Education

Tomorrow the students are getting released early so that the teachers and paras can have professional development time.  For this we were assigned a chapter to read in the book they gave us at the last professional development day.  Last month, with all the things happening for Birka and guests coming I had misplaced the book.  I found it on Sunday, started reading the chapter last night and finished it tonight.  The book is about using competency based grading.  It is a concept that I feel has a lot of merit.  After reading this one chapter though, I think the school I am at will be making some changes.  There are a few things that we do differently from the way the book describes.  I am curious how they will implement the changes that I hope will happen.  The big one of these is to allow the children who have not yet mastered a subject matter an opportunity to relearn and reassess to earn a better grade and reach competency.  This does happen at this school, just not to the extent that I feel the book describes.  Or, because I am a para and not a teacher, I just don't see it happening.

When it comes to education and the way schools work, I have opinions.  They are based mostly on feeling I suppose, but I have done some reading in the past as well.  My opinion is that more classes can be integrated.  When students are learning about the globe and latitude and longitude in Social Studies, the Math teacher could also be teaching graphing.  Graphing is also used in Science.  Language Arts could be reading a book on a global explorer or writing arguments like that used in Science.  There is quite a bit of crossover between the different subjects that I feel would make learning more cohesive for the students. 

Enough work stuff.  This afternoon I decided to go out for a walk with K and Gideon.  The weather is a bit warm (for February) with bunches of snow melt.  I don't think I overdid it and I think that because of the walk I am feeling a bit better.  The walk is my happy for today.  Gideon spent most of the walk singing. 

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