The Value of Knowing When to Teach

            The ethical situation I have been reading about is the argument for introducing sex education to kindergarten students.  The Chicago public school system is, where others are dealing with issues involving religious teachings, facing calls for plans to set a curriculum for sex education for all school grades.  The topics would include personal safety, healthy relationships, anatomy, and reproduction.  A national news network reported that the new school’s policy would include children as young as kindergarteners.  The CEO of the Chicago School District told the network that the educational information would help not only adolescents, but preadolescents throughout their lives. 

            One of the main objectives is to introduce sexual orientation and gender identity to the youth to promote awareness, tolerance, and understanding of the LGBT: or lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual community.  Education and information give people the tools to be more accepting to difference, and in turn prevent bullying and even violence towards difference.  The intention behind this curriculum is noble in design, but the school system also wants to expand into information including sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS, birth control, and abstinence.  Parents may opt out of this program if they do not want their children to participate.

            My concern with this program is the controversial subject matter. When my daughter was five, she only knew Sesame Street and Dora the Explorer.  I did fall into the social convention of dressing her all in pink with flowers and dresses, but where do we draw the line between what we think as normal, yet, embracing the differences in our society?  If change does not happen, we would never have repealed slavery, had an African American President, or a woman close to election to Presidency of The United States, and so on.  But how early do we want to expose our children to all the unique values and differences of others?  I believe that our responsibility is teaching our own values and traditions to our children, then letting them learn at their own pace, of other lifestyles and cultures that are different to their own personal mindset.  Once we establish a solid foundation for our kids, other options are available. We as parents must choose the time we feel is appropriate for their exposure to nonconventional information.

            While these topics are controversial and overwhelming, they have to be dealt with.  As bulling, violence, and suicide of our young people are in the forefront of our society, these issues have now involved the legal court systems. These issues may have legal ramifications and permanent consequences that will follow our children throughout their lives.  All this information makes me consider both sides of this pivotal issue but, I want to keep my daughter’s life as simple as possible.  She is going to encounter so many more obstacles in her lifetime.  Although a child’s mind is like a sponge, there are certain things that most our unable to fully comprehend.  I agree that having acceptance in your heart is a crucial factor that makes a good human being, but learning about the birds and the bees when one is not maturely ready, is as effective as finely dicing a tomato with a spoon.                

           

The Value of an Informed Parent

          As an older parent of a teenaged daughter in middle school, I am not as technologically savvy as a younger parent.  Thank goodness, the school districts have taken into account all the different ability levels of the parents in their student body population.  When our daughter was in elementary school, she would tell us all about her day and bring home all her projects she had made that day but also any notes the teacher had put in her backpack.  We always knew what she was doing, what was due, and any needs she had.  As a teenager, she is not so forthcoming with relaying information. 

            Today, we as parents have the benefit of new and advanced technology of the internet to ease accessing our children’s progress in their educational endeavors.  Schools now have internet access sites where parents can keep abreast of their child’s activities.  The site keeps track of attendance, tardiness, grades, upcoming meetings or parent teacher conferences, even what their child is eating for lunch.  The site for our child’s school in Clark County is Infinite Campus.  The site informs parents about school programs, before or after school, to assist kids with homework and/or assignments needed.  The teacher can make additional money, aid the student to achieve better grades and understanding, and alleviate the limited home/family time spent doing extra homework.  The technology and programs not only benefit the student but help eliminate the time available that parents have to take away from work, traveling to schools, and time spent in lengthy parent/teacher meetings. 

            This technology helps students of all ages, from K-12 and beyond.  At Great Basin College, we have WebCampus that allow students to inbox our instructors at any time and receive timely, if not immediate responses.  We also can access Cranium Café where we can communicate and brainstorm with other classmates.  We can see upcoming assignments due and grades earned on our dashboard.  Another advantage is if an ordered textbook arrives later than the class started, the instructor has the ability to send a pdf of the needed text. 

             Teachers spend so much time in the classroom presenting information, preparing lesson plans, grading papers, trying to keep parents informed, while still trying to make learning fun yet dealing with discipline issues. The internet also can assist teachers in the previously said tasks by aiding in preparing lesson plans.  The teacher can input a subject and learn several options for that educational discipline.  Specifically, the website I researched gave five sites found as valuable to both students and teachers.  Technology & Young People, 21^st Century Business and Education, The Leading Organization for Educational Technology, Internet Student Information Systems, and finally, Teachers Web.   All of these modern technologies benefit students, teachers, and parents, all with the same goal in mind.  

            The only limitations I can foresee are a parent’s lack of availability of internet access and the knowledge of how to take advantage of the technology assessable to them.  Once again, as an older parent, I am not as technologically savvy to take advantage of all the mediums available, but I am learning.   

The Value of a Second Language

          How valuable is a second language to a child?  Planning to go into the teaching profession, this question weighed on my mind.  I wanted to find out not only the advantages for students being bi-lingual going from K through 12, but also the public schools that offered this extra curriculum for students.  In 2012, the Beloit School District in Wisconsin offered a dual language program for 72 students for the school year of 2012-2013.  A survey was sent out to K through 4 parents asking if they were interested in a program that would allow their children to learn both Spanish and English starting at the kindergarten level.  The school board voted and implemented a trial option for parents that expressed a desire to add this tool for their child’s early educational development.  The 72 students were divided in half, with 36 Spanish speaking only students and 36 English speaking only students who would start in kindergarten with one half of their day spent in English and the other spent in Spanish.  Both languages would be taught twice during the day, while math would be taught only in English to aid students to prepare for state tests.  The social studies and sciences were taught in Spanish for the reason that most of the social studies and sciences are rooted in Latin.  The students would advance to the first grade were a new batch of students would follow in their footsteps and continue on their journey through middle school.  I thought right away that this was a great plan if you had the given diversity in your student population.

          This map visually demonstrates my concern about the lack of students entering kindergarten that only speak Spanish.  Given that children learn better from each other and when you have children in the classroom speaking the language, they learn the language faster than if the teacher was the only one speaking the language.  As you can see by the map there are a lot of states that have a very small Spanish speaking demographic as to others that are heavily saturated.  In the case of Beloit School District in Wisconsin, which has a lower Spanish speaking population, a waiting list started to form as soon as the program was offered.  Parents with 3-year-olds were signing up interested in the kindergarten program.  There two decades of research that supports the program, and given that younger students have a much easier time learning a second language this is the optimal time to implement this learning program.  The research also shows that students who know two languages will usually outperform the students who only know one language.  Since the program is designed with an equally divided student body that has one who speaks Spanish and the other who speaks English, the advantage to the southwestern states really stands out.  Of course, this is depending on the political agenda and scholastic requirements in each school district.  My personal concerns are that social bias will continue to influence our abilities to offer an added skill that can aid our children throughout their education, future employment and cultural unification.  Never forget that America is a country that was built on uniting diversity. 

The Value of a Good Teacher

            When I decided to return to school and further my education I had to consider what career direction I wanted to work towards.  At first I had an interest in the study of natural resources for a career that would allow me to work independently and in the outdoors, also this career choice would fulfill one of my private joys, the ability to know and understand all of the natural resources that our right out my own backdoor.  However, as soon as I started my continued education I discovered that my growing knowledge was extremely beneficial for my own family.  I have a daughter that is in middle school and was struggling with her math skills.  She was staring down the barrel of a failing grade in math.  I started working with her to help raise her grade.  Right away I realized that without my decision to further my education I would not be up for the challenge.  After spending some time with her math teacher and experiencing this amazing impact that I had on my daughter my career choice changed to that of becoming a teacher. 

          When I decided to head my career path towards teaching I considered where my skills could be best served.  When considering a career in teaching there are multiple venues to practice your craft.  Given that I have a daughter that is still between K through 12 and after my experience with her, I decided right away to rule out upper level teaching divisions.  That left me three platforms to teach from, internet, private schools and public schools.  My immediate bias leaned towards public schools for three major reasons.  First I believed that the growing pressure on public schools was too much for the deflating public school teacher population to handle.  With classes ranging from 25 to up to 35 students and teacher salaries not keeping up with their financial investment that teachers put in their higher education, the growing demand for people to fulfill these positions, not for financial reasons but for community and service, stood out.  Second I have always realized the value of education in all of its facets.  We all learn things in a different way.  For example, for one person hands on works best, while for another repetition is the key, and some are able to pick things up almost instantaneously.  Others learn by watching someone else perform the given task and mimicking their example.  The public-school system offers all of these teaching methods for its student population, as opposed to an internet or homeschool situation that does not offer the student the same kind of interaction with other students on a up close personal way.  That leaves me to my last reason, the benefits of not only having to excel in a social situation, but the rewards that students can make by experiencing the challenges that comes from competition that can have a life lasting advantage in not only their career paths, or further educational goals, but also relationship skills.  I would appreciate other people’s feedback on where students receive the ultimate experience in their individual educational path from K through 12.