"High Stakes Community Schools"

I thought this debate we did on Monday night was very interesting. I really liked the idea of a "mock school board" meeting because I really think it put things into perspective for me. Someday this is going to be us! It's going to be us fighting for our rights and teachers and us receiving new curriculum changes and ideas to improve our schools. I think this debate served a really good purpose of making us truly think what we believe in. That is what I really enjoy about this class is that fact that everyday we are challenged to think what would we do in this situation? I really like an open minded class like this where everyone's opinion are heard and we are all defending our opinions. In this, I think that this hypothetical situation of "High Stakes" schools was perfect in the way of challenging our beliefs and depicting the fine line between too much structure versus none at all. For my group, we chose to be the supporting parents of high achieving students for the proposal. It was interesting to stand on that side of the debate because obviously many people in the room were much against it. At first when we chose this support group I wasn't so sure I actually agreed with the proposal fully. But, after looking into the points it had and talking with my group members, it actually seemed pretty reasonable. Maybe not so extreme about the things the teachers would have to go through, but the general idea of the proposal had a lot of good ideas! We talked about the strengths of this proposal in our group and we came up with a lot of different ideas. Mostly we said that yes, we do support this idea as parents of higher achieving students because not only does this plan raise the bar for our students, but ALL students in general and if you set this bar high, kids will strive to reach it. We also talked about how this more individualistic idea with each student would give these students much more motivation to achieve. I feel a lot of this proposal is much needed in this school district. So most of these things do seem extreme, but there really isn't anything wrong with a lot of the ideas, what are they going to hurt? There is so much more to bring up about the debate, however I think in general terms it was great way for us to learn the material. I think interaction like this is key to remembering certain ideas and for developing us into proper teachers. It's great to see different techniques our professors use because someday we will most likely be incorporating them into our daily routine! I really enjoyed this hypothetical debate.