For those of you who attended the event today at Youngstown with Alberto Retana from the Department of Education, please let us know how it went. I sent you with one knowledge issue: how do we know if a teacher is effective? Were there any other knowledge issues/big questions that came up in the discussion?
If you did not attend, follow the discussion online and pose new questions. We will weave this content into our class over the next few weeks. Thanks Ebony and Marlys for organizing this.
The event was really interesting! The idea behind it was good however i did not feel super productive. Not to many more knowledge issues came up although we briefly discussed the idea of standarized tests were a good way to evaluate teachers and how to know if teachers were being effective.
ReplyDeleteAnd what did people say about using test scores as a (reliable?) way to determine teacher effectiveness?
ReplyDeleteThe event that TOK attended today was called a "World Cafe Session". So basically, we were divided into three groups at three different tables. Each group had a facilitator. We discussed components within education of course. Within education we discussed the three foundations of a child's education: family, community, and school. Within those three foundations at each table we discussed what we are getting beneficially from them and what we need at this point of our lives. Family involves being at home with family and friends with love and support, and many other things. Community involves churches, recreational centers, and etc.that support and also care for the student in several ways along with the families. School involves the the staff, the resources, and the education that is suppose to prepare you academicly, and in ways that your family and community cannot.
ReplyDeleteSome Quotes that I agreed with and/ or admired that Alberto said were:
"Students need to be empowered to choose or fight for themeseleves" (as far as what they believe in or what they want for their future).
"Too often in education, it is the adults who are making decisions about the youths' education".
So, how can one determine whether or not a teacher is effective? I believe we found a number of ways in which we could judge a teacher on their effectiveness today at the World Cafe session. When your teachers are committed to making you enthusiastic and not giving up on you when your slower than the others in solving a problem, that could be way to make that judgement. The ways of knowing that I see within this knowledge issue are emotion, sense perception, reason, and language. But, I mostly see emotion and sense perception through the observations and feelings around this knowledge issue. The areas of knowledge that I see are mathematics (statistics), human sciences (psychology), history, and ethics. But, in this case since we've been discussing ethics lately, I will say that education issues always come down to ethics...what is right and wrong.
Well I unfortunately only got to stay till 4:10 and I was curious what you guys did after I left? Like after the skit what were the other exercises he had you do?
ReplyDeleteSo yeah basically we did not get to ask any questions. I know that Mr. Zeichner had a list of questions, and wanted us to get to the core of the issue surrounding teacher effectiveness and schools' evaluation of teachers. However, we basically talked about how education relates to our families, communities, and schools. Obama's goals is to have a much higher college completion percentage of students who attend college by 2020.
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting hearing from other kids from different backgrounds and situations about why education is important to them, and what they think could be improved in schools.
Wow, Ebony I just read your post. Did you actually write down all those quotes when you were there to remember them?