When I first read this question I immediately separated the words “we” and “us” into to different categories. When I first thought of “we” I thought of the entire educational system. I believe that as an educational system, we are not doing what is best for our students. If you look at any number of key components that make up our educational system, from how it is funded to the way standardized testing has consumed the way a lot of schools are managed, you can see that we are not doing what is best for our students. I believe that a lot of things need to change in order to make learning better for the students. I always ask myself what can be done to help change the system into a more student centered educational system. As we read in our textbook, Integrating Technology and Digital Media in the Classroom, students learn more effectively with hands on activities especially if computers are used. (Gunter, Gunter, & Shelly, 2010) If more teachers took the time to incorporate hands on activities in their classrooms, maybe Florida’s graduation rate would be better than 58%, which is what it was in 2005-2006. (Alliance for Education, 2009) But it is difficult to incorporate hands on activities when one of the educational goals is to have students pass a standardized test and make an A for the school.
I next thought of the “us” as the individual teacher and what they do in their classroom. At my school, I would say that we do a good job of doing what is best for the students. The teachers at my school strive to help each student learn to their potential and that might mean having to think outside that box and spend a lot of time planning for each class, instead of using lesson plans from ten years ago. Our class textbook mentions, “Ridgedale High School home of the Fighting Tigers.” Ridgedale has three computer labs and all the classrooms have five computers each. (Gunter, Gunter, & Shelly, 2010) That would be an ideal setting for any school, however that is not the case in all high schools. At my school we do not have access to that many computers. In fact, I only have one computer in my room. In order to get into the computer lab at my school, you need to sign out the computer lab months in advance because most of the computers are used for testing students to see how they are progressing on reading or math benchmarks. Since the computers are not available, I need to plan months in advance in order to have access to them. Planning months in advance might require a lot of time and effort on my part, but that is ok with me because I am doing what is best for my students. Some teachers at my school would rather not do that and instead just print out worksheets because that is what is easiest for them. That brings me back to another failing of the educational system that allows bad teachers to keep their jobs.
References
Alliance for Education. (2009). Understanding high school graduation rates in Florida. Retrieved August 28, 2010, from http://www.all4ed.org/files/Florida_wc.pdf.
Gunter, G. A., Gunter, R. E., & Shelly, G.B. (2010). Integrating technology and digital media in the classroom (6th ed.). United States: Course Technology, Cengage Learning.
McLeod, Scott. (2007). Dangerously irrelevant. Retrieved August 30, 2010, from http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2007/05/well_whats_your.html.
