Choosing a School: Metaphors, Social Systems, and Curriculum Organization

1. CHAPTER 6: Choosing a School Introduction to Teaching: Becoming a Professional 5th Edition Don P. Kauchak and Paul D. Eggen

2. Metaphors for Schools • What metaphor for schools is illustrated in each of the following descriptions? • 1. Schools are places where students enter as raw material and are turned out as finished products, with quality control ensured through the process of standardized testing. • 2. Schools are places that provide a broad array of offerings, and students make choices about their experiences based on personal preferences. • 3. Schools are places where students are required—by law—to attend until age 16, and their freedoms are limited while they attend. • 1. Suggesting that students enter as raw material and leave as finished products suggests a factory metaphor. • 2. Making choices based on a broad array of offerings implies a shopping mall metaphor. • 3. The law and limitations on freedom offers a view that uses prisons as metaphors for schools.

3. School as a Social System • Social systems • Organizations with established structures and rules designed to promote certain goals. • What would be another example of a social system? • Families would be a common example. Its most common structure includes a father and a mother, usually with one or more children. • Providing for health and well being and nurturing children are common family goals. • Churches, city governments, and even nation states are also commonly identified as examples of social systems.

4. Goals of Schools

5. Components of Schools • School personnel: • The people who make schools work-administrators, support staff, and teachers • The physical plant: • The school building or buildings, playgrounds and playing fields, and parking lots • The curriculum: • Everything teachers teach and students learn in the school

6. Administrators’ Duties • One of your students, is chronically disrupting your class. You’ve tried everything you know to eliminate the disruptions, but nothing seems to work. Who should you turn to for help? 1. Your principal 2. One of the assistant principals 3. Your grade level chair or department head Who you turn to will be determined by the structure of your school, and you will learn the procedures when you take your first job. In most cases you will turn to an assistant principal or someone at that level.

7. Common Ways to Organize Schools

8. The Organization of the Curriculum • What do the following have in common? • Students will recognize the letters of the alphabet. • Students will write short paragraphs using correct organizational structure. • Students will use the correct order of operations to simplify expressions such as 9 + 4(7 – 3)/2 • Students will solve problems involving the relationships between force, mass, and acceleration. • Each is an example of a standard, a statement that describes what students should know or be able to do after a prescribed period of study. • The curriculum in today’s schools is largely organized around standards. They will be a part of your teaching life, so the sooner you’re comfortable working with them, the better prepared you will be for your first job.

9. Differences in Students • You’re a fifth grade teacher, and you find that Desiree, one of your students, is cooperative and able to consider other students’ perspectives in cooperative learning activities, whereas Kelly tends to be quite self-centered. How might we explain the difference in the two students? • The differences in the two students can be explained using the idea of developmental differences. Desiree’s ability to cooperate and consider other students’ perspectives, compared to Kelly’s self-centeredness, suggests that Desiree’s social development is more advanced than is Kelly’s. • Developmental differences in students, and particularly differences in cognitive [thinking] development, is one of the bases for organizing both schools and the curriculum. • For example, young children learn basic math facts, such as 6 x 9 = 54, whereas older students solve problems, such as: “An article of clothing that originally sold for $49.95 has been marked down to $30.00. What is the percent decrease in the price?” • Older students are expected to be able to solve the second problem because they are more developmentally advanced.

10. Teachers’ Schedules

11. Characteristics of Effective Middle Schools • Use the case study on page 191 of your text as a basis for identifying some of the characteristics of • effective middle schools. • They organize teachers and students into interdisciplinary teams: For example, Chris, Maria, Keith, and Sarah instruct the same group of students and work together to coordinate topics. • They strive to create and maintain long-term teacher–student relationships with attention to the importance of emotional development. “Issues like a student’s ability to feel safe, resolve conflicts, self-regulate impulses, and trust adults all have a relationship with attendance and disciplinary problems, which in turn affect academic outcomes” (Lowe, 2011, p. 40). • They use interactive teaching strategies to involve all students: Teachers are encouraged to move away from the lecture-dominated instruction so common in high schools and toward instruction based on student involvement. In addition, teachers place greater emphasis on teaching study strategies, such as note taking, outlining and time management. • They eliminate activities that emphasize developmental differences, such as competitive sports: In middle schools, everyone is invited to participate in intramural sports and clubs.

12. What Makes an Effective School? What Makes an Effective School?

13. Teachers in Effective Schools • You’re in a conversation with one of your colleagues, and she comments, “I don’t believe in tests. They take a lot of class time, I have to spend time grading them, and the kids don’t like them.” • If you used research as a guide, how would you respond to your colleague? • If you used research as a guide, you would tactfully tell your colleague that assessment, including tests, is an important learning tool, and in classrooms that promote the most student learning, assessment is an integral part of the teaching-learning process. • Teachers who are most effective assess thoroughly and often, and they provide students with feedback about learning progress. • “Testing has such a bad connotation. . . . Maybe we ought to call it something else, but this is one of the most powerful learning tools we have (Carey, 2010, para. 28).

14. Classrooms in Action: The Real World of Teaching • From a video episode, such as this one, it is impossible to observe some of the characteristics of effective schools, such as leadership or parental involvement. • Two important characteristics of effective schools were illustrated in the episode, however. What were they? • First, the instruction was interactive in each of the lessons, and interactive instruction is one of the characteristics of an effective school. • Second, in each case the classroom environment appeared to be safe and orderly. A safe and orderly environment is also a characteristic of an effective school.

15. Discussion Questions 1-4 • 1. Based on the organization of typical elementary schools, what are the primary advantages and disadvantages of teaching in an elementary school? How could elementary schools be organized differently to improve the education of all students? • 2. Based on the organization of typical middle schools, what are the primary advantages and disadvantages of teaching in a middle school? How could middle schools be organized differently to improve the education of all students? • 3. Based on the organization of typical high schools, what are the primary advantages and disadvantages of teaching in a high school? How could high schools be organized differently to improve the education of all students? • 4. In which kind of school—elementary, middle, junior high, or high school—do teachers have the most autonomy? The least autonomy? What implications does this have for you as a prospective teacher?

16. Discussion Questions 5-8 • 5. Consider what you know about the organization of elementary, middle, junior high, and high schools. Which type of school is best suited to your academic and personal characteristics? Why do you think so? • 6. What are the most important things a prospective teacher should look for in a school in trying to decide whether to work in a school? Are these factors likely to change over time? Why or why not? • 7. What are the advantages and disadvantages of grade retention? If grade retention has to occur, is it better at some grade levels than others? Which and why? If you encountered students who were retained in grade in your classroom, what could you do to help them adjust to the change? • 8. Is distance education likely to become more or less common in the future? How effective is distance education compared to traditional education? Why? Is distance education more effective for certain types of students than others? If you were asked to teach a distance education class, what could you do to make it more effective?