Curriculum Outlines

When creating a curriculum, all the research I did pointed to certain steps that you should take in order to create something effective and successful.


1. define the objective of the curriculum
2. choose an appropriate title
3. create a scope and a sequence
4. determine a teaching approach
5. build in an assessment component
6. establish a system of curriculum evaluation


Other research I did included an addendum of how to create your own.


http://goldenwestcollege.edu/accreditation2011-2012/evidence/StandardIIA/OnlineCourseAddendum.pdf

Section 504

What is it and What does it do?


Section 504 is a federal law designed to protect the rights of individuals with disabilities in programs and activities that receive Federal financial assistance from the U.S. Department of Education (ED) (ed.gov).


The Section 504 regulations require a school district to provide a "free appropriate public education" (FAPE) to each qualified student with a disability who is in the school district's jurisdiction, regardless of the nature or severity of the disability. Under Section 504, FAPE consists of the provision of regular or special education and related aids and services designed to meet the student's individual educational needs as adequately as the needs of nondisabled students are met.


Section 504 requires recipients to provide to students with disabilities appropriate educational services designed to meet the individual needs of such students to the same extent as the needs of students without disabilities are met. An appropriate education for a student with a disability under the Section 504 regulations could consist of education in regular classrooms, education in regular classes with supplementary services, and/or special education and related services.


The Difference between 504 plan and an IEP.


A student cannot have both a 504 and an IEP. Students who qualify under section 504 must have a 504 plan that outlines the services to be provided. Some students will also qualify under the more stringent IDEA (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act). These students will have an IEP rather than a 504 plan.


For example, if a student needed auxiliary aids and services, that would be under the students 504 plan. If they needed additional accommodations, they would have an IEP.

Differing Fundamental Beliefs

For common issues/ concerns I researched differing fundamental beliefs. Fundamental beliefs can include culture, religion, etc. 

they are present in our classroom and there isnt just one way to go about them because each situation will be different. 

I couldn't find too much on the subject, but the biggest thing I found was to stay neutral. If you have to teach a touchy subject, stay close to the textbook and avoid any bias you may have at all times. 

Research your community and see what the religious affliations there are around the school and in the school as well and familiarize yourself with each one. Research, research, research.

Never single out your students for being of a different belief if you know about it, unless the student is completely comfortable.

Build an assignment for everyone about their families and background. It could help you become comfortable and the students as well. 

The biggest thing in my opinion is to stay neutral and objective as possible. 

West-E Research

Detailed Description:

For my questions, When should I test? Should I take my major or minor first?, I couldn't find a lot of information about them on the website. For these questions, I would say you should consult your university's Education advisor. 

Every school has different education programs and requirements within the program. I don't think the website can tell you exactly when to take it and what to take first, so it could depend on what your school recommends. 

As for whether you should take your major content area test first or your minor, that also depends on your personal preference and what the school advises you do to, as well as taking into consideration the cost of the test.

Experience and Observations:

In my sequence, we were advised to take the West-E in the summer before we student teach in the fall, that way we have time to retake the test if we were to fail. 

I am currently in EDUC 420 and before we are done student teaching, they are wanting our scores for our West-E for our major content area. That is not to say that I cannot take both of them, but they are requiring us to have our scores for our major content area before we are done student teaching in the fall.

Application to Teaching:

In order to become certified, we must have taken and passed the West-E. My questions weren't pressing on the issue of taking the test. Regardless, if we are majoring and minoring in a subject, we have to take the tests related to that content area to be able to teach it.

Application to Students:

I don't think anyone was too concerned about which test to take first, but more so the question of when to take it. I would recommend talking to an advisor at your university for more guidance. The website offers test dates and I would take the test on the dates that work for you and around the appropriate time you are advised. There wasn't too much research on the topics, but it is always helpful to talk with an advisor and have them guide you in the correct path. 

Learning Letter

I've always struggled finding out who I am as a person. 

I have spent the last 10 months trying to rebuild my life from the ground up, and this quarter helped me to do. 

This most likely isn't going to be the typical learning letter like most students will turn in. Of course, you are interested in what I learned as a future teacher or English/Language Arts, but I think what I learned as a person is far more beneficial. 

I stated that I was rebuilding my life from the ground up because I feel like I am. In May 2013, I ended my relationship to my fiancé of almost five years. By no means was it easy to let go of something that for five years, was all I knew. We became a pair, rather than a pair of individuals. All of my plans were centered around him and couldn't imagine planning anything without him. I slowly found myself forgetting how it was to be on my own. What made Jordan happy? What kind of movies did I like? What music did I like? What kind of toppings did I like on my pizza? We became one before I knew who I was. 

I find myself still partly grieving, though we have both moved on. I am only twenty one years old, but I feel the need to discover who I am right away. I know teaching is what I am supposed to do with my life but right now I am just not ready.

No one is expecting me to 100% ready, but I feel so deeply in my heart that right now is just not my time. The courses I took this quarter and the work we needed to do solidified that as well. No one is forcing me to teach full time after student teaching, but I feel like I am letting people down. I just feel like I need more experience, more living, under my belt to be the best teacher I can be for my future students.

I need to know what my personal style is before I know what my teaching style is. I need to better Jordan before I can better Ms. Lehman. This quarter truly showed me where I want to go in my life and for me, it has made all the difference. 

Poe and Alexie

ALEXIE:
I have had the privilege of reading Alexie's work in almost every English I have had during my college career. His work is often banned from schools because of the "inappropriate" material that they contain, but I think they are pure genius. I was so happy when I saw that an Alexie novel was on our reading list at the beginning of the quarter. I have only dabbled in his poetry, but a novel is just as good. I love that he is a local writer and his work hits home because of the proximity of them. Spokane is my stomping ground and I am so grateful to live in such a city.
The novel was a little intense. I found myself struggling to relate at first, but then made the little connections along the way. I could relate to being the new kid in school, the death of family, and the experience of having a crush on the popular kid in school. I just wanted the situation for Arnold to get better because he had experienced so much in his life already.
Although I love Alexie's personal story and his work, I probably wouldn't include this particular text in my classroom. I think it is a little too mature for the middle school level and it wouldn't exactly fit in the demographic of Horizon Middle School in Spokane Valley. I would recommend the students to read it on their own time for pleasure, but I wouldn't have it implemented in my class. I think there are other works by Alexie that would fit more appropriately.




POE:
I have always had a love for Poe and his mysterious ways. I remember reading "Tell Tale Heart" in eighth grade and becoming so fond of Poe and his works. "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall" was strange. I always had a really hard time understanding this story, as I usually do with his works. I am excited to see what Paul does with this and how he goes through the story with the class. I am still trying to wrap my mind around the story. It was just so strange.

Readicide

Out of everything the book covered, the one part that stuck out to me the most was the part captioned "The Danger of Word Poverty". This stuck out to me because I have done prior research on the achievement gap of vocabulary development between low SES students compared to high SES students. 

I am placed as a student teacher at Horizon Middle School in the Spokane Valley. The students primarily come from middle to upper class families and the school has a free and reduced percentage of 29.5% as of May 2013. I am an AVID tutor at Garry Middle School located in the outskirts of Hillyard. The free and reduced lunch rate at Garry is about 82%. 

I became interested in this topic because of Language Use and Structure taught by Tracey McHenry. We were covering language acquisition and how lower SES children are less exposed to a large range of words, where as children of high SES are exposed to more. Some figures show that there is a gap of some 382 to 187 words per hour. Readicide on page 32 states that "the average young middle-class child hears 32 million more spoken words than the young underprivileged child by age five". 

This is not to say that children who come from an underprivileged home can't excel in school but the statistics are working against their favor. 

The book gives many statistics about children and test scores which is interesting, but doesn't get me to where I want to be within my research. I conducted my own miniature research project by testing my eighth students at Horizon Middle School because there happened to be a transfer student from Garry in my class. I gave them a list of common words that an eighth grader should know and let them all study the list and definitions for 5 minutes, then gave them the simple quiz consisting of 20 questions with a variety of matching, fill in the blank, and multiple choice. Student A (from Horizon) received a score of 23/25 and the transfer student from Garry, student B, received a score of 9/25. 

This could have been an unfair or not a credible way of testing the theory, but still the results are pretty shocking. 

The section talks about standardized testing and how the underprivileged students are affected when it comes to taking these tests. Below I have attached a photo of the differences between the schools MSP scores for the 2012-13 school year. 

The results of the scores only proves what I believe and what Kelly Gallagher wrote about. 

I Read It, But I Don't Get It

One of the things I really notice in my placement classroom is the resistance to reading the students have. They are supposed to have an Accelerated Reader book from the school library at all times because they need a certain amount of points for the trimester. Even with books they can choose they have resistance to reading them. 

Another thing that I have noticed about the students is their reluctance to read informational texts. I'm not sure if it's because of the material that it covers or because they don't know how to read it.

One of the strategies my cooperating teacher uses that reminded me of the strategies in the book, is called "barfing". She has them read a piece of text and respond to it with their thoughts. They are to avoid to using the words "what" or "interesting". They should define any words that they don't understand and anything that they want to know more about they should underline or highlight. My cooperating teacher uses this to help them break down the text and understand what they are reading. Too often we read something and at the end we ask "what the heck did I just read?" I know that I do that often and have to re-read more once.

One thing I really liked was how the author brought up sharing our experiences with reading and our struggles and how we worked through them as a way to build a community with our classroom. I think that teachers are looked at as being perfect human beings that don't really struggle because we are teachers. It is important to let our students know that we struggle. It makes us more relatable and eases the tension that the student may not understand something right away. 

I also liked her strategies of making inferences with the text which is very Common Core based and her strategy of determining what is important within the text and synthesizing the information to create new thinking. I think these are strategies that we should employ in our classroom because of their relation to  Common Core. 

Social Justice

I took social justice as more of a broad term instead of relating it to education because in order to relate it to education, I feel like I need to understand it as a whole. 

Social justice to me seems to be how people can function within their community or their society; that each and every person has the equal opportunities to education, health, work rights, etc. in life. I can think of many different examples of social justice within our history and the world's history. One that instantly came to my mind was that of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960's following Martin Luther King Jr. I'm not even sure if it applies to social justice, but it is what came to my mind when I heard the term. 

Jim Crow laws were an act against social justice, making it so that Blacks were not granted the equal rights that Whites were granted. They were subjected to separate facilities such as schools, drinking fountains, and restrooms. To this day, we do not have an Equal Rights Amendment that has, throughout our history, not been ratified to prevent acts such as social justice. 

One text that comes to mind when I think of social justice is "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King Jr. I chose this text because the throughout the letter King is constantly battling the meaning of justice and injustice within his community. He is writing this from a jail in Birmingham after he was imprisoned. In the letter addressed to Clergymen, he states "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects directly, affects all destiny".  Also he states that "any law that uplifts human personality in just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust". 

Reaching social justice is something that King strived for. When we stray away from what is just, we dehumanize and we strip away individuality and identity. 

We can relate this into the classroom by letting our students know that they all start with a blank canvas and all judgements and stereotypes are put aside. Our students should know that no matter their SES, gender, race, or ethnicity, their opportunities with education are endless. 

The Pedagogical Dimensions of Critical Pedagogy

I have always wanted to teach inner city. This article was interesting to me because it pertained to multiculturalism. I really liked the section about teaching texts that are taught in the class and how they can be taught in a multicultural way. I think that any text can be adapted to a way that can be applicable to all cultures and can be related to everyone. I remember from The Freedom Writer's, Erin Gruwell wanted to teach her students Romeo and Juliet because of the "gang" mentality of the Capulets and Montegues. Even though the actual text has nothing to do with race or culture, she found it applicable to the students' lives. I do like the idea of integrating texts of people with color as the protagonist but not simply to cater to the duiferent cultures in the classroom. I think that it can help the students learn different perspectives (CCSS) and help with the cultural gap. 

I like the idea of hegemonic texts being local and included in everyday lives. I think that it makes it more relevant and more closer to home for the students. 

I think it gets really tricky when it comes to teaching traditional texts, but I think there is a way to teach it so that the biases of "American" backgrounds, such as industrial schooling does. 

I remember learning about Vygotsky in Educational Psychology and I liked some points that he had and that he based his theories off of. I liked that the reading pointed out that "tapping into young people's everyday experiences as participants in popular culture to scaffold academic literacies". In my opinion, when a teacher makes whatever text he or she may be reading in class more current and relate it to the lives of the students, it makes it more interesting and more fun to read. In some curriculum's, the texts are still the same, classic pieces of literature like The Odyssey, Romeo and Juliet, Huck Finn,  The Great Gatsby, etc. We cannot change the literature that we are given to teach, but we can change how we teach it and how the students can learn it.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

While reading this, I couldn't help but think of Plato's Theaetetus. I know that this article is about education theory, which is kind of what Socrates and Plato were about. This text was very overwhelming and tough to sift through, though it was intriguing and insightful.
The word pedagogy has come up in the past couple weeks in my classes more than I have ever heard before in my entire life. I remember first hearing the word "pedagogy" in a learning community of English, Philosophy, and Psychology at Spokane Falls CC. I remember how well it went with Theaetetus. 
How do we justify what we teach? How do we teach the way we do? All of those things are pedagogy. As we are going through the education process, we are learning our own pedagogy.
While trying to sift through this text, I really liked the analogy of teachers being depositors and how they just deposit information into their students and their students just take it as they will, not reciprocating.
Again, the text is very Socratic in the way that he turns to discussion as a means of acquiring knowledge. Through discussions and through questioning. We learn so much from one another and we can grow so much. I think it is such a genuine skill and process to learn through questioning and through dialogue. The students are learning to form a voice and form an opinion, rather than thinking their own opinion is correct. Questioning should always be welcomed in a classroom, as well as dialogue and discussions. Which is really how freedom in a classroom is established. The students should be able to have a voice in the classroom and express their opinion. They should always take part in their education and their learning.
I really enjoyed thinking about students as "containers" and that we are filling those containers with what we teach. The fuller the container, the better of a teacher you may be. Some may agree or some may disagree with that statement, but as education is evolving and shifting, the students should embrace the autonomy that the teacher is giving them. I think this is something that the article touched upon, in so many words.

Common Core

I think that I am entering a time when education is not only changing, but transforming. I could not be more interested and excited to see where it takes me and my students.
The talk about Common Core State Standards has been looming in my mind since I took Intro to Education in the Fall 2010 but I didn't really understand what it was all about.
When I got placed at Horizon Middle School, Common Core was all I heard and all lessons were planned around.
I was getting used to having the words "Common Core" float around and implementing them into my lesson plans.
I feel like the transition to Common Core will be beneficial to students because it focuses on key concepts that are essential for growth throughout grades 1-12. As teachers, we don't just simply teach a concept and move on, each standard builds upon one another instead of just teaching it and never using it again. Though that may be beneficial for our students, it could also be detrimental. If a student does not grasp a certain concept and we move on to another standard, they could fall behind. I haven't noticed this too much in the classroom, but it is just a worst case scenario.
I am very impressed with the accessibility of the CCSS. It doesn't have to be a 900 page document that costs as much as the pages that are contained in it. Although a paper copy is very nice to have, I think the recent dependence on technology serves a great purpose for this. I have the CCSS app on both my phone and my iPad. It's nice to be able to access them at random times during the day or at night because of my crazy schedule. Also, the app was free to download and is easy to navigate through.
The only negative I have about CCSS is that it isn't prevalent to every subject area such as the arts. This doesn't effect me personally, but I know music majors in my sequence are struggling with the transition to CCSS.
Overall, I am very excited to see where CCSS will take education.

Discussion in a Democratic Society

I loved reading this article because this is exactly what my master teacher teaches the students. She introduced the activity called Fishbowl. It is very similar to a Socratic Seminar. The students would receive a text to analyze and a guiding question at the beginning of the week. They would read the article and decide whether or not it agreed with the guiding question. They would have to make an argument and support it with textual evidence. The goal of the Fishbowl was not to decide which stance was correct, but to get a deeper understanding of each other's opinions and how to make and support a claim. As the article states "...discussion imply a process of giving and taking, speaking and listening, describing and witnessing..." which are all concepts that we stress to the students. The point of a discussion is not to debate, although sometimes that's what it leads to, but to gather a deeper understanding of one another.

Whether it is called a discussion, conversation, or dialogue, it was always my favorite thing to do in a class. Like the teacher in the article, I get so excited to have my mind be changed by a point that someone has called attention to. I think one of the greatest things is going into a discussion thinking something else and having your mind be changed by the end of a discussion. I like hearing everyone's side of the story and everyone's opinions about the issue at hand. Sometimes I do more listening than speaking just because I am so engulfed in the conversations that were happening.

The article points out the goals and the concepts that we stress during Fishbowl: hospitality, participation, mindfulness, humility, mutuality, deliberation, appreciation, hope, and autonomy. We highly stress all of these to the children because they are what makes a great, appropriate discussion.
The greatest thing about having Fishbowls continually throughout the year is that we continue to see growth. Every time we have one, we see new voices emerge and such deep, higher level thinking that is amazing to see in a seventh grade class.

I love that the packet included fifteen benefits of  discussion. I could see myself using this list in the future and posting in my own classroom. Number 10 was starred on the list and I think that it is one of the most important, with or without the star. The teacher in the article said that he knew he didn't have to make connections for the students and that he was uncertain where the discussion was going and how he could stay on top of everything. I like that about discussion, that it is unpredictable.

Introductory Letter

My name is Jordan Lehman. I graduated from University High School in 2010 and received my AA from Spokane Falls Community  in June 2012. My plan wasn't always to attend Eastern though.

Ever since I can remember, I knew I wanted to be in law enforcement like my father. I wasn't too sure about going to school for anything else. Until my junior year of high school, I was dead set on that plan, then one day I changed my mind after a student teacher encouraged me to be a teacher. Then it really hit me. I could make a difference just as I would of done as a cop, but it all started in a classroom. I made the decision of wanting to teach in an inner city school. It was really just second nature. When I graduated with my AA, I was determined to leave Spokane. I had been accepted to University of Las Vegas Nevada and all the plans were set about me moving there. I had a made great connections through an instructor at SFCC and I was ready to pursue this new adventure in my life.

My plans had fell through with UNLV because of finances and I was absolutely heartbroken. I think God helped in me realizing that that wasn't my fate. My boyfriend and I of 5 years, who I was traveling to UNLV with, had broken up and I needed to follow my own path, alone.

Everything in my life started falling into place this summer. The upcoming fall quarter meant a placement, and getting that much closer to becoming a teacher. I was placed at Horizon Middle School with the best master teacher I think I could ever ask for. The great thing about her is that she hasn't been teaching for decades, so every year is a learning experience for her. I was hired at Garry Middle School as an AVID tutor in August for the following year and I was finally getting my name out and my foot in the door.

Now in my second quarter of being placed, I find myself still falling in love with teaching every single day, though I still have a long way to go. I find my weaknesses are commanding attention and being fully confident in what I am doing and saying. My strengths are observing the classroom and everything that is going on around me and making connections with the students.

In this course, I want to become more comfortable with my content areas and become more confident in teaching it to my students. I always get overwhelmed thinking that I will never know what I need to know in order to teach my content areas effectively, which seems so silly. Overall, I just want my passion and love of literature to translate into a love of teaching it as well.