Blog Post #2

Did You Know?

After watching Dr. Strange's version of  the "Did You Know" video, I was not entirely surprised by the facts that were presented. China's level and emphasis on education surpasses the United States by far and many countries other than China have schools that require students to learn a second language, usually English, in order to graduate. There is approximately 18 million English-speaking Chinese with an additional 300 million who are learning to speak English.

The fact about the 25% of  India's population with the highest IQ scores outnumbering the entire population of the United States was fascinating, but at the same time, their 25% is like our entire population considering there are approximately 1 billion people living in India verses our 313,914,040 (2012 census).  It's frightening how far behind the United Sates appears to be educationally compared the countries like China and India.

What does that say about our educators in America? Why aren't our students achieving the same educational level as students over seas? I hope to find the answers as I continue my journey to be an educator.


Mr. Winkle Wakes

I find it very sad that our schools are not being updated as often as they should be. Offices all around the country are updates regularly and school systems around the country are lacking sufficient funding to operate properly. People constantly want to push for better resources for our kids, but no one really seems to want to fork out the cash to do so. I know there are many organization dedicated to help with school funding, but it doesn't seem to be enough.

Students need to be engaged in learning instead of just sitting and listening to a teacher talk all day. That's boring. If they were engaged in an activity on a smart board, iPad or computer, I believe they would retain the information more efficiently.

Importance of Creativity

"All children have talents, but we squander them. Ruthlessly." - Sir Ken Robinson

Creativity is vital to the education of children. Our society is so concerned with either being right or wrong that we trample over the idea that maybe sometimes there is no right or wrong answer. Naturally, children are not afraid of being wrong but as they grow up through the educational systems, they are constantly being fed that being wrong or making a mistake is the worst possible thing to do. But, how will a child ever learn if they do not make mistakes?

Intelligence comes in all shapes and sizes. Just because one does not excel in math or science doesn't mean that they are not intelligent. Our society makes the arts seem unimportant or unnecessary to our children being successful, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Children need to be able to creatively express themselves, but instead, they are told to leave the arts alone because it won't get them anywhere in life. I was told that when I was in elementary and secondary school. I was terrible at math, but I excelled in singing and theatre and my dream was to be on Broadway or be a music educator. However, I was heavily discouraged by people who told me I would never be able to have a well paying job or go very far in life.

Creativity is not only useful in the arts. Creativity should be incorporated into the main subjects in school. Let the children make up a song about addition. Draw or paint the life cycle of a flower. . Act out different event in history. The possibilities are endless!

Instead of stifling creativity, it needs to be encouraged in our educational systems.


Pintrest

I. Love. Pintrest.
I had a pintrest account before this class and even had an education board. I recently started dividing up the board into specific subjects like math, science, social studies and grammar. I found an awesome board by TearchVision and they had TONS of amazing ideas from printables, to lesson plan ideas and much more.

I think pintrest is an amazing site that will be extrmemly helpful in education. There's access to teacher blogs, free resources and an infinite amount of ideas to use in a classroom. I definitely plan on using pintrest once I become a teacher