C4T#2

Learning is Messy Blog-Learning is Messy
     I left the first comment under Brian's blog . The topic was called Well Said. In this blog he added quotes from letter sent to President Obama about how sorry that state of education has been from Mary Broderick. When she wrote this letter to Obama, she made some valid points like the fact that students are becoming numb to learning due to the stress on testing. Today, teachers are becoming more focused on tests than actually teaching their students to meet requirements. I can agree with these letters. If they stop hiring people at the district level who's only there for one purpose and that is to raise test scores, then students would have time to focus on what's more important. I graduated from Moss Point High in MS in 2009 and this was the case for four years. Teachers taught around the test instead of teaching students and giving them the enjoyment of learning. Instead, students are forced to learn the materials that may possibly be one the test, and if they don't pass, then they are haunted by this failure and the fear of not being able to pass onto the next grade level.
     For the next topic, I read What Happened to My Pedagogy? and in this blog post he expressed how his once excited class was able to use technology with more time. The students were highly motivated and it even influenced him to write more information about his class's progress. Now that there is not enough time to complete these things he once loved to do with his students, there has been less blogging about the class and motivation towards doing it. He has to squeeze time in and that only makes it hard to do certain policies. Not only is that a problem, but since the internet is more public at the school, he doesn't feel that safe about letting his students look around and search for things online. He has decided to speak about these issues because there are teachers in which he has collaborated with who seem to have those same problems and something has to be done. I sympathize with Brian because he only wants the best for his students. I can tell that he cares them because he's still trying even though its hard and certain policies wont allow him to do things like he did once before. I just hope that things will get better for him and those teachers who are going through the same things. I often overlook these type of issues because I haven't experienced them yet, but I am thankful to have read this post because we often forget about what's under the surface of being a teacher.