2 posts from 2008

Many of the psychology classes have emphasized a "critical window" in a child's early development in which learning, especially reading and language acquisition, occurs.  During this phase, cognitive growth takes place at a much fater rate, so much so that it cannot be made up at any point later in life.  With this in mind, I have always wondered if there are programs that focus on children's learning and development at a more earlier age because many of today's alternate teaching programs-- MTC or Teach for America -- seem to be geared toward middle and high school education.  The Barksdale Reading Institute is one organization that does focus on early education.  More specifically, coaches of the Barksdale Reading Institute assist teachers in Mississippi to help struggling students in K-3rd grade achieve literacy.  The Barksdale Reading Institute encourages teachers to adopt a reading intensive program filled with strategies focusing on phonics, decoding, fluency, reading comprehension, and reading motivation.  This seems to be a promising approach to improving student literacy.  What I found most interesting about the program is their encouragement of differential diagnostic testing to group students of varying literacy levels together and teach each group separately.  As Amanda pointed out, this grouping of students seems like a red flag in terms of classroom management.  Teachers already have a difficult time maintaining peace in the classroom when managing a single group-- how does the teacher maintain classroom decorum among multiple groups of students?  At the same time, Dr. Mullins pointed out earlier this week that if you teach students at one reading level-- either those at the top, middle, or bottom-- you inevitably lose touch with those students in the other two groups.  Those students at the top progress at the expense of the average or most struggling students.  The underlying question is whether you focus on quality or quantity.  Do you focus on teaching all students at the expense of classroom management and more focused instruction or do you customize your instruction to a certain level of students and put the other students at a disadvantage?  Overall, it seems to boil down to limited supplies and high demands-- pure economics.  Maybe then education should be approached as a business?  I don't know.  My gut  tell me no-- there are too many qualitative and uncontrollable factors in a student's education to be able to approach schools, teachers, and instruction as a business operation.  I don't know.  It's a tough question that I need to learn more about.   

Corporal punishment is permitted at your school. It is a district goal to not paddle any students in the first nine weeks. After about 7 weeks, some students you write up come back complaining about getting “burned” or just admit that their “tail hurts.” Their discipline forms indicate that indeed, they are getting paddled.
    There is no intermediate step like detention between parent contacts (which are largely ineffective anyway) and write-ups, so you continue to write up students and they continue to get paddled. The administration, though careful to not make it overt, subtly indicate that they would prefer if you “handled classroom discipline” yourself. There are practical and perhaps moral problems with you paddling, but you have witnessed a few and feel comfortable that you know what to do.
    A student throws a book across the room at another child. If you write it up, the friction with your administration increases. And the kid still gets paddled. If you do it yourself, you cross a moral line, perhaps. What do you do?