State of New Jersey Standards

The website for the New Jersey Core Curriculum Standards was informative and I found it rather simple to navigate throughout the site. I read the introduction and I had the feeling that the State was presenting its program in a different perspective than that of the way it is being presented to the educational systems and we, the educators are certainly not receiving this message in a positive tone. I am not a proponent of standardized testing, but I do believe in an organized curriculum, which connects the students to useful applications. The standards concept was a political response to a potentially failing public education system. Had educators and business people (who are looking for future employees) put their heads together and did a "wants and needs assessment"then developed a program that met these wants and needs, and then implemented this program, we might just have a plan that works.
Being a math teacher, I spent more time with the math standards and found the website had a nice clear and concise representation of the standards. The unrealistic component of the "standards" is that all students will be able to have proficiency in these areas. Students develop at different rates and not all children have the same ability level. Yes,challenge every student, but not every student can meet all of the challenges.

The Saber Tooth Curriculum

Society is slow to change , yet change is inevitable. We meet change with resistance, perhaps it is that we fear leaving our comfort level and routines.
The article seems to express a concern with how society prepares its youth for their future through its education system.The education system appears to be outdated from generation to generation and in most areas, never really prepares our youth with the skills necessary to survive in the real world. We seem to attempt to meet these changes with slight modifications, but all we really do is squeeze stuff in by cutting into something else or eliminating an elective. A better look into our future may tell us to revamp the school system and how it is operated. A look at longer days (45 min.) would be helpful, or perhaps implementing a longer school year, or both! As long as they were compensated, I am sure that the teachers would find this a win-win situation. This would allow administration to include programs that can help develope life skills as well as academia.
Eliminating useless elements of the curriculum is necessary, and implementing technology and lifeskills should be enhanced. Interdisciplinary instruction should be encouraged and implemented. Shop and trade electives should be brought back into our schools. They are important to our society, we need plumbers and electricians as well as stock brokers and lawyers! We need a plan.

180 days ?

The video presents an interesting perspective to the school year. I tried to evaluate how much time is taken away from instruction in my classroom and I have to say that I teach for more than 65 days. Other activities such as assemblies and test preparations do absorb a conciderable amount of classroom instruction time, more than I imagined. Perhaps a flexible period or time slot could be incorporated into each day to accomodate all of these events. Scheduling can be quite challenging, but perhaps electives and studyhalls can be coordinated in a time block so as little instruction as possible in core subjects is missed. This would allow for these events to occur daily if necessary, with little or no effect on classroom instruction. We need to make adjustments if we are to increase instruction time. The clock has no mercy and it waits for no one, we need to manipulate this time piece so that it works for us.

Education is slow to change

Public education has not met the needs of our society and changes have been introduced and implemented into our schools, many of these ideas have good intentions but meet strong opposition and fail. The government regulations and programs appear to have fallen short because of a lack of support and funding. The proposed changes are often pieced together and not followed through. We end up with portions of many theories and ideas that don't seem to last. People may often see these changes as trends or fads and try to outlast them. We as a society like to live in order and change may be viewed as chaos, therefore we are slow to change. How long have we talked about converting to the metric system? Each generation has different ideas on how things should be done, yet most of these ideas appear radical to the previous generation and outdated to to the future generation. Perhaps change has to be perpetual to be effective. Education can then evolve into a system that meets the needs of the present society as well as the future. If people buy into the change as an improvement, they will support it, and it will succeed. Ashley Montagu stated that without the cooperation of its members, society can not survive.

The Prensky Challenge

Prensky's ideas are interesting to say the least. Students should make connections with what they are learning in the classroom with how they can apply these skills to the real world. Students will also take more of an interest in the learning experience if they have an interest in the topic and can see relevance to their own lives and goals. The core content standards and standardized tests are driving the curriculum, and teachers appear to be judged on test score results rather than the development of the future productive citizens who will lead our society. This pressure on performance may be interfering with life skill training and a more practical education to today's way of life. Prensky's idea can work if teacher's can implement these life skills with the standards ,perhaps with the help of cooperative learning strategies. I am all for preparing our students for life's challenges instead of test taking.
mr. S