C4T Post: February #2

C4T Feb 19:


The blog that I was assigned for my C4T is called "Cooperative Catalyst: Changing Education as We Speak." This site is a place for teachers to come and blog and share their views with each other and with the world. Their vision is: "Passionate educators challenge one another to propose sustainable solutions and structures for re-imagining schools and education, supporting one another to enact and refine the ideas." The specific post that I read this week was called "The Diversity Crisis in Taxpayer-Funded Education" by Jabreel Chisley. He is not a teacher but an 18 year old boy who dreams of someday owning his own school and becoming a lawyer. His post was about how no education is being achieved if students graduate without learning to work and get along with people of other cultures. He claims that the dominant "white" race is given the title "right" and that others feel uncomfortable when having to work along side a "white" student. He thinks that because students today aren't learning to accept diversity but that sameness is being emphasized. Unfortunately, none of his reasoning directly supported his argument. He started talking about "No Child Left Behind" and the funding of schools and whether schools were rural or urban. He talked in circles, and his post was very long and vague. I did not particularly enjoy reading his post but was kind in my comment. I told him that schools everywhere in the US did not support sameness and have a lack of acceptance for diversity. I told him that I agreed with him that if I had not learned to civilly work with and accept others of different culture than I wouldn't have considered my education complete.


C4T Feb 28:


This week I have "Cooperative Catalyst: Changing Education as We Speak" again, and the post is by Chad Sansing titled "People, Problems, and Wonder." He starts off by listing 4 "wondrous" things he had witnessed in the past month. 1) Watched/Heard Jeff Mangum play his guitar, 2) Bought a record player for the house, 3) Watched the International Space Station fly overhead in the full moonlit night sky, 4) Oversaw 2 project based learning students recreate the wiring and circuit boards for old arcade game machines. He says that it's amazing that 1 out of 4 of his "wondrous" experiences in one month happened at school. Unfortunately, he knows that students lose this sense of wonder and sink into what hs calls "ennui" which means boredom. He then goes on to quote, "It is past time we designed schools to be wondrous places. It is past time we designed schools to keep kids full of wonder. It is past time we taught one another how to wonder again, fearlessly. It is past time we stopped confusing following instructions to complete a project with solving a problem to complete a project. It is past time we stopped confusing people with problems."

I know that this is true and sadly, it's hard to prevent. I hope that I am able to start changing this is my classroom. Anyone who knows me knows that I love to learn and make the subject of my learn my passion. So this is just what I commented to Chad. I said that I hoped that I could be one of these future teachers that he refers to that can change wonder into wondrous.