Midland

I'm looking forward to teaching students from a very small school district.  I don't think the high school I went to was terribly small, but when listening to the class sizes of many of my peers it seems my class size was small.  I am not scared of the class but excited.  I believe that having less students in a class gives more time for students to understand the material.  Having less students allows us at midland to provide more individual attention and I think will give us results on their comics that will prove very in depth and well done.  I look forward to working with the students and Kellie!!

ATCs

I really enjoyed making the artist trading card this week.  I've always enjoyed collage and making things that are out of the ordinary cannon in art.  The cards are a great way to express issues and bridge gaps, like us trading with middle school students based off popular issues in middle school.  I had a lot of fun thinking back o my ruffian days on the block and think that the experiences I had in middle school are universal to all students going through middle school.

I also enjoyed the field trip to Iowa City with the Hoover students.  The comic book convention was entertaining, but I took more out of the experience then comic books.  It was a great experience to be around students and see how management and structure works in a class of thirty or so middle school students.  It was a wonderful day and the students were well behaved.

To Teach...Post 5

The final half of To Teach a Journey in Comics presents very critical issues to think about for preservice learners like ourselves. Chapters six and seven stuck out the most in my mind, mostly because I have been contemplating at long length the ethics and morals of standardizing education when we are to be creative and think outside the box.  Chapter five does a great job of explaining the problem with teachers simply teaching to the curriculum and standards presented by the higher ups, but chapter six shows us why standardized tests are bogus and full of buffoonery.  Some tests are bias towards one group that is raised one way and taught one way and that is seen as the "standard".  Is it morally right to subject all students to the exact same test that puts them up against other students in school hundreds of miles away and the better the school does the more money they get?   Which just shouldn't happen.  Why pay schools for doing well?  I understand it is the carrot on the end of the stick, but shouldn't we be providing better funding for those schools that are doing poorly instead of counting them as a loss?
Chapter seven shows us that schools can break away from the monotonic scheduling and style of most standard schools today where the students sit in a desk and more or less throw up information that is drilled into their heads. Even if we are to follow standards and look to Blooms, create is at the top of the pyramid and regurgitating information is at the dead bottom of the pile.  Some teachers can BS and say they are having their students be more in depth in the learning process but what they are selling I am not buying and belief in the students ability and the students drive to learn is achieved only by instilling a sense of purpose within the student.  Some students are driven by the goal to achieve a higher education but many students could care less, so connecting with those students on a multiplicity of levels allows for all students to find that purpose to learn.