Sarah+Hutchins

EDC 102: Introduction to American Education Expertise Statement Sarah Hutchins Due: 9/16/13

As I thought about this assignment, I realized that there are many things I know well but, while some of them have taken a lot of hard work and intentional practice for me to master, others I’ve been able to teach to myself because of my natural inclinations. One thing I learned recently was how to make guacamole. During the Spring 2012 school semester, I took a public speaking class. In this class, my classmates and I had to present a demonstration of something we knew well to the class—one of my classmates demonstrated how to make guacamole!

In class, I watched carefully as she peeled and mashed the avocado, squeezed the lime, measured the garlic & salt, diced the tomato, chopped the jalapeno, and mixed it all together in a bowl. She had brought some tortilla chips for the class to sample the finished product and it was the best guacamole I had ever tasted! Her skill and excitement inspired me to try to make it for the very first time.

Later that week, with all the ingredients readily available in my home, I thought back to my public speaking class where the magic had happened and tried my best to remember the recipe. To my pleasant surprise, I executed the guacamole perfectly! This gave me the confidence and the craving to continue making this Mexican dip every week that summer. In order to learn this, I engaged each of my senses. I watched and listened carefully to my classmate as she made the guacamole and I tasted it to learn the flavor of what I wanted to create. Then, I practiced. I didn’t actually finish learning until after I had a lot of practice working with my ingredients. My mom also helped me learn by making suggestions. Through my creative personality, I also experimented with different ratios and ingredients to learn it even better. It was through all of this that I really learned to make, what my family and I consider to be, a perfect guacamole.

EDC 102: Introduction to American Education My High School Experience Sarah Hutchins Due: 9/23/13

My high school experience was overwhelmingly positive. Although I did encounter various difficulties along the way, I can’t complain. Not only was I always at the top of my class, I received exclusive one-on-one support from teachers who loved and cared deeply about every aspect of my life. While my high school experience was radically different from any of the experiences I’ve read so far in //Savage Inequalities//, it was also hardly comparable to anything the vast majority of individuals have been through. Through high school, I was homeschooled.

Probably the most difficult thing for me about being homeschooled, especially through high school, was the need to be self-motivated and self disciplined. In many ways, I was my own teacher. When I struggled with math and there were days when I didn’t feel like studying Algebra 2, I had to make myself do it anyway. With all the extra curricular activities I participated in (Jr Rifle team, public speaking and debate competitions, ministries at church, etc), it was difficult sometimes to prioritize my regular work and fit every core subject into every day. I also had to be organized and keep track of my work and grades for my transcript. I never got “snow days” and my family didn’t follow the public school calendar, so, while my public school friends were on break, I still did school. After reading //Savage Inequalities//, though, nothing negative about my experience seems worth mentioning!

For the most part, homeschooling was great! I was able to work at my own pace—spending more time on Math while getting ahead in English. I could make my own schedule and it was flexible. I had freedom to explore what really interested me, I didn’t have to deal with “homework” in addition to my schoolwork, and I wasn’t bullied. Unlike the children from East St. Louis, mentioned in //Savage Inequalities//, I always had the textbooks I needed, I didn’t have to worry about sewage flooding or lead poisoning, and school was hardly ever cancelled for me. Until college, I had never experienced any type of schooling other than homeschooling, but I consider my high school experience to have been a privilege. I have an enormous amount of respect for my parents, whose level of commitment to my education has been a major contributing factor to my success in life.

EDC 102: Introduction to American Education Reflections on FAE Chapters 2 & 3 Sarah Hutchins Due: 09/30/13

On the surface these two chapters seemed to me like they would be terribly dry and dull. As I read through the ancient history of education, discovering even more of its notable contributors, and the historical perspectives of education, I found myself almost engrossed with fascination. A lot of the information was very familiar to me already, but thinking about how much education has evolved over the centuries and //why// everything has changed the way it has really made me curious. In particular, I found the section “Changing Aims of Education” in chapter 3 thought provoking.

Way back during colonial times, education was focused on teaching children through the Bible—the goals were focused on children’s personal salvation, preparedness to share the gospel, and abilities to read and write by studying God’s Word. Then there was a shift in values, and educators decided to instill qualities of patriotism and unity, teach a common language, and train the next generation to take over technical and agricultural work. After 1900 and throughout several decades to follow, the aims of education are constantly being reformed. What I find interesting though, is that—even recently—educators have included aims about preparing students for civic duties, developing social skills, valuing family, appreciating beauty, being wise, having self worth…and developing virtuous character on some level.

I never went to public school, so who am I to say whether or not all of a school’s idealistic aims are being met. But, for some reason, what I’ve observed doesn’t seem to add up. I don’t mean to insinuate that students aren’t learning any of these valuable things in school, but standardized tests (arguably the most popular/common way researchers like to evaluate a school’s success) don’t expose student’s achievements in many, if any, of the goals mentioned above. Part of me is left wondering, why do we measure quality by tests when education shapes us in so many various ways? And if teachers are “teaching to the test”, are they really taking time to share other (perhaps more important) life skills with their students, when they might not be held accountable for it?

EDC 102: Introduction to American Education FAE Chapter 4 Reflection Sarah Hutchins Due: 10/07/13

As I was reading chapter 4, the thing that really jumped out at me was a yellow box with the heading “Teaching Morals and Values in Public School”. I found this brief sidebar interesting, though it made some assumptions that didn’t seem so clear-cut to me. At the very beginning it mentions how a lot of people think the goal of school is to train up good citizens, but that it’s difficult to determine which values are important. I wondered, aren’t all values important—isn’t that why they’re called “values”, because they have //value// and importance on some level? Why can’t everything of value be important enough to teach?

The text then goes on to discuss the //how// of teaching morals, and I’m struck with another thought—morals are inborn, not learned. What the article could’ve discussed instead perhaps should’ve been more along the lines of teaching the importance of or how to //apply// morals and values in daily life. One great suggestion came toward the end of the piece, when the article suggests that teachers ought to have their students define their own set of personal values. In a culture founded on the principal of liberty, students should not just be told what to think or how to think, but they should be encouraged and equipped to come to their own conclusions.

EDC 102: Introduction to American Education Educational Philosophies Sarah Hutchins Due: 10/21/13

If anything’s clear for the reading, it’s that there is no perfect educational philosophy. The philosophies described in the chapter just don’t seem completely ideal to me. It’s tricky to name a couple that appeal to me, because there isn’t one that really matches me feelings about schooling. A psychologist named Urie Bronfenbrenner, not mentioned in the text, has a philosophy of human development that interests me when it come to education. Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist, also formulated some good ideas about education. From the philosophies mentioned in //Foundations of American Education//, I think I gravitated more toward Dewey’s progressivism educational theory than most others.

What Urie Bronfenbrenner theorized is referred to as the Ecological Systems theory. This theory on human development basically lines up with the old saying, “it takes a village to raise a child.” Bronfenbrenner realized that a school is not the only source of education for a child—children are taught through their varying environments. Education is a collaboration among schools, families, culture, and whatever else a child interacts with throughout their early life. This theory on human development plays into educational philosophies which value open lines of communication and teamwork in different areas of a child’s community—especially family, teachers and school.

Another philosophy of education that wasn’t really discussed in the book comes from Lev Vygotsky’s theory, known today as scaffolding. I feel like the idea behind scaffolding was incorporated into a couple of the philosophies from the text. It acknowledges that students can be their own teachers and may only need gentle guidance from mentors or teachers to be able to learn and make discoveries. This also goes along with the Reggio Emilia educational philosophy, used in early childhood education. This philosophy allows children to guide their own learning. I volunteered in a Kindergarten classroom that used this approach last spring and I was amazed at how much the children were able to absorb just because they were so interested in the material they had gravitated toward. Furthermore, being homeschooled, and therefore having to figure many things out on my own, definitely made the information and habits I learned stick.

The philosophy of progressivism, defined in chapter 5 as “an educational philosophy that emphasizes that ideas should be tested by experimentation and that learning is rooted in questions developed by the learner”, stuck out to me as one of the better philosophies I read about this week. It goes along with the previous paragraph by contending that student’s should be able to guide their own learning. They are definitely capable of drawing their own conclusions and when they are self-motived to learn, the information is more likely to stick with them. I tend to agree with the premise that we don’t need to teach children //what// to think as much as we need to teach them //how// to think. Of course, in a classroom with so many students who all think and learn differently, this could be too challenging for any teacher to keep up with. This philosophy is definitely one that probably translates better to a homeschool environment.

EDC 102: Introduction to American Education Diversity Experience narrative Sarah Hutchins Due: 11/04/13

Being homeschooled and, therefore, having much of my educational life happen within the context of my white, middle class, American family, I thought long and hard about an experience of diversity about which I could write. Experiencing diversity can be about more than just the different ethnic or religious backgrounds of one’s fellow classmates though. In truth, I don’t remember diversity ever being a foreign concept to me. My parents have always been intentional about exposing me to different cultures and worldviews. When I was in the elementary grades, my family cooped with other homeschool families to learn about a plethora of different subjects. We studied many different countries and periods in history through several different content areas. At the end of each unit, we would demonstrate the diversity we had learned about by dressing up as someone from a completely different walk of life, sharing a bit about who we were, cooking and eating foods from their culture, and showing various art projects, skits, dances, et cetera that also went along with what we studied.

EDC 102: Introduction to American Education FAE Chapter 12 Reflection Sarah Hutchins Due: 12.02.13

My group decided to explore the issue of student grouping by researching the advantages and disadvantages of different styles of grouping within schools. Together we covered grouping based on sex, ability/tracking, disabilities, and age. For the lesson we each put together a Powerpoint presentation to help us inform the class about these issues and the conclusions we drew from our independent research. We also did an activity to demonstrate the effects of student grouping. Chapter 12 in "Foundations of American Education" discusses homogeneous versus heterogeneous student grouping on page 353. It basically explains what heterogeneous and homogeneous groupings are and suggests some key points to keep in mind when deciding how to organize you classroom. What the book acknowledges is also consistent with the evidence we discovered in our research—that grouping styles should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis because different contexts require different accommodations. In general, heterogeneous groupings work well for the class as a whole because the higher achieving students can help the lower achieving ones, and homogeneous groupings can be effective in empowering higher achieving students to get even further ahead.

EDC 102: Introduction to American Education “High-Quality Teacher” Wiki Post Sarah Hutchins Due: 12.09.13 I’ve learned a lot about what it means to be a “high-quality teacher”. I’ve learned how crucial it is to keep open communication between families and the school. Teachers should work with parents and the community for the sake of the child. It’s also important that teachers put the unique learning needs of each of their students first. High-quality teachers should finally be learners themselves. There is no such thing as the perfect teacher—every one is a work in progress. With so much changing in the field of education all the time, teachers should remain flexible and constantly reevaluate their practices. These are just three of the many things I’ve taken away from this class (and textbook) this semester.