comments

I know others had problems accesing blogs or what not. I was only able to access less than 10 blogs but did what I could to share my comments between those people. Sorry about that.

2nd meeting (PTO) hometown

Going back to my highschool was a little wierd because I havent walked through the hallways thier in a few years. Moving on the PTO meeting was held in the library and the topic was applying for financial aid. The focus was on juniors and seniors as well as their parents. The meeting had a good turn and the library was packed, their wasn't an extra seat avaialbe for myself. The highschool is lucky enough to have a teacher who was previoulsy employed at a High School financial aid department. He is responsible for holding the meeting and explaining to the students and their famalies the importance of apllying for Fafsa. The library was a little hot and uncomfortable but I dealt with it. The parnets were very interested in the information the speaker was providing. They asked many questions and some parents were even taking notes. At the end the speaker offered his services for free and explained that he would be available to every student that needed him to fill out their own fafsa. I was only dissapointed with the lack of handouts made avaiable to the guest. The should have had more available.

1st Board Meeting

The first board meeting I attended was at West Side High in newark. The agenda that was available for the public had to be a couple hundred pages think. It was impossibe to read through it at the meeting, it was bigger than my anatomy text book. The board members were all from diverse backgrounds and varied in age. Some of the topics covererd were student safety, school fundings and spendings, and students from the graphic and art design class presented some of their material. Awards were given to parents who donated their time and effort to the school and students, and the top five students in the high school were also recognized. It was an interesting experience being my first board meeting ever, the pace was slow but moved, just wish thier was a bigger crowd.

Community Service 1 and 2

My first and second community service visit worked hand in hand because I did the same service both visits. I worked with the Phys. Ed teacher at the school. Initially I thought I would be working with the students in the classroom but I did not actually work in the classroom. When I arrived the phys. ed teacher expressed his need for help with computer grading. He was told that he must be more technologically oriented with his teaching style. Therefore he must transfer his gradebook to microsoft office. He had no idea how to do this and asked me to help him, of course I helped and created a grading layout for each of his classess. I had to transfer every students name and first qurter grade into cells and columns on office. It was challenging at first but eventually I got the hang of it and continued at a faster pace. The first visit I did was 3 and a half hours and the second visit was 3 hours. All of which consisted of helping him transfer his grade book to the computer. I also fixed his printer and he was vary grateful for the amount of help I provided him with. The service hours were not very excited or fun but I don't regret because I understood how much he could use the help. Thats really what we are there for is to provide help where ever it is needed.

Reading and video clip 11-07

The video with the parent teacher conference was very interesting. The amount of questions and the way the parent asked questions seemed a little overboard. I have heard of parents that are a little out of hand and that could be one way that they approach a teacher. She question the teachers teaching ability and lacked genuine respect. The teacher was very patient and handled her the parents actions accordingly. No child left behing has pros and cons. You have to teach to the test because apparently thats just the way things are nowadays. Its good that their trying to help students the best they can to keep them all at the learning level they should be at. Fundings are being provided for schools that lack it to help keep them on an even playing field with schools that do have the funding. Many sides can be taken its all a matter of what you think works best for the students progress.

Issue 9

I dont believe that schools should be only judged on the scores they recieve. Students learn in many different ways, some are better writers than others and those that are good writers may not be great in math or viceaversa. Students are only tested in certain areas and all are tested on the same thing. Some students are good with mutiple choice others are good with word problems. The credibilty of a school should not be measured only on the scores. If this is the case then a test that measures all the ablilties and different learning styles should be administered. Then again this will probably never happen so we must deal with what we have for now.

16 % children (over 9 million) 6-19 year olds are overweight

According to the CDC in 2004 "16 % children (over 9 million) 6-19 year olds are overweight or obese" this is three times what it was in 1980. Phys Ed Class helps students in being fit for life. It is evident that many people who are obese when young have a higher risk of being obeast when they are adults. It only makes sense that we keep kids fit and healthy at a young age to atleast increase their chances of being healthy into adulthood. Many parents do not motivate or help their kids to be active on a daily basis, or at least a few days a week. Playing one sport for 3 months a year is not going to help students stay fit, it needs to be year round, it needs to be more than one sport or activity. Moving on... Schools play an even bigger role in helping decrease the percentage of childhood obesity. It was said in class that some elementary classes only get one, maybe two days of phys ed per week. Thats just wrong. They are promoting this disease or at least their not doing enough to prevent it. Phys Ed is needed on a daily basis, activity, sport, all of this if we want to see a respectable decline in childhood obesity.