A+ for Case Studies

I really enjoyed doing this case study. I chose to do the same kid that I interviewed before and he was also one of the students I chose to examine in my neighborhood profile. I was really glad I did this because it showed me what different kinds of information you can gain from each of these things but how one of them doesn’t really describe the child. It took all of these to make me feel like I really had a feel for where this student was coming from. Case studies are such good tools for gathering data on a student. In the first interview I didn’t feel like the student really told me anything. The biggest thing I learned about him was that his father didn’t speak English and that he would try to “show” his father English when he went home from school. Through the case study and the ethnographic narrative, I leaned the most through his drawing. He drew a typical looking house, square with a triangle roof, two windows and a door. But then, he drew a truck coming out of the side of the house. He then told me he lived in a “truck house”. I knew that this student lived in a trailer because he lived in one of the homes I visited for the neighborhood profile. I thought that it was very interesting that at 5 years old and after only being in school for a few months, he already recognized that he was different than some of his peers because he lived in a “truck house” or trailer. I not only learned more about his home life but also about the ways he learns best. This ethnographic case study is so important because it helps you focus on one specific child. I think as teachers we get very caught up in the class as a whole and sometimes group all the students together. It’s important to look closer and focus on one particular student at a time and really examine how that specific student is reacting to a lesson, the classroom environment, and his peers. I learned that my student is very competitive. He shuts down when he loses at a game too much. He also is very cocky when he is winning. All of these observations have taught me some very specific ways to increase this students learning.

1. Use engaging instruction: Mo interacted and learned the most about the letters and their sounds when the instruction was in the form of a game or song.

2. Make instruction meaningful: Mo really likes astronauts and was more inv

olved in the lesson because the teacher incorporated his likes into the lesson.

3. Work from student’s strengths: Mo was good at the memory game so he was more involved. It’s important not to make the material too hard that the student gets discouraged. He needs to feel some success with every activity.

AR Thoughts:

What an awesome way to learn “hands on” how to fix a problem! Every student is different and every class is different. Something that worked for somebody else might not work for you. But you will find out really quick what does and doesn’t work in your classroom if you implement action research. There is so much to be said for studying other people’s research and talking to experienced professionals, but I learned firsthand through this project that sometimes that isn’t enough. My ESL mentor was adamant that in all her experience the main way to increase comprehension for second language learners is through visual aids and it was obvious through my observations that this was the only tool she used. Once I started to collect data, it helped her realize that she was zoning in on one strategy too much and that by incorporating and rotating strategies, the students actually comprehended more.

My Ideas

• Everyone has some prior knowledge, it’s our job as teachers to help students activate and connect it.
• Assessment don’t always answer all the questions, sometimes they create more.
• Students could bring in items from home that relate to the subject matter, this helps them make real-life connections

I Suggest…

• Utilizing mini action research projects many times throughout the year.
• Use pictures and video clips, not just written notes. Sometimes we short cut the information if we are trying to take quick notes and you can get much more concrete data by using technology
• Change up the way you group your books. A lot of times in elementary classrooms books are grouped by subject matter or theme. Try grouping books with the same vocabulary words in them too.
• Mix it up! Comprehension isn’t gained through just one strategy so use them all in different combinations!

Factoring in Cost of Living

I read the article called Teachers’ Cost of Living Matters More by Danielle Georgiou. I thought that this was a very informative piece because too be honest I didn’t realize that cost of living was not factored in to teacher pay. I have always been told how teachers don’t make a lot of money and I have looked at several school districts websites to examine the highest teacher pay in the area. However, I did not realize that those charts do not give any indication about the cost of living in each area. Too be honest I thought that teacher pay depended on how large the district was and that larger districts would have higher cost’ of living. Apparently this is not the case. Is education the only area that salaries are not dependent upon cost of living? My father is an industrial engineer and has moved 3 times because of his career and each time his pay was agreed upon after the cost of living in each area was discussed. In one instance he moved somewhere that the cost of living was lower therefore; on paper he did not get a pay raise however when the salaries were compared with cost of living he actually was making more because of the move. My boyfriend also just recently moved because of work and cost of living was a factor in the salary decision. I suppose I just assumed that this was the way salary settings were in every job.

It seems to me that it would only make sense to think about the cost of living in an area when analyzing teacher’s salaries. I certainly will be careful to examine the cost of living more carefully when I start applying for jobs. I recommend checking out the cost of living calculator at http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/cost_of_living/cost_of_living_calculator.asp . For instance, I found out that the cost of living in Chattanooga is higher than the cost of living in Murfreesboro. If you make $100,000.00 in Murfreesboro and move to Chattanooga, you will need to make $105,646.04 ($5,646.04 more) to maintain the same buying power. You can compare any two cities in the US. Another good website to check out would be http://www.teateachers.org/cms/Average+Classroom+Teacher+Salaries+%28by+system%29/896.html This is a link off of the TEA website that provides a list of average teaching salaries in different Tennessee school districts. I think it would be a good idea to compare different cities in these districts with the cost of living calculator to determine whether or not the teacher pay is fair.

Classroom Diversity

I had never heard the term cosmopolitanism before but I really liked how Hirsch described it as being a member of humanity as a whole. I think that we have been focused a lot lately on “multiculturalism” and what it means to respect other cultures. However, not everyone fits into one stereotype or cultural box. Each person is different. Therefore, I think it really just comes down to getting to know our students. Each and every student not just certain culturally groups of students. I also agree that just because we are respecting a culture does not mean that we have to allow intolerance if it is a part of their culture. We have laws for a reason and while being aware of what others believe is important it is not ok if their beliefs cause harm to other people living in this country. I think an important question came up in one of the readings about how other countries offer their children more equal educational opportunities. My question was, do they?
To be honest I don’t think that they do. Yes, our country may have a gap between low and high socioeconomic education mainly in comparison of test scores, but we also have the most diverse country in the world. I highly suggest reading, What ‘Superman’ got wrong, point by point by Rick Ayers http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/what-superman-got-wrong-point.html . Ayers says, “According to this piece in The Nation, ‘In the Finnish education system, much cited in the film as the best in the world, teachers are – gasp! – unionized and granted tenure, and families benefit from a cradle-to-grave social welfare system that includes universal daycare, preschool and health care, all of which are proven to help children achieve better results in school.’" Why does Finland have such high test scores? According to Wikipedia, “The country is ethnically homogeneous, the dominant ethnicity being Finnish people.” How can we compare our multicultural education system with a country that has no minorities or different ethnicities represented?

Now with that said, I do think that we can fill that gap we just have to understand what we are dealing with. We are dealing with students who all have different home lives, experiences, and learning environments. There is all this push to change curriculum in order to increase test scores. Has anyone thought that maybe we should change the test to match the curriculum and not vice versa? If you want to know more about the Core Knowledge Foundation and their curriculum ideas, check out http://www.coreknowledge.org/the-k-8-sequence .