How bad is the Student Debt Crush?

Being as I am currently a student racking up debt, Education Nation's tweet about student debt hit home really fast. The tweet brought me to a website where I watched a short, thirty second video about student debt. I was not surprised to find out that tuition has gone up eighty-nine percent in the past couple of years. I found it interesting that student loan debt is higher than credit card and car loan debt. Of course, most people won't spend $33,000 (the average student loan debt) on their credit card but to know that more people are in debt for bettering themselves as compared to people spending money on god knows what strikes me as a little crazy. The last few seconds of the video go on to convince people that they're making the right decision by going to college, which I agree with but it also makes it seem like students will have no trouble finding a job and paying off their loans when they graduate. This, sadly, is not the truth.


You can watch this video here.

Student Selected Learning Objectives

The Nerdy Teacher recently posted this blog about learning objectives that caught me off guard immediately. The Title, Student Selected Learning Objectives, jumped out at me because of the first two words, STUDENT SELECTED. Learning Objectives are probably one of the last things I would expect students to select. Normally, the teacher would choose this and the students might have a say in another aspect of the lesson. I believe that students should have some control over their educational experience and this is the perfect way to let them. The Nerdy teacher had different groups set up to research aspects of their next author, Emily Dickenson's, life. They covered things like education, childhood, relationships, death, ect. The next day they were to come in with the information they found. This is where their voices could be heard. The students were allowed to pick five interesting things they found in their group and discuss those things. This made for a more diverse conversation as well as allowed the students to talk about what they wanted to talk about. All of this happened while also making the kids learn the information they needed to begin with. I might have to use this idea.

You can read this blog here.

PARCC Testing

Standardized tests will always be on my bad side. Recently, a Chicago school decided they were on theirs too. They decided they would not administer PARCC Tests to their students. I find this move very bold and I think people should learn from it. Standardized testing is not ok. The reason it continues is because schools who do not want to administer them and refuse, loose funding. When the school is Chicago was to loose their funding, they decided to actually administer the test. I think this is sad, but who can blame them? Schools need government funding. If the only way to keep that funding is to keep the tests, the schools will keep the test. My little sister is currently in sixth grade and just took a standardized test. The test required them to sit in front of two computers and read questions from one screen and record their answers on the other computer. That, to me, sounds stressful; however, my sister said the test was too easy. If the test is too easy, why bother taking it? I personally do not understand standardized testing and wish more schools would refuse to administer them. But we all know that is wishful thinking when funding gets involved.

You can read this blog here.

Essential Life Skills Taught Intentionally

I read an article from twitter on an edweek blog talking about life skills in the classroom. I found it interesting because most people do not think about teaching students things other than their subject matter and their common core standards. I think more teachers should be actively trying to better their students for when they leave the classroom. If you do not think it is important that students learn life skills such as cooperation, communication skills, and conflict resolution (amongst MANY others,) why bother teaching? Common Core is important in that it is a guideline for things all students should know by the time they are done that year of school but it is also important to remember that students will probably need life skills more than they will need Shakespeare. Now, do not get me wrong, I think all students should be exposed to Shakespeare, but if you can form a lesson that requires them to work together, to collaborate and to be patient with other students as well as commited to getting their work done, why not switch up your normaly boring lecture and teach them more with a single lesson?

You can read this article here.

English Teachers' Group Seeks to 'Reclaim Assessment.'

I recently followed Education Week on Twitter and I have been reading a lot of their articles since. Because I spend time on twitter anyway, following these educational accounts has really exposed me to a lot of information about my future career. Today I read an article about assessment and testing. I, for one, am not a very big fan of testing. I absolutely despise standardized testing and with good reason. I have done it. I have been taking standardized tests since elementary school and I understand thoroughly how completely uneffective they are. What the English Teachers in this article are proposing is not this testing I hold so dearly (sarcasm) but a reformed method that will actually work. They have a survey that is still active that asks teachers to suggest methods of assessment that they use in their classrooms that they find effective. Needless to say, these methods that real teachers are practicing are not seen in the standardized tests I trudged through. I think it is time to eradicate standardized testing and implement a much more effective form of assessment. What that assessment is, I'm not sure yet. But if teachers work together to find better ideas, I know they'll find something great.

You can read this article here.

Four Reasons to Worry About "Personalized Learning"

Personalized Learning is something that may sound very important when first looking at the words. The blog I read today thinks differently. Personalized learning, in Alfie Kohn's opinion, is basically a market scheme. They do not actually personalize the learning. The disks and online materials are mass produced. Mass production and personalization are two very different things. This made me wonder, how personalized could these methods really be? Upon further reading, I was informed that they really are not and there are some good reasons why. The most important point, in my opinion, was the current method of delivery in the education system. The long quote below describes this climate much more accurately than I could have.

"In fact, the perceived need to personalize probably comes from this way of thinking about education in the first place. If the point is to dump a load of facts into children, then it may be necessary to adjust the style and rate of dumping – and to help teachers become more efficient at it. But if the point is to help kids understand ideas from the inside out and answer their own questions about the world, then what they’re doing is already personal (and varied). It doesn’t have to be artificially personalized."

Being as I only recently graduated high school, I am very familiar with the "dump and regurgitate method" (as I like to call it.) This widely used method makes teachers dump information on students, and makes students spit it right back out. If this is what these personalized programs are aiming to do, how are they at all personalized?

Just some food for thought. 

You can read this article here.