Art in Education

Art has proven to be very beneficial to students. For it is through art, that many students can express themselves, create meaning, and be creative! Today there are so many schools that do not integrate the arts (music, movement, drama, and fine art) into their curriculum. The reasons why there has been such a fall-out of using the arts is because of the lack of time and money that many believe needs to be spent on the arts to be able to teach it effectively. However, what many teachers do not realize is that they can easily integrate the arts within their lesson plans, and use it to relate to other subjects without having to spend any time or money at all. For some teachers, being able to find the right resources to use to integrate the arts can be very difficult and time consuming. But by going to http://incredibleart.org/ teachers can find a number of different sources, information, and lesson plans on fine art that they can use. This site provides lesson plans specific to grade levels, subjects, etc. It also provides resources such as books, art supplies, and even information about specific artists and their work of art that teachers can use to help teach art and integrate it into their classroom. This website is a great source for teachers to use to bring back art into education!

http://incredibleart.org/

Millions of public school children to be affected by educator layoffs; At least 125,000 educators expecting pink slips

This video addresses the need that adults are not the only ones affected by budget cuts in the schools. Students are the ones who are losing out on a rich education by having larger classroom sizes, fewer resources, and crowed buses. Senator Tom Harkin (D) from Iowa has proposed the Senate to pass the Keep Our Educators Working Act. This act calls for $23 billion dollars to the existing bill to save thousands of jobs for educators and supporters in Iowa. Iowa State Education Association President Chris Bern urged the Senate to pass this bill because “students did not ask to go to school during a recession” and they should not be shorthanded on a quality education. This sets a model for other states to demand help in trying to save educator jobs. President Obama is working on plans to overhaul NCLB but what is California doing to help save its educators?

Multicultural Education; Diversity Issues in the Classroom

Dealing with Errors in Math Textbooks

According to Diana Lambert with The Sacramento Bee, two districts, Sacramento City Unified and Folsom Cordova, have discovered pervasive errors in the adopted Macmillan/McGraw-Hill math series for K-6th. It is not uncommon for textbooks to contain a few typos, but that is not the case this time. Students cannot count the flies in the picture if there is no picture on the page! Five times three does NOT equal five, although it does in the 2nd grade math text. In addition, educators have found that lesson plans and homework assignments do not always match and there are numerous mistakes in the answer keys. According to the news article, 90 errors have been found in the 4th grade text. These texts were definitely not cheap. Prior to being added to the state-approved text list, it had been thoroughly reviewed and the publisher was supposed to make the required corrections.
What happens when a text contains so many errors? "Teachers begin to question themselves," said Folsom Cordova teacher David Chun. "It develops a student mistrust in the program." It also turns math into a Bloopers game in which students have to find the errors!
This issue of textbooks containing errors relates to educators being knowledgeable within the content area—knowledgeable enough to know when the textbook is wrong. What do you think about a published, state-approved textbook having such pervasive errors? Do you see a parallel to asking students to be responsible for revising their work? What do you think about using the errors as a way to engage students with the math concepts and challenging them to be critical of texts?

"Sacramento-area Districts Deal with Problem Math Books" was published April 1, 2010.

Chapman is Working to CONNECT with English Learners

Chapman University and the Orange County Department of Education have worked together to create Project CONNECT. This project provides professional development to Orange County teachers to help them meet the needs of English Learners in their classrooms. The project is working in concert with Chapman University to provide veteran teachers with alternative ways to receive their new certification. It is also gathering materials and resources like realia, thematic kits, books, and teacher resources to support English Learners. They are also providing many conferences and networks for teachers to learn and discuss the best ways to teach English Learners. I thought this was very useful to students in our Tapestries class because these materials and conferences are very accessible to us because most of them are located on the Chapman campus. In the future, almost all of us will have English Learners in our classrooms and Project CONNECT is a great way to prepare for our future classrooms.

Reversing Readicide

One of the lessons regarding teaching to the standards that has been learned by one high school teacher is that we are committing "readicide." Students are being overwhelmed with the many requirements that the standards impose on the curriculum that teachers are compelled to teach. One teacher in our own area, at Magnolia High School in Anaheim, has written a pointed critique of that practice, and his book has been favorably received by thousands of teachers. Kelly Gallagher, in his book Readicide, describes and critiques those practices that encourage readicide--including exhaustive coverage of books that students should be allowed to enjoy. Instead, the state requires that they analyze them to death! In the process, they learn to hate reading. Here's a link, then, to "Reversing Readicide," an article that summarizes the key points Gallagher makes in his book. What do you think? Is this something we can turn around? As a future teacher, it's up to you!

TFK!

I remember when I was little and my 3rd grade teacher gave us a magazine every month that we could read to our hearts content about everything interesting around the world! That magazine was Time For Kids. I loved reading TFK because it gave me a look at what was happening in science and medicine, politics, nations around the world, what was going on in the oceans, and anything else that i might want to know about in a way that a child could understand. Time For Kids is a magazine (and now also a website) designed for children to learn about what is happening around the world in a manner that they can understand and get excited about. It is produced by Time Magazine and I have found can be a wonderful tool in the classroom. TFK is set up to work in grades K-6th and is separated into appropriate reading levels for these ages.

After thinking about what good TFK might do in a classroom, I thought about other magazines that might be helpful as well and took a look at the kids' websites as well. Here are some very interesting links that you might find useful!


http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/teachers
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/
http://www.highlights.com/
http://www.sikids.com/
http://www.kidsdiscover.com/