Sparked interest

The thing I learned from all of this is the earlier the better.  No matter if it is when they are born or in high school.  We need as a society to get people on board with helping their children. I’m not sure what the best method is, Should we teach parenting in high school, so everybody gets training or should we tie training to services received such has WIC , food stamps, free/reduced lunches etc.. The problem with all of it is we won’t see big change for decades to come.  Sure we can make a difference with students we have now, but that’s a slow process as well.

I do also believe that our IQs are not fixed as well. They change as our environments changes.

Chapter 4 Reflection

In chapter 4 the SHARE model was discussed.  The book says that this is the thing to follow to be successful. The acronym SHARE stands for Support of the whole child, Hard data, Accountability, Relationship building, Enrichment mind set.

We are trying to support the students. We have 504 and IEPs and tutoring.  We have Hard data, we just have to learn how to use it and disseminate it to all.  Accountability is a tough one. We as a District or state cant blame. We just have to find ways to help and I think that’s what we are doing now. We did and activity in our district that shows us something about our relationships between staff and students. The biggest problem is defining relationship.  I think the mentoring gourps help us do all of the things we want to do with this. It will enrich us and our students.

Chapter 3 reflection

Chapter 3 reflection

I like the idea of the action steps. It gives a somewhat of a plane that we can all understand.

Change staff members’ mind-sets.

I think that what we are doing as a district reading the book Mindset

Invest in staff.

We feel good about ourselves before we can really help others.

Support ongoing collaboration.

It’s important that we all get along.

Encourage staff dialogue.

I think this is what we do in our PLCs.

Gather quality data.

I think we get good data but how to use it is the question.

poverty refledtion 1,2

My reflection on the first two chapters on of this book follows.

                I would consider myself one of those students. I struggled in school because of it. I find myself comparing myself to the students in the book. The book reminded me where I came from and the advantage I have dealing with those students that have had some of the same problems that I had growing up.  I have been in teachers meeting and thinking to myself these people (the teachers) don’t have a clue about what’s going on. They could not comprehend due to no fault of their own. They had just not experienced those things in their life.

                I know I’m supposed to read this to make myself a better educator, but I’m mostly excited to read this book to help me understand my own problems in school when I was younger. That might make me a better teacher at best a more understanding teacher.

formative assemesment narrative

I had students take a practice Standardized test. We have been working on test taking strategies. The goal was to transfer those strategies to the actual test. The assessment was 12 questions.  1 out of 8 got 0 wrong the rest got two wrong. I had those that missed questions write a brief explanation in why they missed the question and had them correct it. I had each student come up and explain to me what they should to next time and what strategy we should use.

Take away

The biggest take away from this book

This book can go to the extremes.  Some of the fixes would be so hard to implement at present.  It did make me at least think about how I do things in my classes, right or wrong. It does have good ideas that we can use as long as we make them our own.

Reflection

The way I'm going to go about this is to reflect on one fix I agree with and one that I do agree with. I will start with the one I do agree with and that fix would be” Don’t give points for extra credit”.  You shouldn’t get credit for something that doesn’t really count.

The one I disagree the most is “Don’t include student behaviors in grades; include only achievement” The first thing physical education state standard states “Students participate in regular physical activity” and standard “Students exhibit responsible personal and social behavior in physical activity settings”.  This book is geared for the common core.

I do believe that the behavior is as important as achievement.  The question is how to we successfully split them when they are so much tied to one another?