Using Ed Bloggers as a Resource

Since before I started this blog (all seven days ago), I skimmed through a couple DC teachers' blogs to learn more about their DCPS experience to help me make a better informed decision about choosing DCTF or PGCTF. Needless to say, every single blog scared me shirtless. While every blogger seemed to love, love, love their students, the same couldn't be said for the bureaucracy of DCPS. The idea of shaky job security, unsupportive principals and less than stellar teacher's union made me decide against DCTF and DCPS for now. I'll try again when I'm better suited to navigate the educational maze.

Anyway, back to the topic. Ed bloggers' blogs are such a fun read (DCPS or not), but I'm trying to start from the beginning of each person's blog so I can absorb as much of their experience as possible. Soo, I have a lot of reading ahead of me! Right now I just read through (life) lessons and tests from a first-year teacher (who is in DCTF). Below are some thoughts that came up during my reading expedition. (On another note, I hope bloggers don't mind my gathering information from their sites for my own opinion-making.)

• "Even when parents' income and wealth is comparable, African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and immigrants for whom English is not a first language lag behind English-speaking, native-born, white students."
• So often achievement gaps are traced back to 1. race, 2. wealth or 3. gender. Since it is clear here that wealth does not play an important factor in achievement and gender is not discussed, I wonder what it is about race that perpetuates differences between learners. Is it how teachers perceive students of these races? Is it that teachers negatively change the way they teach when they see the students that they're working with? Is it the overarching culture of learning that each race is stereotyped for? I keep reading that we need to close the achievement gap for those who do not have the same opportunities as their peers. Wealthier students often have better educated parents and more opportunities. So if these students have well-educated parents and several open doors - what's causing the discrepancy? I can understand why equally wealthy ELL students might lag, but the other racial groups puzzle me.
• "Schools in America are dangerous places.  According to a 1991 study by the Centers for Disease Control, approximately one in twenty-five high school students carries a gun...It strikes me that while metal detectors may prevent a few guns from coming into the school, they have no real impact on the children's sense of safety.  Children simply get the message 'if you're going to shoot someone, it will not be in school. You must shoot them coming to school, or going home from school, but not in the school building."..School is too often the child's learning ground about the impotence of adult authority when it comes to violence." (from Geoffrey Canada in Fist Stick Knife Gun - adding to my reading list... now)
• While I didn't enter school until 1993, this statistic startles me because I think of schools today as much more dangerous than schools "back then". I hardly ever felt unsafe, but to think that in that day and age violence was that prevalent just outside of schools seems surprising to me. I imagine that that statistic is much higher now, but perhaps I was just shielded from the idea of kids carrying guns as a child. But with that said, gun control. I think it's really necessary. Kids have no place being around such things and I hope that I will never have to deal with that kind of issue. This brings me to another issue. Aside from teaching our students content and course knowledge, we need to take time, regularly, to discuss life. The value of it, the improvement of it, the possibilities of it. We're not just teaching our students to be successful test takers, we're teaching our students to be become better citizens for a better society. And as if it's not clear, teachers have the greatest and most difficult job in the world because they hold so much at stake. Wake up in the morning (not feeling anything like P. Diddy, hopefully) and say to yourself, "Well, just another day of inspiring a student and changing the world."