Divorce?

A close friend of mine was writing a paper on the effects of divorce on children's learning ability. I thought this was interesting considering America has such a high divorce rate. Could this be a contributing reason for our failing education system? We all have friends or family going through a divorce; it happens all the time. Children are the ones that get thrown under the bus in divorce. Its very hard for children to cope with divorces. %50 of first marriages end in divorce (citation). That is such a sad statistic. Many times the stress of the parents getting remarried is what causes the difficulty, sometimes. This could be why children have hard time learning, they are so focused on what is going on at home and not what is going on at school. If we could change this problem this could help more children become more focused in school. We could invent programs to redeem lost marriages and prevent them from divorce in order to save kids from learning problems in school.

Survival of the Fittest...

Have you ever had a teacher that you knew could not handle the classroom? And the other students knew it and took advantage of it? Usually these teachers would threaten to give detentions but would never actually give any. Maybe they were too easy going because they wanted to be the easy fun teacher, not the difficult one. For whatever reason they were liked this, if you were a hard working student you especially share my problem. You felt like the other students were pulling you behind by picking on the teacher’s weaknesses. So you’d sit there and wonder if you would ever learn anything. This is a problem for the students who want to excel but are hindered by a teacher’s incompetence to handle a classroom. This is a problem in which one of my other friends brought up. I can’t help but agree that I have encountered this too throughout high school and middle school. This is a problem that should be addressed by other teachers, parents, and students. If you feel like your teacher is doing a good job say something. Why allow your education to be hindered if you could fix it. Survival of the best teacher wins!

Leaving early? Think again!

In college classrooms, you’d think that the efficiency of the teaching would solely rest upon the teacher. Wrong. It’s both the student and the teacher. A major distraction in a college classroom is students coming in late to a classroom or leaving early. This is both the student and teacher. They could take attendance at the end of class so students wouldn’t leave. Or lock the door for those coming in late. The only downside of the solutions is that taking attendance for the class would make attendance as requirement as a whole, which doesn’t give students the freedom to decide if they should come that day or not. All in all, this is a major distraction in college classrooms. Can you brainstorm other ideas that could help monitor this?

Go the Extra Mile

In the below post you can see an overly crowded classroom. In an elementary school classroom, we tend to see some classes like this. Sometimes when parents feel like their kids need to be more focused or they are not involved enough; they join the PTA or become a room-mom. Joining the PTA can be a great deal of work, but I feel as though it will bring you closer to what’s going on in the school. If you feel you should be very close, then become a room-mom. The definition of a room-mom is a parent (usually female) that works with the teacher in organizing small events that go on in the classroom. With you being in the classroom and have a closer relationship to the teacher, it allows you students to know that the parent really does know what is going on. Both these jobs can be a tough responsibility. You must have some free time to put into these duties. But this is just one more way to get more involved in the classroom.

Crowded Classroms--homeschooling?

Next couple of blog entries we will be looking at narrowing some problems down so that you can get a good look.
Today this one is crowded classrooms. This picture displays a typical crowded classroom. We should not have crowded classrooms. It’s inefficient. You could fight this by opting to homeschool your child. Many parents do this because they disagree with the way their kid is being taught. Another solution could be a charter school. This has more influence from the parents and teachers. It is still a public school. So consider these solutions for your problems with public schools.
** Ciation for photo

Texting; Such a crime?

A close friend of mine told me I should talk about texting in clas. All students know its wrong, but we do it anyways. So why should I teacher spend so much time caring if it isn't distracting others. I understand if the phone ringer volume is up and makes noise and what not. But if it is on silent, why should the teacher care? Many teachers in middle school, high school, and in college spend so much time being bothered by phones, and lose time from teaching and then they become distracted from telling the student to put their phone up. This is a huge problem in the American school system, as well as other countries as well. (MUST READ MORE!!!!!)

Are you aware of learning?

The other side you need to look at it, is at the student’s point-of-view. These days the main idea of how students learn is meta-cognition; the idea of being aware of how you learn. Many time in college, I, as a student, will acquire new information. I think about what kind of information I am working with and then decide how best I will learn it. That right there is metacognition. The sad thing is that some students don’t realize how they learn best. But teachers are usually the ones who can spot what a student is going to need to do in order to learn. Why waste our education system with making every student learn the same way. It wouldn’t be very helpful to those who learn in very different ways or those who don’t even know how they learn best. But the teacher would be too busy having a strict class and so many standards she has to teach that she doesn’t have time to help the student during or outside of the classroom. We need to include what kind of learners we have when we are thinking about what teaching philosophy or style we are going with.
**Citation:
"Cognition; New Cognition Findings from Technical University Published." LexisNexis. NewsRx, 11 Jan. 2008. Web. 24 Mar. 2010. . The main focus of this article about the new cognitive style. The new cognitive style is called cognitive style—it is the idea that we think about thinking. When we see new information and we must study it, we think about the best way we can study it so that we can learn and know it.