Waiting for Superman

This past Friday I was able to go see the documentary "Waiting for Superman" by director Davis Guggenheim who also directed "An Inconvenient Truth." The story was inspired by an earlier documentary by Guggenheim, "The First Year," which is about 5 teachers who are in their first year of teaching in Los Angles public school systems. It had been 10 years since that documentary and as Guggenheim begins to look at schools for his children to attend he realizes just how much of a problem there is in the public school system in America.

"Waiting for Superman" follows several students from around the country in their struggle through the education system. All of the students come from families that are lower economic status, yet there is a huge desire from the students and their families for a quality education.

Also included are interviews with educational reformists such as Geoffrey Canada who has spent his whole life trying to increase graduation rates and decrease drop out rates of students across the country. This desire has lead Canada to establishing Charter Schools in New York City, to give parents a choice in their son or daughters education.

These charter schools are an alternative to public education. They are funded by the government so therefore they have to be open to the public for enrollment. Since there is limited spots available at the school they have to randomly admit people who have applied. This creates a lottery system, which is often devastating to the families and students when they don't get accepted.

It is heartbreaking to see these young students who have such a desire to learn, but are held back by a failing educational system. These families can not afford a private education so their only chance is the lottery for the charter schools. One lottery had a little over a hundred spots available and over 600 students who applied. Of the students featured in the film, only one was chosen, although one was put on a waiting list and later a spot opened for him.

While charter schools provide a small solution to problems, there needs to be a larger scale solution. The film features controversial Chancellor of D.C. Schools Michelle Rhee who proposed and carried out many changes to the DC schools, many of which went against teachers unions.

The stance against Teacher's Unions was one thing I found surprising with the documentary. However, the film presents many valid arguments in how the unions fuel our schools failures. For instance tenure makes it nearly impossible to remove and replace teachers who are not fulfilling their duties. Instead of removing the teachers, school districts do the "Dance of the Lemons" in which they move their poor performing teachers to another school in the district and accept another school's bad teachers in hopes of getting better teachers in the end. The reality is that moving a bad teacher to another school doesn't make that teacher better, and it only puts more students further behind.

What was most appalling was the "Rubber Room" in New York State. This is a place where teachers who are going through hearings to be removed from teaching are sent during the day. The teachers there are still paid their full salary to basically sit around, read newspapers, play cards and chat with each other. The hearings can take years to complete too. How much money are we wasting on these teachers that could be spent on the students instead?

I certainly understand the positives of being part of a Union, such as collective bargaining. I even totally understand tenure, that it means a teacher is granted due process before they are just fully removed from their job. It was established to make sure teachers aren't removed for not getting along with someone above them or having different political views. However I feel that tenure is being abused by the unions.

I like what Michelle Rhee did in Washington D.C. She allowed teachers to stay at their current employment rate if they continued with tenure. They would get minimum raises over the year. However, she offered teachers the choice to make more money based off of merit pay (based on how well the students do). These teachers would make much more (some over six figures) but would also forfeit their ability to obtain tenure.

Which brings me to my final question that I got from this film. Why shouldn't teachers be held accountable for how they teach? What makes our profession more privileged than others? I mean a surgeon is held accountable for how he performs on a job. If a surgeon went to work and performed his duties, but they weren't effective (i.e. he performed the surgeries but didn't cure the patients) chances are he would be fired. The surgeon is only wasting the hospitals money and is giving the patients a false hope. That is exactly what ineffective teachers are doing as well. They are selling parents and students an education and then not following through which is costing the government and tax payers money. We need to step up as a nation an insure we are giving our children, and our future, the best education they can get.

Its time to reform our education system. If this means as teachers we have to give up some of the perks we get such as tenure than so be it. The profession of teaching should be for those who want to create a better tomorrow. For those who want to make a difference in our students lives. Teaching is not for those who want to do the minimum to get a pay check. The idea of removing tenure is only a threat to those teachers. Teachers, especially physical educators, are always trying to validate what they do as a profession. The problem is we are held back by those who don't perform. If we have a way to weed out the bad teachers, it will be a major step in proving that teaching is truly a profession.



Visit the Official Website for "Waiting for Superman"

Total: 4 hours

Pictures from St. Mary's

Professional Portfolio Presentations

Last Monday, May 4th the Physical Education department hosted it's presentation of the best portfolios from the senior class of 2009 at Park Center. This was a great oppertunity for me as a Physical Education major, who is early in the program, to get a good look at what I should model my professional portfolio after. The presentation was from 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm which gave me enough time to look at multiple portfolios. I didn't, however, have enough time to look at all the portfolios, but I did have a chance to look at some of the best ones.

I was able to look at portfolios from: Alicia Thomas, Richard Rolo, Caitlin Cruschow, John Fresetch, Jonathan Billing, Kevin Tripp, and Mallory Cogen. Every portfolio was impressive but there were some aspects of different ones that I liked. For example, Alicia Thomas' included many pictures which really added and showed that she had experience. It's one thing to just have a resume that says you have experience but to show pictures of yourself teaching really adds to it. I also liked how Mallory Cogen put time into making creative dividers for each NASPE/NCATE Standards. I liked how John Fesetch color coded his Standards with different color card stock so that you easily knew what section you were in.

Also, Kevin Tripp had a very impressive resume that caught the eye with a red border and Cortland logo. If I was an employer with an opening and was going through resumes to narrow down the candidates, Kevin's resume would catch my eye and make me take a second look at him. Finally I really liked Jonathan Billing's portfolio. You could tell that he took the time to make the graphics for his dividers and his cover art. It really put his portfolio above the others.

What I learned from talking to the different students who were presenting their portfolios was that I need to save everything. I need to save not only hard copies but also back up the computer files as well. Richard Rolo mentioned that I should create a folder on my computer for pieces of work that I want to put in the portfolio and keep everything organized by what semester I took the classes in. Luckily I already do this, but I still need to make a backup copy by burning the files onto a cd and keeping them seperate.

Overall it was a good experience for me observing the portfolios and I will attend future presentations so that I can continue to develop my portfolio and hopefully be presenting mine to faculty, staff, and students when I'm a senior.

Spanish Infused PE.. Olé!

Last week I took advantage of a free workshop that was offered on campus. It was infusing the Spanish language into your PE class. I found this workshop very informative and useful. Spanish is a language spoken by many children in our education system. I'm sure at some point in my teaching career I will run into some student who does not speak english, especially if I work in an urban school. Most likely the student will speak Spanish so this workshop was very helpfull.

The workshop was taught by Dr. Luis Columna with the help of some Physical Education students, some who spoke Spanish and came from a different cultural background, and some who spoke very little Spanish. It showed how we could play games and use activities that we already will use in our class, and incorporate some simple Spanish in it.

The first activity we did was working with a parachute. We learned 4 colors (Red - Rojo, Green - Verde, Blue - Azul, and Yellow - Amarillo). We also learned some basic movement words such as Running - Corre, Jump - Salta, etc. The object of the activity was for the caller to call out a color and a movement. Then everyone lifted the parachute up and if you were holding on to that color you had to do that movement to a different spot underneath the parachute. It was fun, and a great way to start developing the colors and movements we would use again in the future.

The next activity was a dance where we learned how to count to four and directions (left and right). It was also a cultural dance which was interesting. The next station was a type of human board game with many different activities to do. It again inforced the movement skills in Spanish. Next was a handball game and then a modified baseball game. These taught us how to say overhand and underhand throw (por arriva and por abajo respectively).

The following activity taught us movement concepts such as circle (cirulo). Finally we ended by playing Omnikin ball in spanish using the colors again. It was a great way to get everyone involved in the final activity as because of numbers many people weren't able to participate in some of the activities.

The most informative part of the workshop was at the end when Dr. Columna put everything into perspective for us. He said it didn't matter what language the student speaks that's in your class. If you learn a few simple words, it's not that much work, and it will mean the world to the student. It must be hard not speaking english and by just including a few simple words the students see that you really do care about them learning and about them fitting in with the class.

Finally I found the handouts that came with the workshop helpful. They not only included more words in spanish but also mentioned about deaf students in the classes. I have already taken ASL at my community college, but it is still interesting to learn about the impact of just including a few simple words and spending minimal time doing so, has on these students.

It's definately something I will keep in mind in the future as I begin teaching.

Last Week Working at St Mary's

So our last week came and went at St. Mary's. Overall I think it was a good experience for me and definately helped me develop into my role as a teacher. Coming into this I had some experience working with kids, but at a summer camp and as a coach, but this was different. Here we were put into more of a teacher role by leading activities and the evaluating what level students are at with different motor skills.

This week was nice because we didn't have to worry about observing certain motor skills so we were able to focus more on bringing in props and working on our activities to do with the kids. This was important because this was our Easter Themed lab.

My group was picked to work in the cafeteria with the kids. We started with the older group of kids and I got to sit and talk with them for a little as I had never gotten the chance to do that before. I played a game similar to UNO with a few of the kids and another college student which was fun. I also walked around and talked to the kids playing with Legos and a few different board games. In terms of fine motorskills there was no doubt that these kids were more developed than the younger kids, but that is expected.

After a while they switched with the younger kids and we stayed down there. We brought in eggs with a different movement skill in them (Jump as High as You Can, Slide, Skip, etc.). Each student had to jump out to the basket in the center to get an egg and open it. They then had to do the action inside the egg back to their line. It was a competition to see who could get the most eggs in their basket between the two teams. We also had easter themed music and all of the college students were wearing bunny ears. Another member of my group went to the store and got some easter coloring books which the kids enjoyed too when they weren't participating in our activity.

We then followed the group we were with upstairs to have open gym where the kids could do whatever they wanted. I ended up in a game of tag with a few of the little kids which seemed to last forever. I was exhausted afterwards but I'm sure they got a workout too.

While I'm happy the semester is coming to an end, I still had a lot of fun working with the kid's at St. Mary's. I'm hoping to help out next year as a lab assistant for this class because I enjoyed it. It showed me that you can still have fun while assessing motor skills in children, it doesnt always have to be boring for them and you.

I also learned a lot on how to interact with students and how to be a better teacher. Patients is key. So is selling the activity you are doing and making it seem fun. You really do have to put on a different persona when you teach. This class has taught me that when it's time for me to teach or lead an activity I need to be enthusiastic and clear, and I will have success.

Kicking, Dribbling, The Environment, and Kolas

Once again last Wednesday we were back at St. Mary's School in Cortland to work with the kids as part of their after school program. This day's theme was the environment, which I'll get to how my group incorporated it later.

We started off in the gym with the K-2 grade kids observing their kicking and dribbling skills. The kids seemed not to be to interested today with the games but we were still able to observe what we needed to while two other groups lead their activities.

My group was chosen to work with the Pre-K kids this week, which I wasn't that excited about, but in the end found it really enjoyable. We basically get to just go into the room and play with the kids for a little bit. I joined a group of kids that were cutting out letters in play dough. It was fun to challenge them and see if they knew their alphabet. One thing I did notice was at that age most kids don't play together. Even if they are playing with the same thing they are in their own space and not working with each other. After cleaned up the kids listened to two stories read by a fellow classmate of mine.

Both of the stories had to do with the environment and peoples surroundings. The first book was about being on the farm. The second was about a duck who was traveling home. It talked about the duck's surroundings and what colors they were, and ended up making a rainbow at the end.

After that the children had a bathroom break and then snack time. While other members of the group set up a physical activity for the kids, I got to read a book about Kola's to both classes of Pre-K kids. It was a neat experience. The kids pay attention so well and always want to make comments about the story and whats going on. And yes, I was able to read while holding the book out to the side.

We then went into the gym where we played a game where the kids got to act like animals moving through the environment. There were sharks swimming in the ocean, alligators in the swamp, foxes in the forest, and even some butterflies flying through the air. It was fun to become involved in the activity and make the noises with the kids. We made sure each kid got a chance to pick a card and lead the rest of the group. Soon the kids were leaving and we were only left with a handful of students. So we broke and did whatever the kid's wanted. Some wanted to play a game where one person chased the others (like tag) but as an animal growling. Another student was shooting under-hand baskets and was able to make more than 5 in a short amount of time, it was amazing.

Soon I realized that there were more college kids than Pre-K kids so I went and interacted with some of the older students and played with them. We ended with a cheer with all the kids that were left that day.

It was another great day where I got to observe and learn things about younger kids.

Food fight!

Last Wednesday was the food lab at St Marys. The theme of the day was favorate foods, as each group had to create games that had to do with food, and also worked on overhand throws and catching. Our group decided on a game called popcorn. The students are broken into 3 groups. One group stands behind mats that are stood up and have a bunch of balls of different sizes. They have to throw the ball over the mats to the other teams. The other teams have to catch the balls (or the popcorn) and take it to their team's "bowl" (hula-hoop on the ground halfway across the gym). If the ball hits the ground then the teams have to throw it back over the mats and back into the "popcorn maker." It's similar to a game I remember playing when I was in elementary school.

I got to lead the activity which was fun, and I think it went pretty well. The teams got mixed up a little but it was still alright. I found that by being enthusiastic about things made the kids want to play the game. All the kids were involved which is always a plus, and none of the kids got bored with the activity which has happened in the past. I think keeping the game pretty simple was a good idea. Sometimes the games played are way too complicated for the kids and they get confused and end up not enjoying the games.

After the activity my group finally got to stay up in the gym and work with the older (3-5 grades) kids. We started by playing the game "SPUD" which was a lot of fun. Then we played some Knockout basketball. It was fun with the older students because we could participate with them and they would be able to compete with us more than the younger kids could. I still like the younger kids as its fun to be creative and keep things fun.

I also met a 9 year old who's soccer skills were amazing, and his knowledge of the game. He truely amazed me that he could finish crossed balls from across the gym. And since soccer is my favorite sport and I have a strong background in it, it was fun to talk about soccer teams and players with him. It still amazes me some of the skills these young kids have, I just hope they stick with those sports.

Overall it was another fun week at St Mary's, as all weeks are.