Developing Literacy in MST

Authored by Rick Catalano
(Each student in GMST 525 has written their own post for our class blog.)

More and more teachers are requiring summer homework and summer readings to try to get the students ready for the upcoming school year. While in theory this is a GREAT idea! In practicality, all it does is stress a student out before they even enter your classroom. For advanced placement and honors classes it is understandable. But for regents and/or locals level classes, this is just asking too much from a student.

USA Today had an article in 2004 in which it said “Summer homework has increasingly become a popular tool used by teachers to bridge the gap between the end of one school year and the start of another. But some parents worry that the workload is making summer fun slip away.” Parents are starting to worry that it is taking its toll on our students.

One student in Wisconsin actually sued his school saying “It didn’t completely ruin my summer, but it did give me a lot of undue stress both at home and at work, I just didn’t have the energy or the time for it.”

Most students in high school have summer jobs, athletics to train for, as well as their own fun planned. They have earned the right to enjoy their summer. They ARE still kids after all.

Nelson Guirado writes in his blog post Summer Packets-Waste of time, that he is completely against such things. He talks about how during his childrens’ winter break, the principal assigned everyone a packet of homework. He says it was very frustrating because anytime he wanted to get together with the family and do something, they instead had their head buried in their homework so that they didn’t get into any trouble.

I remember the summer before my Junior year of high school I had to do a 200 + question packet of summer homework for an AP chemistry class. True to form like most of my class, I didn’t start it until the last week before school started, when I was also in football practices.

My question to you is thus:
Is it fair to ask these students to do this extra work over the summer, when if they have any questions, all they have is each other or their parents to ask? Is there a better alternative to this? And out of curiosity, does anyone here implement summer homework or would you want to?

Authored by George Flevares
(Each student in GMST 525 has written their own post for our class blog.)

How many times have you heard from a student, “When am I going to use this?” We might be tempted to respond with the statement “I’m not a fortune teller, I can’t read your future.” While it may be true that some of our students will never again have to consider the Kreb’s cycle, electron orbitals, or polar coordinates, all of them should become financially literate. Unfortunately, recent results from the 2008 Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy are not reassuring.

If students are not making the grade when it comes to financial literacy, it is due in large part to an unawareness or unfamiliarity with the vocabulary of personal finance. Some terms, such as compound interest and depreciation, could easily be incorporated into math classes. But this only scratches the surface. Many students come to school with little or no knowledge of personal finance, and many schools do not have courses to cover this vital topic. If students lack financial literacy, they are likely to make unsound decisions and are also good candidates for people to dupe them or pressure them into making poor financial choices. So, what can we, as educators, do to improve students’ abilities to understand the financial tools that they will need for the rest of their lives?

Authored by Jason Yockel
(Each student in GMST 525 has written their own post for our class blog.)

On Thursday during my free period, I saw a book sitting on the bookshelf (Do you think this is a subtle hint that administration encourages reading amongst us teachers?) in the staff lounge. It was entitled Expecting the Unexpected – Teaching Myself and Others to Read and Write by Donald Murray. It was kind of in rough shape. The cover was torn and there looked to be coffee stains all over it. However, because of this class, the title caught my attention. I flipped open to a page and read this:

It took me a long time to learn how not to teach, how to keep from interfering with their education, to follow instead of lead. I behaved as teachers were supposed to behave, and that made me a good one. When I finally taught myself to relax and learn with the class, to deal in questions rather than answer, listening instead of talking, I confused many of my students. They expected to be taught. I expected them to learn. (p. 128 )

Students expect to be taught. They wait for direction. They are passive. The problem is that we as teachers are no longer the sole authorities on content or of knowledge in the classroom. However, we can be authorities of learning. Learning is seeking, attempting, failing, reflecting, succeeding, practice. It is a constant circle of metacognition. What if we really engaged and taught kids these things in the context of their own interests? And, what if we visibly modeled that process for them? Reflected on our own successes and failures? Shared our own strategies? What if teachers were learners first?

The book goes on to say:

As I learned to teach, they began to unlearn what they had been taught in other classes and began to make use of the room I gave them. I learned how to allow them to learn and they did. (p.129)

This is an important swing in how we see our relationships with our students. Murray figured it out 15 years ago, but I think its all the more significant now.

Post authored by Shaun McBride
(Each student in GMST 525 has written their own post for our class blog.)

One quote that really grabbed my attention was in the article Learning 2.0: Built for the Next Generation where Jim Ericson writes,

Technology has become an integral part of the way our society thinks and functions. In order to succeed in this Web-focused world, students need constant exposure to new technologies.

Ericson bases his quote on the importance of Web 2.0 and its learning tools. However, that got me thinking that if you see it all the time in job descriptions you must be familiar with this and that in order to be even considered for the job. It is obvious that in today’s world, being technology literate is extremely helpful and could put you at a competitive advantage over someone you’re competing with. The job to teach this technology that everyone seems to need to know will be a big question going into the future.

As teachers, our job is preparing students for life and the ability to learn throughout it. How to prepare them the right way is the biggest question. Do you believe that teachers are not doing their jobs correctly if they do not use modern technology in their classrooms like Jim Ericson states? Or do you believe as long as the students learn math in a math class or science in a science class, the teacher has done their job no matter how they taught it?