ACT Concerns: Corporate Pandering or Helpful Tool?

By Unknown found on insidehighered.com

In a recent statistical announcement from the American College Testing (ACT) Inc. “The national average scores on the subject area sections of the ACT—math, English, reading, and science—as well as the composite score, all dropped slightly, along with the percentage of students hitting college- and career-ready benchmarks” this harsh decline in student readiness has raised the air-raid sirens for the big-wigs at ACT Inc. and has, in a panic, caused ACT Inc. to incorporate a couple of new methods which allow students to succeed with greater ease (Campbell, 2019).  The first method, which will be incorporated as of “September 2020” is the options for students to retake sections of the ACT (Gewertz, 2019). The base price of the Act will cost “$52” and will be split up into “four required sections: English, math, reading, and science” with the option for students to “opt for a fifth section, in writing, for an additional $16” and while section retakes have yet to be given a solid market price “Pontzer (Mary Michael Pontzer) said it will cost less than retaking the entire test”. The Next major section is the introduction of a “superscore” a type of testing which will allow student, who’ve taken the test multiple times, to have their best scores from each of their aforementioned test results and use those as their official ACT results (ACT Inc., 2019). In simpler terms “When students send scores from two or more test sittings, they calculate a score that shows a student’s best scores for each subject, across all dates. ACT will now do those calculations automatically and include them in students’ score reports” (Gewertz, 2019).

            Now, with all of this said, one might wonder to themselves: “what is the public opinion about this very large scale reform?”, and I’m glad you asked faceless audience I’m giving a voice to. The immediate opinion from the public-corporate angle was “Generally, testing experts saw the ACT changes as making the ACT more competitive against the SAT, but they were divided on whether it would help low-income students” (Jaschik, 2019).  But the uncertainty doesn’t stop there, “Robert Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest: National Center for Fair & Open Testing” declared that “clear winners” would “include ACT and the test-prep industry ‘which will attract even more revenue from upper-income families seeking to maximize the scores reported to admissions offices’” (Jaschik, 2019).  Mr. Schaeffer even went as far as to call this reform a “shrewd revision” that will “almost certainly boost ACT’S admissions testing market share versus the SAT” (Jaschik, 2019).  So needless to say, the initial responses to this reform have been lukewarm at best and total distain from at least one very vocal mind.

            Now, from the perspective of a prospective-teacher, or even an actual teacher, I don’t see that much can be done about the lukewarm responses that his reform has seen. Since a teacher, or prospective-teacher, has very little power over a corporate decision. One, which I might add, has very little to even due with the teacher- outside of potentially changing common core- due to ACT Inc. declaring that the tests “will be available only to students who take the test in national testing centers on Saturdays, starting in September 2020. ACT administers 62 percent of its exams this way. Students or their families pay for the exam” additionally “the rest of the students who take the ACT take it for free during the school day, as part of a contract their districts or states signed with ACT.” (Gewertz, 2019). Thus, everything is more-or-less out of our control.

            Let’s take a step back and think about this from our perspective- the prospective teachers. What can we do to help this decision move forward accordingly or put a wrench in the machine. Well, the way I see it, whether you’re for or against this reform, it’s going to be a reality. So, what I personally think could be done is have us teachers- spread thin as we are- figure out ways to help students not need to retake these test numerous times and instead let the lower income students take advantage of the proposed lower prices. While we can fight change- and we should since a lie (or in this case an action) unchallenged becomes truth- this is a time where we’d be wasting our time fighting. What we should do is look to take advantage of this system for the sake of our students and throw aside our own petty pride- just this once.

         

            Finally, let’s discuss the impact this little mess would have on us. Remember my musings earlier about how this could effect common core? Well, it’s still only a musing, but due to the decline in student success and students lack of readiness “over the past five years” there has been a prevailing method which effects student success which is “The consistently good performance of students taking the core curriculum sends a message to educators to start offering “rigorous courses to all students,” said Marten Roorda, ACT’s chief executive officer” (Campbell, 2019). Which again, is only the musings of a college student, but from what Marten Roorda said, this could mean more rigorous accommodation mandated from teachers too. Though, alas, only time will tell this story in full. 

References:

Campbell, M. (2019, November 4). College Readiness Concerns Raised by Latest Round of ACT Scores. Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/10/30/college-readiness-concerns-raised-by-latest-round.html.

College and Career Readiness Report. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.act.org/content/act/en/research/reports/act-publications/condition-of-college-and-career-readiness-2019-preview.html.

Gewertz, C. (2019, October 22). ACT to Change How Students Retake Exam, Add 'Superscore'. Retrieved from https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/10/08/act-to-change-how-students-retake-exam.html.

Inside Higher Ed. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2019/10/14/act-reforms-seen-giving-it-edge-vs-sat.

An Unorthodox Look at Technology's Importance

By Unknown found on ounews.co

Technology in the classroom is a uphill struggle for most, myself included, due to how entropic the topic is between the venerated teachers and the new guard who are slowly taking their place as the successors to those grizzled veterans who came before us. Though, no matter your view on technology in education, both of us have to admit that it’s not going anywhere, and if we want to make the most of education for our students we have to learn about it. But for those who don’t like technology and are forced to learn about it anyway find solace in this: like a good comedian, it’s important to know the material your making a satire of so you can make you punchline that little bit more potent. So think of your subjugation to technology as a means of creating better material when you want to rip into it.

Now, when we talk about technology in the classroom some of the first thoughts in your mind might be: computers, computer software, websites, etc. And there are all what we’ll be talking about, but have we ever considered that there’s more to the great-wide world of technology that could be integrated into education? While I’m certain many of my readers have thought about how extensively technology can be integrated into the general classroom, have we taken a second to think about alternatives to our classic use of technology? To be frank, I know I hadn’t before embarking on my research to find alternative, forms of digital technology. So, let’s discuss these discoveries together by observing an unorthodox use of digital technology.

By Unknown on bristol.ac.uk

Let’s begin with a truly unorthodox idea of technology and its value. Role-play games (RPGs for short) as a literary tool for students. Now, this might sound crazy to some, but to those who’ve played these types of games, you might know how well these types of story-based games influence your own writing style and force you to think creatively for both character creation and story-telling. Let’s look at an example of the integration of this bizarre method with an article that talks about the very same ideas as I proposed. In “Gaming as a Tool for Narrative Writing” by Suzie Boss, we get first hand accounts of from teachers about their creative expeditions with their would-be adventurers. Boss speaks about how teachers use “the power of gaming to turn even reluctant student writers into enthusiastic storytellers” which is highlighted by teachers using game like World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, or Final Fantasy XIV to teach their students by sending students on their own personal “hero’s journey” (Boss, 2019). 

By Unknown on Edutopia

Though, RPGs aren’t the only way that digital technology can be integrated into the classroom. There are fiction based websites that allow students to express themselves in whatever kind of world they want to be a part of by presenting students the ability to write openly. In Kathryn Nieves’ article: “5 Fiction Writing Tools That Spark Students’ Creativity”, Nieves talks about the use of websites like Story Speaker which uses Goggle Docs and “allows students to create choose-your-own-adventure stories that can be integrated with a Google Home smart speaker or any device with Google Assistant” (Nieves, 2019). And this is only the first of several websites that permit this kind of open ended writing. The next one, and one I’m rather fond of, is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short) that has fairly recently incorporated a “young writers program” to engage students from K-12^th grade into the wacky-stressing inducing world of writing a whole novel in the course of a single month.

These stand as perfect examples of why technology can be valuable if used correctly. Through the simple use of a couple of websites or free game trials we see that students can become actively engaged in the work we have them do and make something out of what would traditionally be called, silly ideas, and make a real- positive environments for these kids to learn intensely valuable writing and creative thinking skills.

At that, while I’d love to keep talking about such a multi-dimensional conversation about valuable tools for teaching, I think I’ll release everyone from my ramblings. Though, I’ll leave a couple of articles that talk more in-depth about a lot of what I talked about for those interested.

The aforementioned “couple” of similar works:

https://www.edutopia.org/article/cultivating-literacy-skills-interactive-fiction

https://www.edutopia.org/article/teaching-empathy-video-games

References:

Nieves, K. (2019, August 14). 5 Fiction Writing Tools That Spark Students' Creativity. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/article/5-fiction-writing-tools-spark-students-creativity.

Boss, S. (2019, May 6). Gaming as a Tool for Narrative Writing. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/article/gaming-tool-narrative-writing.

Socrates: The Unorthodox Father of Philosophical Debate

Image by Unknown found on azquotes.com

A Brief History on Socrates

Socrates, one of humanities greatest minds, had what some might consider an odd history. For starters, Socrates was by no means a beautiful man, having been said to more easily resemble the mythical man-beast: Satyr than a man of thirty-year in age (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2018). Which, to some, this might not mean anything, but in reality, during early Athenian culture (For reference, between: 470–399 BCE) visual beauty was a mark of high importance for political figureheads as beauty, at the time, was marked by the beauty of the gods and goddess which had been sculpted during the time and made beauty equivalent to divinity (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2018).

Additionally, Socrates was a bit odd-ball in his ideologies for the time, since while “any self-respecting Athenian male would prefer fame, wealth, honors, and political power to a life of labor” Socrates chose a life of poverty (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2018). This choice of poverty and general vagabond status had played a large part of Socrates’ ‘teachings’, though, it is said, that Socrates never saw himself as a teacher. Since, the “image then current of teachers and students: teachers were viewed as pitchers pouring their contents into the empty cups that were the students” though Socrates preferred, what would later be known as the ‘Socratic Method’, which would require the individual speaking with Socrates to actively engage him in conversation and workout what questions they have, instead of being given the answer (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2018). 

The final bit of Socrates’ unorthodox behaviors was in his regards for gender. Unlike his peers, Socrates “seemed to have a higher opinion of women than most of his companions had, speaking of “men and women,” “priests and priestesses,” and naming foreign women as his teachers: Socrates claimed to have learned rhetoric from Aspasia of Miletus, the de facto spouse of Pericles” which painted him as, once again, ‘strange’ since most women of the time, where usually uneducated and where forced to spend much of their time in their homes in isolation until they’d reached puberty (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2018). To which, even still, when it came to women and the concepts of intercourse Socrates “refused the physical advances of even his favorite (Plato, Symposium 219b–d) and kept his eye on the improvement of their, and all the Athenians’, souls (Plato, Apology 30a–b)” above his own worldly-desires (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2018).  Dryads grassy

The Socratic Method of Socrates

While Socrates did not declare himself a teacher, it was undeniable that he was a scholar, which can bee seen in his influence he had on the people he spoke with. Beginning with his “greatest contribution to philosophy” which was causing intellectual/scholastic pursuits away from “physical sciences” and towards the esoteric and ethical world of abstract thought (Mark, 2019)  Additionally, a concept already mentioned, and still renowned for its usefulness even to this day, is the ‘Socratic Method’ which shakes the foundation of the interrogated persons moral/ethical beliefs by “asking continual questions until a contradiction was exposed, thus proving the fallacy of the initial assumption” (University of Chicago Law School(Garrett), 1998).

Finally, one of Socrates’ most interesting philosophies, is his belief that there is a no such thing as a “weakness of will” since everyone acts accordingly to their own virtues, even if they won’t admit it (Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d.).  Socrates believed this because ”once one knows what virtue is, it is impossible not to act virtuously. Anyone who fails to act virtuously does so because he incorrectly identifies virtue with something it is not” which is further indicative of Socrates’ belief in one’s actions, virtues, ideals, and so forth, being questionable and widely up to debate and further plays into the ‘Socratic Method’ (Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d.). 

Socrates in the Modern World

In the spirit of wrapping this up, let us take a look into what Socrates did for us, in the modern age, and how his groundbreaking way of thinking changed the very way we consider reality to this day. To which, I must add before we reach the finally, I (the author) was homeschooled, back when homeschooling meant something, so I do not have any sort of serious time in a public school outside of a couple of classes I had taken semesters ago (as of writing this) and as such will be giving my interpretation of Socrates’ influence on education from a strictly observational stand point.

Now, with all that out of the way, let us dive into to a man of philosophy, academics, and strangeness for the final time, in the modern world. From what I can see, with the little experience I have, Socrates touched the souls of not just his people, but of generations. I’ve seen what can only be called the modernistic approach to the ‘Socratic method’ used in nearly every classroom I’d observed in those few semesters ago. Though, unlike its ancient counterpart, the modern approach of asking a question to answer another, is used to teach and allow for hands-on-learning as opposed to its original intention, which was to make someone see the mistakes in their logic and question their ways of thinking.

Additionally, Socrates’ philosophy of women being capable of teaching and being educated has never been truer. With woman holding more jobs in education then men, we can see now, better then ever, that Socrates knew what women where capable of and how mighty a force woman is in the name of education and philosophical betterment.

With as knowledgeable as Socrates was and as influential as he became, it leaves one to ponder: was Socrates a genius, years ahead of his time, and a visionary misunderstood by his era? Or was he the ancient equivalent of our modern idea of the starving artist?

References:

Nails, D. (2018, February 6). Socrates. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/socrates/.

Mark, J. J. (2019, October 11). Socrates. Retrieved from https://www.ancient.eu/socrates/.

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.iep.utm.edu/socrates/#SH1b.

The Socratic Method. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.law.uchicago.edu/socratic-method.

Life and personality. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Socrates/Life-and-personality.

Best_Schools. (2019, February 25). 20 Major Philosophers & Their Big Ideas. Retrieved from https://thebestschools.org/magazine/major-philosopher-ideas/.

Teachers the Paragon’s of Diversity: Or Are We?

Photo by Unknown on education.cu-portland.edu,

We American’s live in a country commonly called a “melting pot of cultures”, and for good reason, since America has been a place for the repressed and beaten to call sanctuary for some time. But, if that’s the case, if America has come so far culturally, why do we repress African-American, Hispanic/Latino, Islamic, and Asian people? What right do we have to look a starving Hispanic family in the eyes and tell them ‘get a job’? What right to we have to assume that a “rough looking” African-American person is going to rob us when the gangly looking Caucasian guy next to you is probably already in your back pocket stealing your wallet. What’s worse, you probably backed-up into the Caucasian guy because you thought you’d be safer with him.

And do any of us know why we feel this way? Why we don’t look an African-American in the eyes? Why we’re afraid of them? Well, I think it was best stated in a quote from Vernā Myers, who, when speaking about a murder of a young African American man, said: “This violence, this brutality, is really something that's part of our national psyche. It's part of our collective history.” (Myers, 3:06). The “history” Vernā speaks about, is a history of slavery, which for some reason, even though it was out forefather’s who acted as slavers, we, the common collective, still think that African-American people are scary. Even though, we, were the one’s who enslaved them, not the other way around.

What’s even more serious about this, as if the lives of people aren’t serious enough, these prejudices are falling onto child. People, who don’t even know how to add two-plus-two, yet they are experiencing the same kind of cultural despair their parents are. Currently, in America, there are low-income children who are living in fear of weather or not they’ll be spending their early twenties in a college dorm or a prison cell. In a speech made by Alice Goffman during her TedTalk, she says something similar, to the tune of: “What's more, it's poor kids that we're sending to prison, too many drawn from African-American and Latino communities so that prison now stands firmly between the young people trying to make it and the fulfillment of the American Dream.” (Goffman, 2:30). Which, again, begs the question: why?

Well, sadly, the “why” might very well be beyond the understanding of the every-day-joe, but what we can do, as future educators, is make sure that we don’t perpetuate this prejudice. A very important step for a teacher to maintain a positive and prejudice free outlook was stated in the article “Addressing Diversity in Schools: Culturally Responsive Pedagogy” where the author’s declare: “Teacher self-reflection is an important part of the personal dimension. By honestly examining their attitudes and beliefs about themselves and others, teachers begin to discover why they are who they are, and can confront biases that have influenced their value system (Villegas & Lucas, 2002).” (Richards, Peay, Brown, Forde, 2006).

Another point, which can aid in a teacher’s cultural development, was stated well in a blog called: “7 tips for teachers to create a safe school environment” wherein the author: Jeffery Marsh states “ Lobby for safe spaces (or create them). Sometimes a teacher needs to be the one to advocate for the use of school space for clubs and gatherings that the school deems controversial or unimportant. Whether it’s an LGBT or religious or just a hobby club, young people need at least one safe space to make connections with peers and find out they are not alone or freakish or as weird as they may be thinking. A safe space of this kind has several hallmarks. It is clean and respectful. It is private. It is free from other activities and groups. It is free from haters and bullies, whether they are students or teachers who disagree with what the club is offering. If a school refuses to allow a safe space that you know your students need, look for ways to assist with the club outside your school.” (Marsh, 2017). And while that blog’s statement does talk about racial aspects we need to remember two things.

First: That we aren’t speaking singularly about ethnic problems. Many people from diverse backgrounds all face prejudice of different calibers.

Second: Just because the statement doesn’t mention ethnicity doesn’t mean we can’t apply the thought process across different groups.

In conclusion, we, as future educator’s, have a chance to lessen the divide between ethnic, cultural, and personal prejudices if we chose to. We can chose to turn a blind eye to the dark world around us and leave it to rot in its own despair or we can make a difference and help those in need. Not by being heroes, social-justice warriors, or paragon’s of bias-less might who champion the unwanted. But, instead, by being people, real people, who have excepted that we have flaws, emotional baggage, biases, prejudices. What’s important, is that we know about these problems, and strive to be better then them; not for our sake but for the sake of our students.

References:

Myers, V. (n.d.). Transcript of "How to overcome our biases? Walk boldly toward them". Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/verna_myers_how_to_overcome_our_biases_walk_boldly_toward_them/transcript#t-175692.

Goffman, A. (n.d.). Transcript of "How we're priming some kids for college - and others for prison". Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/alice_goffman_college_or_prison_two_destinies_one_blatant_injustice/transcript.

7 tips for teachers on how to create a safe school environment. (2017, May 2). Retrieved from https://blog.ed.ted.com/2017/05/01/7-top-tips-for-teachers-and-anyone-who-works-with-young-people

Richards, Peay, Brown, Forde, (2006) Addressing Diversity in Schools: Culturally Responsive Pedagogy. (2006). Retrieved from https://learn.granite.edu/pluginfile.php/1848530/mod_resource/content/2/Diversity_Brief.pdf