Education

I receive short summaries of educational news articles from ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) each day. I can then link to the full story if I wish. It keeps me informed about the educational community even if I'm no longer in the classroom. Yesterday, I read this header: Columnist: Great Web sites for students to bookmark. The list is pretty good, but as I already had quite a few of the sites bookmarked, I was a little disappointed. But I've printed out the list and given it my girls so they can add the appropriate ones to their favorites.
Education is a hot topic in this country. And that is not something new. In 1957, when the USSR (that's the former Soviet Union, for those of you under 20)sent Sputnik into orbit, there was a huge uproar about the poor quality of education, specifically science education, in the U.S. Today we have NCLB and most states have some high stakes test students must pass certain years. In Florida, we have the FCAT. Many teachers refer to it as a four-letter-word. I will concede that there is room for improvement in the system (primarily...teachers need to be observed more by their administrators and made to use recognized educational best-practices, but that's a whole different blog), and that some schools need a complete overhaul. I will also say schools reflect society. If reading and thinking are not valued outside of school, the school system cannot instill those values. The school system has a child 7 hours a day, 180 days a year. If we say that a child sleeps 9 hours a day, that still leaves 8 hours not accounted for by sleep or school. If we eliminate weekends, there are 261 work-days in a year. There are 180 days of school. That leaves 81 weekdays that children are not in school (add in the 104 weekend days and students go to school only 1/2 the days out of a year) and are in school for about 1/2 the waking hours of a day. That means they are in school about 1/4 of their waking hours each year. That leaves 3/4 of the time that they are being influenced by something other than their teachers. Yet teachers, not parents, are held accountable for the academic progress a child makes in a year.
Jack Fernandez, a local community columnist in Tampa, wrote a great piece entitled, "Dinner Table Doubles As Institution of Learning." Most of what he says seems pretty obvious. With the growth of the electronic handhelds industry, more and more people are spending less and less time with direct personal interaction. Dinner is a great time to connect with those who are important to you. At our dinner table we do 'best-worst.' Each person gets to tell the worst and the best things about their day. [We begin with worst because we want to end on a positive note.] As a parent, it's a great way to find out about things that are important to your child. "Suzie yelled at me at recess and we didn't speak the rest of the day," lets me know a lot about what's happening. It's a way for Hubby and me to show we have disappointments and frustrations, too. Occasionally, my worst is "My children don't listen." This usually elicits laughter and if things had been tense, it clears the air a little. It sure beats, "What happened at school today?" or "How was school today?"

Still looks like Ernesto is going to miss us. We're not out of danger yet as we're still in the cone of destruction. A wobble to the west and we get much higher winds and more rain. A wobble to the east and the moisture will actually get sucked out of our area by the storm and we'll have dry weather. Hope it takes a big jog to the east and misses the Carolinas.