Peabloggy

In the Social Context of Education course this semester, we are learning about programs that assist in bridging the gap between high school and college for at-risk students. This article about Middle College High also acts as a bridge, but for advanced and exceptionally motivated high-schoolers. At this special school, juniors and seniors can graduate with one to two years worth of college credits. A University of Tennessee-Knoxville representative says this puts them at an advantage when competing against typical high school graduates.

I wish this type of school existed in my hometown when I was growing up. Knocking out two years of college credits while still living the carefree life of a teenager? Sweet.

-Teresa Bagamery Clark

Academic tenure is a beast. The topic has been discussed for years and years throughout the academe, and now with new technologies, has gone the way of the blogger. Tenure is highly sought after by those that don’t have it and lamented by some that do. It’s appeal is understandable, but is it worth the trouble and endless amounts of antacids that it sometimes requires?

I am curious to see the effect of tenure on the Millennial generation. As the super educated and highly mobile generation begins working into the faculty ranks, I wonder where they will place priority. Will the Millennials be content with a paycheck for life, or, will they go the route of exorbitant short-term contracts and the freedom to move where they choose? If my students are any indication, they might go with the latter. Students today don’t like to be locked into anything (cell phone contracts, meal plans, on-campus housing, majors, etc.) so I don’t know how they would feel being locked into something like tenure, even if a paycheck is involved.

- Landon C. Clark

I recently saw the mockumentary Chalk, produced by Mike Akel. Perhaps best described as K-12’s version of The Office, this film prodded a few laughs out of me (especially the slang spelling bee), but left me wanting more, a lot more, out of the characters.  Despite my previous complaints about unrealistic education movies, I wanted to see a profound moment between student and teacher.  I wanted to hear the choirs of angels serenading the movie audience as an educator liberates his students from institutional oppression.  I wanted those classic montages in which students create a dazzling project or improve the neighborhood to the chorus of a catchy tune.

Instead, I got a pretty close rendering of the day-to-day reality of a new teacher with little support, no experience, and mediocre passion.  This description may not appeal to most audiences, but to the urban educator, this movie may resonate deeply.  Before I began teaching, I never realized that there will be bad days, no matter how well you teach or how much you planned or how effectively you connect with students.  I never considered the lifelessness that can skulk about the hallways of comprehensive high schools.  But I also agree with the assistant principal in Chalk when she says that it is those shared moments with students, however brief, that make teaching worthwhile.

–Katie Harris

Wednesday was parent-teacher conference day in Williamson County, and I lost count of the number of times I heard something along these lines from parents of seventh graders:

“So and so does his homework, but he’s always trying to do the least amount of work possible so that he can hurry up and go play video games. I don’t know what to do besides take the computer away during the week.”

I was shocked. I know that kids often want to avoid or quickly finish homework in order to move on to more appealing activities like games or sports, but it was striking to hear from parents about the sense of urgency their kids feel to get to the computer screen - an urgency not unlike the sometimes neurotic email-checking that I, and so many other adults, engage in every day.

We live in what researchers and theorists have named an “attention economy” (Lankshear, Knobel) - and in this economy, the demands on our time and attention exceed the amount of attention we have to give. After Wednesday, I realized how important it is for teachers to discuss this overtly with students, and other adults. How do we prioritize and sort through the demands effectively? And how do we teach (and learn) habits that can help us focus on a task for half an hour without clicking on “Send and Receive Email” about fifteen times? I’m still trying to figure that one out.

- Rachel Bowers

I feel extremely lucky that last night I was able to attend the preview of a documentary film made by a former local tv news reporter about two current Vanderbilt Medical School students.  The film is called “Sons of Lwala.” The two students are Milton and Fred Ochieng’ who come from a small, remote village in Kenya named Lwala.  The documentary recounts the story of how the two brothers came to be at Vanderbilt and their struggle to build the first medical clinic in their home village.

There are so many remarkable facets of the film that I don’t want to give away because there are still a few opportunities to see the film locally and hopefully nationwide.  Let me just say that it is a great story about sacrifice, philanthropy, and dedication to ones community and family.  Milton, the older brother, was only able to come to the U.S. to attend college because the people of his village sold their cows, chickens, and anything else they could in order to buy him a plane ticket.  The reader should understand that it is not uncommon for students to leave Africa to get a college education; it is unusual for them to come back, and to take on the kinds of burdens in doing so that the Ochieng’ brothers have in order to change the unfortunate state of their home village and country.   The brothers lost both of their parents while at school in the U.S.

I implore everyone who has the chance to see the film to make the time and please go to the premiere at the Nashville Film Festival.  If you are not in the Nashville area, then you can go to www.lwalacommunityalliance.org and learn more about the brothers, their familly, and the clinic, as well as their continuing mission to construct clinics across Kenya and Africa.  Donate.  Tell all your friends. Consider what it is that you have sacrificed for your education or your profession.

–Luke Webb

When my wife and I moved to Nashville in 2006, only one of us had a full-time job lined up. That being said, we weren’t that worried, considering that we both had Masters degrees and there were plenty of college and universities in the area. Six months and multiple withdrawals from our savings account later, we were both employed! If only we had found a job search application that looked for jobs in higher education for two careers at the same time, we might have saved both time and money. Now, almost two years later, I finally found one.

Inside Higher Ed has a function that combines two job searches into one, which can probably help highly mobile couples looking for jobs in the same area. I suggest you check it out. I am sure my wife and I will when we approach our graduation from Vanderbilt in two years.

-Landon C. Clark

Women needing less money than men to survive? As far as I know, the stereotype is that women shop and spend, not men. This opening statement assumes, as you have figured out, that every woman has a man at work somewhere bringing in the big bucks to supplement her income and thus take care of her.

According to this article, there exists a “salary gap” between the salaries of university-employed women and men–and in salaries, period. I have heard this as a general rule of thumb for as long as I can remember. In addition, in Organizational Theory of Education last fall, some of the readings and classroom discussions centered on “gendered” organizations and workplaces that may favor male employees.

The idea that women earn less than men at basically the same jobs intrigues me. Is it education? Experience? Who we don’t know? This article brings up an interesting point- that certain fields of study in higher education receive funding, while others do not. This suggests that perhaps the salary gap is unintentional if women are simply choosing disciplines that don’t make money (or schools that cannot afford to pay).  Are we self-selecting (gasp) lower salaries–or are they culturally imposed?

-Teresa Bagamery Clark

I have posted about Facebook many times already, but I found an article in the Washington Post a few weeks ago that I couldn’t resist writing about. Young, savvy networkers everywhere are flustered by parents attempting to “friend” their children.

I have thought long and hard about my own Facebook site, especially as a teacher, and have consciously avoided posting anything I would not want future employers to see. I realize my profile is available to only those whom I allow to view it, but I’m paranoid, I admit. Just a few weeks ago, a group of middle school students went searching for my Facebook or Myspace profile!

Social networking sites like these appear to be making it more difficult to keep boundaries between public and private life, college friends and family members. Depending on your security features, others have access to view all of your friends, read conversations, and see pictures that others may have posted without your permission. As more and more authority figures join Facebook, creating an online identity becomes more and more complicated.

–Katie Harris

One of the major problems I’ve had with No Child Left Behind from the very beginning, before the law even had a chance to prove its inadequacies, was its reliance on numbers; numbers that could be manipulated with remarkable ease by administrators looking to mask their school’s shortcomings.

Case in point, when NCLB was instituted in Texas, while W. was governor there, principals disguised the number of daily student absences by reporting that chronically absent students had transferred to other schools or districts.  NCLB requires a daily attendance percentage in 90’s, and for schools in high poverty areas with high levels of transience and student turnover that number was a bad joke and nightmare all rolled up into one.  The principals did what they had to in order to survive.  I don’t blame them for that.  I also can’t fault NCLB for wanting to enforce what data shows to be a highly determinate factor in student success.  Both were, however, treating the symptoms and not the disease.

The New York Times website ran an excellent article today reporting on the ridiculous amount of manipulation that states do when compiling graduation rates.  One more example of how NCLB uses flowery language to fill stump speeches, while leaving real world implementation of those mandates up to politicians and administrators who will act with their own best interest in mind.

The solution?  Exactly what NCLB asks for.  Implementation of scientifically based teaching methods by highly qualified teachers.  I am writing this blog entry from an education library filled with thousands of ways, stated in theory and proven by practice, to motivate and involve students of every type and persuasion; and help them graduate with an education that prepares them for a competitive global job market.

And this is the moment at which this polemic comes full circle.  Better results need better students need better teachers need better education requires money teachers/schools need more money government needs to give more money government spends money on fruitless tactics (a war maybe?) cuts budgets schools lose teachers/resources students get left behind graduation rates plummet to 60’s public demands better results government demands better results…

I have a headache

–Luke Webb

While I was sifting through the myriad of stories chronicling the near upset of Belmont over Duke last night, I think I found the only NCAA bracket in the world that had Belmont in the title game. Inside Higher Ed produces a tournament bracket based on graduation rates based instead of three-point shots. Only a handful of the top basketball programs in the country make it to the Sweet Sixteen on the academic bracket, which is saddening, although not unexpected. If you happened to have filled out a bracket similar to the one by Inside Higher Ed, you should be congratulated on picking some fine academic institutions. However, you will probably come in last in your office pool.

- Landon C. Clark