our constitution and allow students to transfer to a non-regulated private school at the expense of our tax payers? Even if that expense is roughly half what it costs to educate them through our public schools? I am on the fence, as I suspect most people are. If it is what is best for my child I am likely going to be in support of this idea, regardless of the constitution. It is, however, a valid argument to say that it is not our responsibility, as tax payers, to support the education of students who do not wish to attend public schools. The problem with this argument and with our constitution is that this creates a loose monopoly on education. Not in the sense that there are no other options, because there clearly are, but because as a tax payer you are forced to pay property taxes that support local government funded public schools, regardless of your child’s attendance. This is how our public education system gets funded, if not for these property taxes, we would not have the ability to fund these public schools.

So the question remains, can we, the state of Florida, afford to support those students who do not wish to attend our public schools at the expense of those public schools? I think the answer is no. I am in full support of private schools, and have often considered the idea that maybe all schools should be privatized, but this voucher program is hurting more than it is helping. It strips funding from our already struggling public schools and hands that money to private schools that may or may not be for profit. As I stated above, I am open to the idea of privatizing education (which I will explain in a later post), but at the expense of the tax payers, it just can’t happen.

Apples Aren't Everything

Teacher. This word gets thrown around a lot, especially when it comes to the government budget. Students, parents, fellow employees, everyone has an idea about what it means to be a teacher, what they should teach and how they should act, but what about teachers? Where do they feel that they fit in the grand scheme of life? The answer varies. There is no one correct answer to these questions because they are first and foremost, imperfect, diverse, opinionated humans. 

In the news lately teachers have been a hot topic. Their budget, their skill, their responsibilities, their behavior, everything about them is up for discussion, but those who matter most are not invited to speak. No one asks the teachers how they think we could improve the school system. They ask politicians, the public and 'professionals'. But who could possibly understand school better than those who teach it? 

A recent article from TBO shows just how these teachers feel about the changes being made to their career. They are angry, depressed and lost. Some teachers are being forced into retirement while others are being forced to switch schools, grade levels and even careers due to layoffs and district shuffling. These teachers are fighting these changes because they have grown attached to their schools and to their students. For a teacher, being moved to a new school is like being moved to a new family. Its as if they are a foster child being shipped to another foster parent because there just wasn't room for them at home. And the students don't like it any more than the teachers do. They too grow attached and long for that connection to remain the same. For instance, when I was in kindergarten my teacher got pregnant and had to go on maternity leave half way through the school year. We had another teacher, just as qualified and just as nice, come into our classroom as soon as she was gone, but the students, including myself, were never comfortable with the change. I cried and moped and my friends talked throughout the new lessons and learning took a back seat to discussions of our former teacher. We missed her and there was no replacing her. This same thing happens to students every year when teachers get shuffled from school to school. It may be difficult to understand from the perspective of a parent or governor, but a teacher remaining where they are comfortable really makes a difference in the classroom. They work more with other teachers in the school, which has been shown to aid in student learning, they are more social, which makes them more likable to the students, and they are happier. All of these things come in to play during the school year and when teachers are constantly being uprooted due to budget issues, everyone suffers. 

Teacher is not an easy word to define, because teachers are humans. They have emotions and opinions whether that is convenient or not. They like being rooted in their preferred school and having at least some job security. They may not all deserve it, they aren't perfect, but I think teacher preferences should be taken into account when it comes to transfers. I may not be an expert but having spent time on both sides of the desk, I can safely say that this really matters and will make a difference in the classroom and in education. 

Pointing to the Problem

This blog originally started as a place to address problems in the school system in Florida, but this particular post is going to be much more broad in it's scope. I read an article this week about public school education in America, and it wasn't a glowing review. It ripped everything from the funding to the teachers, unions were targeted and so were government policies. Everything was fair game. But there was nothing fair about the way it pointed fingers. In my personal opinion, the problem with our education system is that no one knows what the problem is! Everyone has their opinion and everyone loves to conduct research but what  purpose does it really serve? With all of the 'too much funding/lack of funding' arguments and nail biting decisions about how many teachers we need, no one really looks at what is wrong. We look at Europe and see that we are falling behind but everyone is so busy accusing others of failing that the problem never gets solved. 

There are so many weak links in this chain. Teachers, for example, aren't as highly trained as they could be, likely do to low standards and high college tuition costs. Students are also not spending as much time studying as they could, again due to low standards, mediocre teachers, lack of school choice and a host of other problems. The government monopoly on schools is also a problem. They control what and how our students learn, but who is to say that they are the experts? Most of the people making decisions have never taught a day in their lives and likely attended private school, which is not government run. Parents also present a problem. They don't spend time teaching their children morals, which then need to be covered in schools, which they complain about and blame the teachers for their children's shortcomings. If a student rips off his shirt in class and dances around I would be more likely to blame his parents than his teacher. Parents also have no choice as to which public school their child attends, which circles back to the monopoly issue.

My point is, there is no one solution to our problem. There is a series of issues that are keeping everyone tied up in a vicious cycle of failure and finger pointing. I am not saying that I have all the answers, but I would very much appreciate it if everyone would just take a look at what they could do better, rather than what someone else is not doing for them.qwerki-tm.blogspot.com

Juicing the Turnips

It has been a hot topic in my household as of late, with both my fiancee and I becoming teachers in just one short year, we've been paying close attention to the educational budget cuts going on in the state. I've been hearing about it from all sorts of different media, the television, news papers and even the radio, and as bad as they make it seem, I still wasn't prepared for the numbers crunch when I checked out the facts for myself. 

One of Rick Scott's campaign strategies, like most politicians, was to express the desire to protect education while still managing to cut the state wide spending budget. In this respect I say that as our governor, he has failed miserably. His plans for cutting back our budget fall largely on those employees and our students.

One of his recent propositions, another of his campaign strategies, was to reduce property taxes. This reduction in property taxes will equate to approximately $44.72 per average homeowner according to an article by Dara Kam in the Palm Beach Post. This sounds like a decent plan, a small help but  help nonetheless to those paying taxes on their homes, but consider where this cut will come from when the new school year begins. This $44.72 per household cut will be made up by cutting $2,335 per year from the average teacher's salary. A beginning teacher makes roughly $40,000 a year as it is.

But the fun doesn't stop there. 

Another solution, applicable to county employees and school district personnel as well as teachers, would be for them to start contributing to their retirement. This would be another 5% pay cut in teacher salary each year, bringing it down a whopping 10%.

Also take into consideration that our teachers, our school systems, are ranked 7th in the nation, an A-, on the 2008 Quality Counts report from EdWeek Magazine. This same report, from 2008, also gave us an F on our school spending. Teachers are doing their jobs, they just aren't being recognized for it.

This is a bleak outlook from where I stand as a future teacher. Most teachers have not received a pay raise in over 3 years and they have been stripped of their tenure, which was the only job security they had; their pay is now going to be based on how well their students perform, though as you read in my previous blog there seems to be no funding for that endeavor, and now they must take a 10% pay cut to support a homeowners tax cut, which will be of largest benefit to the wealthy. 

Desperation is eking into our school system. In some counties schools are pooling their resources to support ESE students, which also means they are pooling their ESE students which works against inclusion. For most schools it is now cheaper to pay the fine for being over the class size limit than to try to fit inside it's strict boundaries, not for lack of trying, but for lack of funding. THey have discussed cutting arts and sports from schools as well to make up the deficit, which would further promote the dropout rate in my opinion because we already know that compulsory education isn't all that popular with struggling students, so taking away their one enjoyment from school would only seal the deal. 

There are a multitude of other places that the government could be cutting from, their spending for one, is ludicrous. We've all seen what they eat for lunch on our tax dollars. Prisons will soon be receiving more funding than our school system, which gives you an idea as to where they think we're headed. 

As I said in my very first post, I am not a politician, nor do I pretend to be an expert in this area, but as a future teacher and a future parent, I think I would choose the future of our children and the support of our teachers over cheesecake and inmates.

Apology Dejected

I've spent a few days mulling over my previous post about how and why I decided to become a teacher and I am becoming more and more convinced that I have made a horrible mistake. So I would like to apologize in advance to my children and my future husband. From before the beginning of my first year of teaching they will become my unwilling guinea pigs and my moving assistants. They will be roped into moving desks and decorating classrooms, sharing their mother with hundreds of other children and spending an absurd amount of time with me during the summer. They will also likely spend those summers assisting me in the development of my tests and their weeknights grading papers. They will have to quickly come to terms with my habit of using classroom management strategies to handle family arguments, which may or may not lead to me developing a bathroom pass system to hunt down the member responsible for leaving the toilet seat up. 

gonzalolira.blogspot.com

And it will be a stressful time in our family when FCAT rolls around and my children have to go shopping for wigs with me, as I will likely have pulled out all of my hair. I haven't even graduated or thought of children yet and I already feel the need to begin sending apologies to my un-conceived fetuses. I am sure I will drag home germs and stories of awful children whose parents were less than invested and take out my frustrations on my children by trying to make them everything my students are not. I will need to apologize for seeking reports of their behavior from my teacher friends and motoring their grades like they're valuable stocks. I'll be able to stalk them in the hallway and practice my lesson plans on them at home. We can play all of my clever jeopardy test reviews at home during family game night, to make sure they're in proper working order and eat lunch together in the cafeteria. My husband can practice Shakespeare with me while the children do their homework and help me develop discussion questions during Monday Night Football. There are so many possibilities and opportunities for family/career crossover! So maybe they won't always fully appreciate tripping over term papers stacked by the door or my constant correction of their grammar, but I think I've really got something. I thought this was a horrible mistake but on second thought, I think I've stumbled on the perfect career for a family woman, even if its not so perfect for the woman's family.

No Topic Left Behind

The topic of todays blog will center around the not so recently passed No Child Left Behind Act. This topic may not be recent but it definitely remains in the forefront of struggling teachers' minds. This was intended to hold every school in the nation accountable for their actions through standardized testing and tight control on federal funding for any school that fails to meet the Adequate Yearly Progress. This is handled through a series of steps taken if a school does not meet the AYP multiple years in a row. These steps range from a bad label and free tutoring to the elimination of a school that consistently falls short. In theory this idea is great because No Child is Left Behind, but is it really effective? I'm not sure it is, but I think it has potential.

Most of you have heard the term 'teaching to the test' and in Florida especially this has been highly controversial. Teachers are spending so much time making sure that their students can pass these standardized tests that they don't have time to teach anything else. Students don't have time to learn anything else either because they are forced into remedial classes that are supposed to help them, but don't encourage them to want to learn. I was never placed in these classes because I test well and found these tests remarkably simple, but others that I went to school with and even some of my friends' children are completely discouraged by these classes and these tests. 

These tests label students and force them into classes that stigmatize them and take away their electives making school a chore and and an uninviting place to be. Just today I was talking to a woman who's son has chronic stomach pains, not because of anything physically wrong with him, but because he is so physically stressed about attending school. He is going into high school this year and can barely read, his teachers have mentioned tutoring and private schools, learning disabilities and a mess of other excuses for his not passing these tests, but he is entering high school. One of his teachers came to her outside of school to explain to her that the other teachers think that he will be made fun of if he is held back and will be more discouraged, but will likely not succeed in High School, her solution was to send him to private school, which his mother can't afford. 

I am still on the fence with this issue because I think it sounds promising, but if teachers constantly push failing students through the system to avoid having to spend time working with them, then Every Child will be Left Behind. 

Where am I and how did I get here???

After reviewing my previous blog submissions it has come to my attention that I haven't delved into the why as much as I should have. I haven't explained to my loyal readers, all one of you out there, how I got into this career path. This is an excellent inspiration for my next post but it is not an easy topic to adress because frankly, I have no idea.

I remember being a young wide eyed student absorbing every word my teachers said to me. I loved to read and I really loved to learn. I was one of those kids that begged my mom to take me school supply shopping in July, 'just in case they ran out of Crayolas and I got stuck with RoseArt because Lisa Frank-ly they just don't color the same.'

I also remember those awkward middle years where school was the only place I fit in and I was more likely to cry about earning a B than about losing a boy. Even high school was great for me, I was a band geek. head band geek to be precise, class president, I had a good GPA, it was awesome. And then it all rolled to an end. After my last day of high school, after I had been accepted into my choice school and everything looked brilliant, I asked myself, "What the hell am I gonna do now?" School was all I ever really loved to do. Sure I had considered becoming a marine biologist or a pediatrician but what I really wanted to do was to just stay in school. So I ditched my choice school and landed in a podunk Community College with a schedule that lacked direction.

As I sloughed through the miles upon miles of options for electives I noticed that there were a lot of classes studying Education, so I took one. Then I took two more. Then I found myself with an AA and all the pre-reqs for a Bachelors Degree in Secondary Education. Now I could have reconsidered this train of thought when I began at my University but I had developed a passion for the other side of the desk. As for my blog post, why deviate now? I know what I'm passionate about and I don't really have many other interests so I'll just stick with the familiar.

"All Stick and No Carrot"

The title of this blog comes from a current teacher at Hialeah High School, Jennifer Smith, in an interview with the Miami Herald. The interview was about the recently passed bill in Florida that will revolutionize the way our teachers are paid, at least thats what they say its going to do; but to Jennifer and many others, such as myself, it looks more like an "all stick and no carrot" incentive designed to make teachers easier to fire. 

This incentive was not thought up by our dear Governor but it was put in place by him. This bill was signed in March of 2011, much to the dismay of many Floridian educators. These educators feel like this bill strips them of their protection from arbitrary decisions made by higher-ups that can cost them their jobs. After all half of the 'merit' in this merit pay system will be judged by the principal of the school who is not even required to supply a reason for dismissal. The other half of the potential dismissal relies on the dreaded FCAT and the new end of the year tests that will cover all curriculums, which by the way have yet to be funded for development. Core classes are no longer the only teachers on the chopping block, those who teach music and other electives will now be evaluated based on their students' progress which will be measured over three years by, you guessed it, standardized tests. 

Now this all sounds like a decent enough plan. Teachers will be held accountable, students will be encouraged to learn more because teachers will depend on them for their paychecks, and bad teachers will be so easy to fire that the principal won't even have to fill out paperwork! So where does the 'all stick and no carrot' come into light? That would be the PAY part of the merit pay bill. Those individuals in charge of this new bill have spent so much time thinking about how they are going to weed out the bad teachers by rewarding the good that they forgot to allocate some funding for this fun new idea. This bill will take effect in July of 2014. It will strip teachers of their tenure, possibly lower their starting salary, put pressure on them to teach to the test, pit them against one another for the top spot and discourage many possible teachers in the state from becoming teachers in the first place. That is a lot of stick. The carrot comes in when their students show improvement over the course of three years. If the improvement is adequate and their principals say that they have done a nice job than they get a nice little raise. They also supposedly get a pay increase if they have higher degrees, but only if they are in their curriculum area. This carrot however is nowhere to be found. The funding isn't there for this program and it doesn't appear to be popping out of thin air between now and 2014 either. 

A study done by the University of Florida showed that this idea has merit because if you give the top teachers a bonus when they do a splendid job, they tend to try harder to succeed. David Figlio, the researcher said that "We demonstrate that students learn more when teachers are given financial incentives to do a better job." To this I say fantastic, brilliant and congratulations on having some common sense. Of course people will try harder to succeed when they are given 'financial incentives' to do so. The fundamental problem I see in this statement is the whole concept of 'financial incentives.' For one there are no finances to support this venture. Teachers will most likely face a gross amount of layoffs and a pay decrease as it is, though our state is already at the bottom of the teacher pay totem pole, which doesn't bode well for teacher bonuses. And for two, this sounds more to me like financial threats than financial incentives. There is much more bad coming from this bill than good and I think it will honestly injure the educational process. While I do believe that there are some teachers that need to find a new profession, I do not believe that basing their pay on an objective assessment and a standardized test is the way to go. As Jennifer Smith said, this looks like a lot of stick and no carrot.

Images courtesy of: fruitgum.wordpress.com, quinnthebrain.blogspot.com and newmexicodietitian.wordpress.com

A little correction and investigation...

As I was continuing my research in this area I came upon a startling bit of TRUTH that I missed in my last post. I was incorrect in stating that the class size amendment was loosened by voters last November. It fell just short of the 60% it needed to pass, so take that how you will, the amendment stands as it was passed and I need to improve my research skills.

I also looked into a few reviews of some studies done on the class size amendment and its effects on our schools and those in Tennessee. Most of the preliminary results show that there wasn't a big difference unless the teachers knew that they were being studied. Big surprise right? A human performing better when they know they are under scrutiny... It also appeared to work better on a smaller scale (in Tennessee) than on a state wide scale (Florida). This may be attributed to overall better funding or to a lack of enthusiasm in Florida as it was more of a pain than a fun experiment.

If there was one thing I learned from my statistics professor, aside from how NOT to teach (or do my hair), it was that correlation does not imply causation. Meaning that just because the schools that participated in the class size reduction in Tennessee saw improved results, does not mean that it was caused by the class size reduction. It also means that even though Florida didn't show much improvement there still may be hope for the class size amendment. I can't say for sure whether I believe that smaller class sizes are beneficial to our students or not, but I still maintain that Florida could clean up the process.

A Numbers Game in School, Who'd Have Thought?

I don't like politics, when asked what my political stance is, I simply fill in 'apathetic.' I do realize that this probably makes me a bad American but honestly, who can follow along with them? So I understand that there is a need for a lot of background information before I begin ranting but first consider: As I begin my blog on Florida's Educational system I would like you to think about being a teacher or any school personnel really or even a child in a public school and how these changes might affect you. 

I began my research today on educational reforms in Florida, only going back about six months and was un-pleasantly surprised to find a hurricane brewing off the coast of my future career; and just like with a hurricane there seems to be a chance to wash away some of the grime that has been building up but there also stands the huge potential for widespread damage. This hurricane however, has been a long time coming, so I decided to widen my search and came up with a topic that has been brewing for almost a decade. 

The Idea:

The controversial shake-up topic of today's blog, which has been floating around our great peninsula waiting to pounce, began all the way back in 2002 by voters in Florida but has only recently been fully implemented in our school systems: the dreaded class size amendment aka amendment 8. This amendment, like many others, is wordy and confusing, but the bottom line is you can only have a limited number of students in a core education class at one time. The cap is 18 for preK-3, 22 for 4-8 and 25 for 9-12. 
                                                The idea behind this cap was that students would receive more individual attention from their teachers because there would be less students in each classroom. Theoretically this was great because these students would be able to get the help they need but financially, this is the iceberg to our proverbial Titanic of a budget that we had at the beginning of this venture. This has sunk the ship of educational budget and now we're all floundering in the water trying to get back on course. 

The Problem:

Schools all over the state struggled to fit into this strict restriction which has been steadily tightening around the necks of every school since 2002. This tightening began as a district-wide average cap for the core classes (English, math, science and social-studies) which allowed for a lot of wiggle room. So long as there were enough teachers in the district to bring the core class student:teacher ratio down to the required cap everything would be great and no one would get fined. (The state had money to funnel into this system as well, which by the way has thus far cost us a whopping $18 BILLION dollars.) 
                                   
                           The noose began tightening in 2006 when the average was was to be calculated by school instead of by district and our budget started to look less like the Titanic and more like a nice yacht. Student were shuffled from class to class to fit into this puzzle but most schools managed and survived the fines if they didn't. Last year however, in the 2010-11 school year, schools really began to feel the scratch of the rope and our budget had shrunk to a rowboat. The averages are now calculated by individual classes, and while the standards have loosened somewhat to 21 in K-3, 27 in 4-8, and 30 in high school, there is still a huge problem fitting a school full of students into a restricted set of teachers.

These teachers are facing pay cuts of their own (which is a lengthy subject for a future blog…) and above them each district is cutting back as well. So the idea of fining schools who can't afford to meet the class size amendment because they can't hire new teachers, because they can't pay the teachers because the state can't fund the new teachers even at a reduced salary based on merit without tenure… seems preposterous to me. For some counties it is cheaper to ignore the amendment and pay the fine than to hire the required teachers because the money to expand the staff is simply not there. If they are so much as one student over the cap they are expected to hire a teacher and spread out the students to fill the classes. This is a logistical nightmare. Reshuffling an entire school to fit in one more student doesn't really seem like a good idea to me. When you think about how many classrooms, teachers, lunch breaks, students, desks, fire codes, textbooks, electives, projectors, pencils, principles, custodians, chairs, lights and class scheduling personnel are required to run a school, reshuffling the whole system is ludicrous for one student that could transfer in late when you have each class tightly fitted beneath the required cap! Ludicrous! (not the rapper…)

My somewhat-simple Solution:

The idea of cutting down the class size was great. Students need teachers who can take the time to help them, the execution however, was much more expensive than we could hope to afford. The expense however is not the only problem because five horrible teachers are not going to feel better than three good ones, no matter how many students are in their classes.
 Let me give you a pop-culture reference as a prime example. You've probably seen the previews for the new movie Bad Teacher, think about putting someone like that in front of 30 9th graders, now think of the teacher from Freedom Writers in front of 40 9th graders… 

                      

Do you see what I mean? I think the focus needs to change from a numbers game to a quality requirement. I'm not saying that I am jumping on the merit pay band wagon but maybe focusing on teaching teachers how to teach rather than kicking 3 students out of their class would be a more influential adventure. For those of you who really love this amendment take heart in that I still believe it has potential, just at the school wide average level, I just don't think there is room for it in the classroom.

Something to think about for my next blogging adventure..

Sources for further information on this subject:

http://www.fldoe.org/classsize/

http://www.ocala.com/article/20100523/articles/5231014?p=5&tc=pg&tc=ar

Images in order:

onlinemovieshut.com

filmcritic.com

http://www.floridatoday.com/content/blogs/jparker/uploaded_images/100205-770809.jpg

diogenesii.wordpress.com

About Me.. well, about my blog

Beginning this blog is like starting college all over again. I feel exactly like a freshman walking into chaos but instead of searching for the perfect major, classes and textbooks I find myself searching for my own personal interests. You would think that being 20 years old, engaged and about to graduate college I would have a good handle on where to locate these interests but I have done more flip-flopping on the topic of this blog than a Floridian in the summer. 

It began as a cooking blog, which given my history in that area would have been a complete disaster. To give you a taste of my cooking expertise I once subconsciously decided that water was not a key ingredient to the ramen noodle-making process. The smell was epic and the bowl was destroyed, I am mostly just thankful that my dad was nearby to catch my mistake before it turned into a blazing failure. 

I then had the remarkably daft idea to blog about knitting. Knitting. If you've ever tried knitting then you understand my apprehension, if you haven't, you don't want to. I feel like I would be more successful tying the yarn in knots with my toes, blindfolded, upside down and unconscious, and yes, the redundancy is intentional. 

So I  reconsidered my blogging strategy, trading temporary hobbies for more long time interests and so I decided to blog on my chosen career: education. I live in Florida and I want to be a public high school teacher. I am probably sentencing myself to a life of mayhem at the hands of - confused - politicians. I say this politely because while this blog is understandably anonymous, I know that once something goes out into the internet you can never really take it back. It is this feeling of frustration that will drive my blog. 

This will be a learning experience for me in a lot of ways, the first being blogging. I have kept a journal about thirty times in my life and none of them have lasted more than two weeks and honestly most of that was… we'll call it creative musing. Writing about something I am passionate about consistently and in complete sentences will be challenging, as will be holding my tongue when faced with someone who is of the opinion that teachers really don't deserve to get paid year-round. I also hope to broaden my horizons in this area of exploration, there are a lot of issues bouncing around the house in Florida when it comes to education and I hope that by the time I graduate I will at the very least understand them.