My Service to the Community

Community service is an essential part of the learning process of being a teacher. Often times as a teacher you aren't reward accordingly for your efforts in the classroom, so you should become accustomed to helping others without proper payment. Community service also teaches you to become selfless and to want to help others simply to help and not for being rewarded. I have always been one to do some sort of community service willingly. I found it to be a great way to get in tough with my community as well as other communities I might not have been familiar with. I attended my little brother's football games all season he plays for our town. The surroundings were quite interesting and watching all the parents and how the react and interact with each others and the game. It was also interesting to see the visiting team and how they fit into the "community" they were visiting, and how the home team welcome or not welcomed them. While visiting Arts High I had the pleasure of attending a staff meeting that was like a workshop in how to improve the school and the interaction between the teachers and students. Since thanksgiving every Wednesday from 3 to 5 I have been assistant coaching my grammar school's cheer leading team. Since it is a small Catholic school all the after school activities are run by volunteers. My little brother since attends the school and my mother is very active in its community so the school knows I have the a dance background and has asked me to donate my time. I found this experience to be quite fulfilling and have bonded with the girls and will continue to coach them for the rest of the season and prepare them for their competition in March. This experience has prepared me in two ways, it has prepared me in my field of teaching students an arts as well has how to interact and discipline students all while helping the community.

My Visit to Arts High

On November 28th, I had the pleasure of visiting Arts High. Since I wasn't initially assigned a teacher of my own I went with a classmate who shared my major. We are both dance education majors and were assigned to Mr. Ronnie Carney, one of the two dance teachers who work at Arts High. We were able to watch two dance classes one in the morning and one in the afternoon. In between the two classes we also attended a staff meeting where we were welcomed with open arms and were encouraged to participate. Our ideas and opinions were taken seriously and we were treated as true future educators. We also got a chance to have lunch and discuss the school and our inquiry question with Mr. Carney, he was accommodating and more than willing to answer any questions we had. I loved setting at Arts High all the students look very motivated and are very focused on their majors and so they are very well behaved, something I naively didn't expect in an urban setting. All the teachers seem to get along and even though we weren't assigned to them were very nice and welcoming to us as well. I enjoyed my experience at Arts High very much and would love to work in a place just like it someday. Mr. Carney said we were more then welcome to come back and help with rehearsals and their dance shows any time, and we have been doing so ever since. He and some students from Arts High even came to see our dance department performance this past week at MSU.

Response to No Child Left Behind

"No Child Left Behind" is an honorable attempt at fixing the things that are wrong with the educational system. Its the policies and rules that are being used in the attempt to fix the education system that I don't agree with. I don't believe that the standardized testing should have as great as a significance as it does. The results of the test being of so much importance is that the teacher will only concentrate on those subjects being tested. The students are being deprived of their full curriculum because the teachers are attempting to up the test scores. Th e students may become proficient in those subjects being tested but what about the others. Will they be able to get into Universities and be able to keep up with the Gen-Eds? If schools continue to cut the other subjects and only concentrate on what is being tested then I don't believe the students have a chance.

Arts High School Experience

The experience I had visiting Arts High School in Newark was definitely a positive one. All the professionals seemed to really love working there, and as a future educator myself I can only wish to be as happy as they are in my future place of work.I also enjoyed visiting this school because it deals hands on with my own personal concentration in the arts. To see that places like this really do exist and that my dream of teaching dance isn't limited to a dance studio was very reassuring and exciting. The children who attend Arts High School are the type of children that I really admire and would feel privileged to work with. They are focused, dedicated and truly think outside the box. They have creative minds and as an artist myself I feel like I understand and could relate to these children because I think the way that they think. Visiting this high school has made me very eager to get right out into the field and start working with children. I can really see now more then ever, that as a future educator I would have a hand in shaping the minds of children and helping them discover who it is they are going to become. I loved Arts High School and can't wait to go back to do my observations.

Reaction to the Promise of Urban Schools

I found the reading, "The Promise of Urban Schools", to be both very interesting and informative. I have always known that the urban school districts don't have the same resources and advantages that the suburban school districts have but never knew exactly to what extent. This reading was full of this information and really made me realize that it truly up to the teachers and future teachers such as myself to know that if we are placed in an urban school district that we must bring that much more to our lessons. We need to really come through full force and make sure we teach these children all that we can in any way that we can. We won't always have the resources and tools that we may want or need but we should go out of our way to provide a productive learning environment that results in intelligent well prepared students who could go toe to toe with a student who came from a suburban school district and that was clearly brought up with more learning tools. I am looking forward to visiting the Newark Arts High School because I am eager to see if the issues and solutions that were discussed in this paper are really done and accounted for. I would also like to see the results and effect that it has on its students and the way they perform academically. I have never been in an urban school district or even a public school for that matter so the only knowledge I have is that which I have heard from others. I am really excited to see the Urban School at work and eager to see if the school we are visiting abides by the guidelines and promises discussed in this reading.

Inquiry Project Question

I am working with two other people for my inquiry project. Since we are visiting a Performing Arts High School and two of the people of the people in my group intend on joining the field of the performing arts we decided to base our question the idea of how the arts affect the performance of the students in their core subjects. We plan to compare and contrast test scores and overall grades of the students who have the arts in their curriculum with the students who don't have the arts available to them.

Reaction to the Parker Piece

Reaction to Parker Piece
“Teaching Against Idiocy”

Quote: “The children I teach are just emerging form life’s deepest wells of private perspective: babyhood and family. Then along comes school. It is the first real exposure to the public arena." -Vivian Gussin Paley

The public school system in this country is a great thing. It provides people of all races, gender, color and financial status the opportunity to better themselves and their future through becoming educated. People bring their families from different countries to come to America because they know that by living here their children will be granted the opportunity of a better education and thus a better future. Vivian Gussin Paley delves into this exact idea. She states that, “Boys and Girls are both there. Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, Buddists, and atheists are there together. There are African Americans, European Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, and many more. Immigrants from the world over are there in school.” (Parker, 2005, p.4) Her classroom just like so many other teachers’ classrooms are is an example of people coming to this country to be educated and become active and successful participants in society.

As I was reading, “Teaching against Idiocy” by Walter C. Parker and contemplating the four essential questions from our syllabus and which one I wanted to answer the above quote jumped out at me and I immediately thought of the essential question, “ Who are our students?” Our students are the children or younger generations of “students” who came before them. They are required to go to school from a very young age and school is usually the first place they interact with other children and adults without their parents or family around. As Paley stated her students are, “…just emerging from life’s deepest wells of private perspective”, meaning they go from being babies interacting in their own private homes with their families own rules and views to school where it is the first time they are going to follow rules and learn views that they aren’t accustomed to. As stated in Parker’s piece the variety of ideas or values does not occur in the home but in the public places such as school. It becomes clear when diverse people are thrust together in public places and have to come to terms with everyone’s different view and perspectives.(Parker, 2005, p.4) These problems or everyday issues that we are faced with in public places become not only issues that are our own individual issues but become the collective issues of all the people in said public place.

That is why children that are in Kindergarten as Paley teaches need to be shown the “way the world works” from this young age so that they can become used to it and carry it throughout the rest of their schooling as well as into their future lives as citizens. Students taught in a classroom in schools aren’t only taught the basic subjects they are being groomed to become future leaders or productive members of society who will be intelligent enough to right the wrongs of our past mistake and follow in the greatness that was laid before them. They are being taught to be the kind of people who are able to handle the situations of being thrown together with diverse people in public places and the kind of people who will prove that the education of young mind is truly the future of tomorrow.