Favorite Quote and Messages of Thanks

When considering my time with children and my chances to learn pedagogical strategies, one quote really defines my teaching philosophies is by Benjamin Franklin: “Tell me and I forget; teach me and I remember; involve me and I learn.” In my classrooms, I truly believe in utilizing a learning through play philosophy in which intended play is used to help children discover new concepts and ideas. Children are not tape recorders that simply retain whatever information we tell them, nor are they robots who can be efficiently taught utilizing solely chalk-and-talk methods. Instead, children need to be integrated into classrooms in which they participate in predetermined activities that was lead by a teacher in order to reach a common goal. Through these experiences, children have the opportunity to construct knowledge and gain a deeper and more meaningful understanding of material.

At the end of this semester, I really feel like I've have the opportunity to get to get to know many of my colleagues. In addition, the views and experiences of my colleagues have really allowed me to develop as not only a teacher but as an individual. I wish I had the ability to thank each and every member of my class that I interacted with, but we all have to finish our final bits of homework! So, I'll restrain myself to two.

ShaRina:

Thank you for sharing your views with all of us. In all of your blog posts, you've posted opinions very personal to you and used your experiences to justify what you mean (where others tended only to cite scholarly journals). It really gives us an insight into who you are as a person and a teacher, and it lets all of us learn from your experiences. In addition, whenever we have the opportunity to examine other cultures, you always have chosen a country that I never selected, so it's always fascinating to find out what you've discovered. Thank you so much!

Lynette:

This has been the second class that we've taken together, and I believe we are also taking the next course together. It's always an amazing opportunity to be able to work with a like minded professional and attempt to obtain a similar goal. In addition, your personal childhood web really shows us where oyu come from, and it sheds light and justifies all your opinions. I wish you the best in these upcoming classes where we strive to get our Master's (and eventually a Ph.D!).  

Assessment

When considering the development of a child, regardless of age, there are a set of domains that educators and psychologists assess. Usually, these domains include cognitive development, social development, language development, and motor— both fine and gross— development. Of course, some of these domains are relatively specific to age or child (i.e, most educators are not concerned with attempting to refine an eighteen year old’s gross motor skills). So, a common inquiry has been often seen on the news: How can we properly assess our children?

Whenever one watches the news on television or read an editorial, the media often agrees that students need a new way of being assessed and that our traditional standardized testing is neither appropriate to determine the growth of a child or to hold educators accountable. However, these sources are only referring to the academic growth of children. What these sources tend to forget is the various realms of development that we study in this classroom and the interactions these domains have.

So, the question comes to be: How do we not only appropriately assess the academic progression of children, but how to do assure that children are meeting their developmental milestones? In order to consider how to appropriately measure a child’s development in these domains, I think it’s important to consider the gamut of child development charts that our community of early childhood educators have the opportunity to work with. When looking at these developmental milestones, it’s clearly evident to trained professionals that this is not a list of achievements or a checklist of goals for every child to obtain; instead, these milestones act as a roadmap for parents to assess if a child is developing at an appropriate rate.

I do believe that it is important to assess children’s academic progression in school. Our current standardized exams do attempt to accomplish this (although in a suboptimal way). Although I do agree with the many sources that an additional means of accountability should be in place to examine the academic growth of children, I’m unsure of what method would be the most efficient to do this. However, I do not believe that the other domains need to be assessed in a new fashion. RTI and similar systems effectively examine children in relationship to an averagely developing peer and offers scaffolding for children who require it. Since it has been successful in this task, I do not believe we need a different system in place.

In order to look for ways to assess children, it's reasonable to examine the standardized testing that other countries use. One of the leaders in education (and thus one of the logical sources to examine) is Japan. Japan uses a single standardized test in order to gauge its students' growths, and this test is only taken once (at the end of secondary school). Therefore, much of Japan's efforts in education go towards the practice of standardized testing (and evident from their consistently high scores in international tests like TIMMS). This system does have some keys flaws, though. By emphasizing standardized testing so much, Japanese students tend to have weaker problem solving skills and critical thinking skills; in addition, students tend to have much less independent thought.

Through my readings, it's clear that all countries agree that standardized testing needs to be refined, but no one country has found an optimal solution.