World Food Day 2011Take Action For Children

I was born in Niger and I grew up between Niger and an oasis in the Sahara Desert. Water and food have always been important issues in my community. I used to walk five times a day to fetch water and food was very scarce during my childhood in the oasis.

I run an Amnesty Youth Club. I teach teenagers about important issues, such as lack of water, hunger, child labor, human rights, death penalty, empower women, and many other subjects. 

I am enrolled in the Hunger and Agriculture Griot Course launched by One and WFP. 

 

This fall, One and WFP-USA and the Griot students are campaigning for foreign assistance funding in the Cogressional Budget for Fiscal Year 2012. 

Lincoln said, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”

I believe that by educating students about hunger, importance of water, and human rights issues, they will be ready to fight for a brighter future. 

 The students and I are selling bags  made locally by an artisan. These bags are made with local fabric and on the bags we can read, 1 sac = 15 repas (1 bag = 15 meals). 

 The students and I will donate the money to a school in a remote rural area where most of the students do not go to school because they are hungry.

In this area, they prefer to work in the fields instead of going to school. 

With the money,we will offer one school meal a day in order to attract more students to school. If we can do it for 3 months, it will be wonderful! 

Equal Opportunity in Education

The federal educational policy has been very concerned about improving opportunities for students from all cultures. The United States is a melting pot and immigration numbers have been increasing in recent years.

The preamble to the United States Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal.” 

Schools and teachers want to give to the students an equal opportunity to learn. Teachers need to address the history of equal opportunity in education and how did students come to receive the opportunities.

The history of equal opportunity in education started when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. the Board of Education that the doctrine of “separate but equal had not place.” 

Therefore, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown vs. the Board of Education marked a turning point in the history of equal opportunity. As African Americans and other minority groups began the struggle for civil rights, they claimed equal opportunities for their children in schools. Parents’ demands for better schools became an important part of the larger struggle for civil rights. Therefore, African American turned to the courts to demand for better educational opportunities for their children. Michael A. Rebell, an executive director of the campaign for Educational Equity and a teacher at Columbia University (New York, N.Y), remarked that the “civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s revived the common school ideals and for the first time sought to extend educational opportunity to all children regardless of race.” The federal educational policy wants to overcome the deficiencies associated with educational and socioeconomic disadvantages and the educational system wants to offer program that compensate low income families. 

Consequently, President Johnson’s Great Society education program has passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965. Title 1 of that act was perceived as an important weapon in the War on Poverty. Title 1 is one of the nation’s oldest and largest federal programs supporting elementary and secondary education. Moneys known as Title 1 are distributed to those school districts supporting a low income population. Title 1, Part A, of NCLB provides assistance to enable children in low-socioeconomic level schools to meet state academic content and performance standards. 

Michael Rebell declared that by the “end of fourth grade, African American and Latino students-indeed, poor students of all races-are two years behind their wealthier, predominantly white peers in reading and math. By eight grade, they have slipped three years behind, and by 12^th grade, the gap is a full four years.” Therefore, money known as Title 1 are distributed to those school districts supporting a low-income population. The money is spent on school lunch programs, bilingual programs, dropout prevention programs, and after-school programs. The purpose of this title is indeed to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach all the state academic assessment.

In the whole, Brown explicitly stated that segregation in public schools was against the law. Therefore, we have witnessed the creation of the Secondary Education Act (ESEA), designed to facilitate the dismantling of segregated schools systems. According to Michael Rebell, this law was grounded in “the principles of Brown and a centerpiece of President Johnson’s “war on poverty.” The ESEA was enacted to expand educational opportunities for poor children.

Webb, L.D., Metha, A. & Jordan K.F. (2010). Foundations of American education (6^th ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson

Rebell, M. A. Equal Opportunity and the Courts Equal Opportunity and the Courts.

(v89 n6 p432-439 Feb 2008. 8 pp.) Retrieved on the 15 October, 2009

Simmons, L. The Civil Rights Act and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The Constitution Community: Contemporary United States (1968 to the Present). Retrieved on 15 October, 2009

My Teacher Education Program

My teacher-education program in the middle school seems to favour the subject-are curriculum. The subject-area curriculum is consistent with the essentialist philosophy of education. 

But I agree with John Dewey who encourages balance between the importance of the subject and the student. 

The students cannot construct their own meaning based on current and past knowledge and experience if they do not master the essential knowledge and values of society. 

I think that middle school educators should focus both on student and subject matter. We need to emphasize both learner-centered and subject-centered perspectives. We should provide exploratory programs that reflect students’ developmental interest, while reinforcing the content. 

We should provide students with learning activities to apply a variety of cognitive skills (computing and research). 

Therefore, I think that a balance between student-centered and subject-centered is the best. 

Effective teachers should use a variety of instructional strategies and a variety of motivational and classroom management techniques. A balanced curriculum is made of subject/teacher-centered (authoritarian) organization on one end and student-centered (democratic) organization on the other. 

In the elementary school, I would prefer the integrated curriculum. It tries to unite all the subjects under one topic or theme. For example, the story, “The Little Red Hen”: social studies would be included by learning about the farm. Science would be included through a focus on growing plants, math would be introduced with a discussion of measurements using in baking bread, a health component would have the children focus on eating healthfully.

The instructional approaches discussed in this chapter which best fits my teaching style are the mastery learning, direct instruction, teacher questions, cooperative learning, and peer tutoring. 

Mastery learning is an approach to instruction in which students learn one topic thoroughly before moving to a subsequent one. The objective is to learn knowledge or skills to mastery and students vary in the time they need to achieve mastery. For example, the teacher will have students practice 100 single-digit addition facts until they can answer all the facts correctly within five minute period. 

The objective of the direct instruction is to learn a well defined body of knowledge and skills. Students need considerable guidance and practice in order to learn successfully. It is a teacher-centered method that is used to convey information. For example, the teacher will explain how to add fractions with different denominators and give students practice in adding such fractions, both in class and through homework. 

The teacher questions instructional approach is also very useful in the middle school. The objective is to understand and elaborate on a topic in greater depth. The teacher can ask questions that promote recall and review of the previous day’s lesson or he or she can ask students for examples of how people in their community react to global warming.

The cooperative learning instructional approach teaches the students how to cooperate and how to listen and respect each others’ ideas. The objective is to develop the ability to work collaboratively with others on academic tasks. It emphasizes cooperation rather than competition. 

And my favourite is peer tutoring. I like to have students work in pairs to test each other on their spellings or how to ameliorate a story or to have some students help others work through history or geography questions. I think the most advanced students can gain increased understanding by teaching it to someone else.

Facets of Educational Planning

Effective teachers should be concerned about what content should students study and how this content will be presented to them. The types of curriculum organization used in most of the schools are based on two perspectives, subject-centered and student-centered. I would like to discuss with you today the differences between student-centered and subject-centered curriculum as they impact instructional planning.

The concept of the student-centered curriculum has its roots in the philosophies of Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and Froebel (Webb 2010). The student-centered curricula emphasizes the student’s freedom to learn, activities, and creative self-expression that engages the student in the learning process. 

On the contrary, the subject-area curriculum, which is supported by essentialists and perennialists, proposes the return to fundamentals. The curriculum is composed of a group of subjects which presented through lectures and discussions. Rote memorization and recitation are required of students. 

On the other hand, the student-centered curriculum emphasizes the students’ needs and interests by letting them use their creativity. The student-centered curriculum focuses on the individual learner by including a wide range of activities outside the classroom. The Progressives think that the student-centered curriculum encourages teachers to choose content which are suitable for their group of learners. This design involves more the teachers and it allows them to use their creativity. 

However, Essentialists think that teachers who are faced to a student-centered curriculum will not concentrate on the subject-matter mastery. Essentialists, who support the subject-centered curriculum, are persuaded that this design reduces repetition or overlap between grade levels. The knowledge will be exposed to students in an orderly manner. Teachers will be able to methodically assess pupil’s progress. Essentialists think that student-centered curriculum is too broad and too permissive. They believe that textbooks are developed for subject-areas and they provide a solid organization to teachers. 

But the student-centered designs explore the student’s own life or family history or local environment. The Progressives think that the traditional curriculum is fragmented and compartmentalized and that it fails in including the increasing number of English language learners. 

John Dewey encouraged balance between the student-centered and subject-centered curriculum. 

I believe that we should do the same. In curriculum planning and teaching, we should maintain a balance between the two curriculum designs. An effective teacher should adapt to the learning styles of students and considers student differences.

What do you think? parents, students, teachers...