Blog Post 14

1. Giving far more school choices to families 

2. Using technology to improve teaching and learning 

3. Adopting a knowledge-based curriculum 

4. Starting education before a child is 5 years old.

Listed above is some of the things that Mr. Joel Klein thinks need to happen in our school. He brings his thoughts to the table for all of us to see in his article  Self-Discipline and High Standards Can Secure the Future of Public Schools. All of these are admirable goals and we should work our hardest as future teachers to bring this man's vision into a reality. The first one of his point I found to be pretty interesting for me. I went to a very small community and we had one local school in our area code. If you had our zip code you had that once choice outside of enrolling into a private school which was really a long drive. Luckily my our school was great and I could not imagine graduating from anywhere else. I am sure that is not the case for everyone however. I guess if you give more options then that would in turn promote competition between students to get into the best schools in the area. The next point is using technology to improve teaching and learning. This is a subject matter we have covered very frequently in our time in EDM 310. While a couple of months ago, I would probably of told you too much tech in a classroom would ultimately hinder or distract the students. Today I am thankfully singing a different tune. After observing and studying some local and global teachers this semester, I have become convinced that the biggest logical way to improve our classrooms is by the use of technology. We can through technology create a much more interactive, personal, and engaging classroom for our students that could never of happened even a decade ago. We have been given the unique opportunity to help push forward this new wave of teaching and I fully intend to be apart of this. So I fully agree with Klein on this count. Next he brings up that we should adopt a knowledge based curriculum. This is pretty straight forward and I agree with him. We need to be teaching kids in a way that truly pushes them intellectually. Not just having them memorize some vocabulary terms and follow that up with a true/false test. We need something A LOT more meaningful than that. We need to push them to develop skills and application that will better prepare them for the world ahead outside of the classroom. Next he thinks we should enroll kids into school before the age of five. I think we should start to prepare kids for learning at an early age sure. I would be curious to hear what I real life parent would think of this. On paper it sounds great and that is really the extent as to which I will speak on the topic.

The author made some great points that we can contemplate for the rest of our future teaching careers. I certainly look forward to implementing his ideas into my own classroom one day.