ASKING QUESTIONS, EXPLORING OPTIONS, CHANGING THE IMPACT OF PUBLIC EDUCATION.

Carmen Jacobsen

Carmen Jacobsen is a graduate from the UNAM, Faculty of Medicine in Mexico City. She has 25+ years of experience as an Educator in Mexico City and Texas including Bilingual Education and ESL.She currently works as a K-12 Educator for Deer Park ISD and as a Creative Writing Teacher for Writers in the Schools (WITS) in Houston, Texas.

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Writing Outside the STAAR.

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Teacher, teacher!  What are we going to write about today?

Working for “Writers in The Schools”, WITS is one of the best jobs I have ever had. I love the job because it gives the writer the freedom to expand. The writer’s imagination lives without the pressures of preparing a student for the test. It lives without the demands of having the child to produce. The child grows at his/her own pace. They discover their own voice first before working towards the mechanics of writing. When a child is just waiting at the door for his class to start, one knows, one is doing something right.

Sir Ken Robinson in his book “Out of Our Minds” wrote, “Many educators want to provide a more balanced and dynamic form of education that makes proper use of their own creative energies. Too often they feel they cannot do any of this because of political pressures of conformity and the disaffection of students who suffer under the same malaise.”

When I was doing the after-school program at “The Chicano Community Center” I had kids who looked forward to coming to my class. In fact, the writing class became the opportunity, a reward for those who behaved. They would not be allowed to go into my classroom unless they followed and cooperated with the staff.

These were some of my happiest and most successful teaching years. The coordinator trusted my work and the kids loved to come to my class. So, what was different about it that helped the students and I become successful?

 

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The Educational Paradox – Part II (China).

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An international study that began in the year 2000 named “Programme for International Student” PISA surveys education systems worldwide by testing their skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students of different participating countries.

In 2009 China participated for the first time ranking 1st in all three areas of reading, mathematics and science. PISA average scores are around 500. China scored 575 in Science, a 556 in Reading and 600 in Math. United States scored 502 in Science, a 500 in Reading and 487 in Math.

Like Finland I decided to look into how the Chinese Educational system is set up and the reason behind its success. One thing is for sure they work hard to obtain the best results possible in their test scores. PISA noted the phenomena and reported the following as well: “Typically in a Shanghai classroom, students are fully occupied and fully engaged. Non-attentive students are not tolerated,” it said.

Shanghai also places great importance and care in training and nurturing their teachers who receive continuous support to improve their schools. According to Dr. Miller an observer of the Chinese Educational System points out that Shanghai invests heavily in education research and “is at the forefront of doing research to help teachers teach better,”

So, what do Chinese schools look like?

 

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The Educational Paradox – Part I.

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A coworker told me she had heard on the news that Finland topped first in education. Curious about the subject, I found out that Finland’s style of teaching is amazingly the opposite of that from United States. I was also able to confirm that when it came to International results Finland’s Schools scored consistently at the top.

While checking the “Organization for Economic Co-operation and Economic Development,” OECD and looking for the “Program for International Student Assessment.” PISA results I found out the following. Finland and Asian countries were among the top ten. The United States rank 17 in reading, 23 in Science, just one notch above the average score, and dropped below the OECD average in mathematics ranking 32 in 2009.

Could it be possible that longer days and school years is a solution to our low performance? Could it be that shortening summer vacation helps children do better in school? HISD has now developed a new teacher evaluation system called EVAAS “Evaluating Value-Added Models for Teacher Accountability” which measure the growth of students at the classroom level. They also have a program called ASPIRE that helps determine teacher and campus awards based on EVAAS results and data.

Be ready to be puzzled by what the Finns do and please let me know what you think about it when you are done reading.  I was baffled by our differences.

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The Language Learning Curve – Part 2.

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What is the Foreign Service Institute? The Foreign Language Institute (FSI) is the branch of the US Department of State that teaches foreign languages to diplomats.  So, what does the language difficulty ranking show us? What can we learn from it? Did you know Linguists say there are close to six thousand languages? This will be our Part II of Language Learning Curve.

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The Language Learning Curve – Part I.

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When I was doing my research on Chinese schools I found out that The U.S. Foreign Service and Defense Language institutes ranks languages in 3 to 5 categories based on the hours English speakers must spend to become fluent. What is the Defense Language Institute?

The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center teaches foreign languages to the military.  It was founded on the eve of America’s entrance to World War II to teach the Japanese language. It was a secret school in 1941 in an abandoned airplane hangar. There were about 60 students at the time who were second-generation Japanese-Americans from the West Coast. They studied the Japanese language and military terminology. In 1942 it was known as the Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS). It was the only class ever given in this building. Wartime fears had led Japanese and Japanese American expulsion to isolated camps. This was a wartime internment in post-war years, but it marked the beginning of the importance of learning a foreign language to help in wartime.

So, why is this important to note? How did this affect what we know about education in the field of teaching a second language to English speakers?

 

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