Competition in the Classroom

This semester I’m also taking Child and Adolescent Psychology, last week we spoke about competition in the classroom. At first I didn’t like the idea of having competitions in the classroom cause it can cause a student to create a sense of inferiority that can affect the student a long time, especially if its used in an assessment. For example, teachers in my grade school used spelling bees to asses student’s ability to spell instead of having a test, quiz or some other form of assessment. I believe this form of competition is and will always be harmful because students that perform poorly will do so in front of their peers, making them feel inferior to their peer that perform better. But after thinking about competition for a while I changed my mind, it can work if it’s structured differently. If the competition is set up in a way all students can win maybe it might work. For example, the teacher I observed during my Junior field made up a bingo game in which the student completed a matching assignment in class, then after they finished they would use the answer from the assignment instead of numbers on their individual bingo boards. The competition was not in completing the assignment or getting certain questions right but in where you placed the answers on the bingo board and then they played long enough for a large number amount of students won. Even thought that I agree on this kind of competition I don’t agree in any competition as an assessment.

A different view to the education problem

Obama unveiled an ambitious $18 billion plan to expand public education frompre-school through 12th grade while at Central High School in Manchester, New Hampshire this morning.
Calling education "the currency of the Information Age," Obama stressed the need for expanding public programs to help American competitiveness with other nations. He said that a child in Boston now needs the training to compete with the kids getting an equal or better education in Bangalore or Beijing.

"In this kind of economy, countries who out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow,” Obama said. “Already, China is graduating eight times as many engineers as we are. By 12th grade, our children score lower on math and science tests than most other kids in the world."(MSNBC Tuesday, November 20, 2007 11:38 AM by Domenico MontanaroFiled Under: 2008, Obama)

I was recently looking into the education polocies of the decomcratic candidates and I found this article on Obama. What really sttruck me was the fact that he seens educatuion as a problem because of the competition with other countries. That seems wrong to me, why not just see it as a national problem instead of a competition with other conturies?

WARNING to anyone looking to do sophomore or junior field.

If you live on campus and don’t own a car the best and most logical option would be to apply for a public school in Jersey City. Well think again. Before our fall semester ended I applied to do my junior field during the winter break for two reasons one I live in JC and two I work and go to school fulltime, which leaves me with no time for anything. I had it planed out perfectly. I applied early and I was going to use one of my paid vacation weeks so I can complete the 40 hrs during that week. Well, that plan fell apart quickly. Jersey City’s human resources department took forever with the paper work and didn’t respond to my application until about 4 day before school started. So I used those 4 days and got about 18 hrs done and the experience was fun.

Ok so I thought that since I got about half way through the 40 hrs I would be ok doing a few hours here and there between work and school. Yea right it couldn’t be that easy. A week after my first day I received a call from the department of education. I was told that I could not return to the school until I had taken a physical (that includes a blood test, just in case you’re scared of needles) and without having been finger printed. I thought to myself no problem I can do that, so I asked the lady on the phone how long would it take for all that to clear and her response was and I quote, “Who knows.” Well needless to say I applied for Hudson Catholic, which is a private school in Jersey City. So if you’re looking to do any field experience in JC and you’re pressed for time, think twice.

Technology in the classroom

The video we saw in class definitely opened my eyes to a bunch of new ways to use technology in the classroom. If teacher would have used unconventional method like those to teach when in was in HS I would have loved it. The only time I touched a computer when I was in HS was at home. I did take a computer class but all the things the instructor taught I already knew and most of the time I knew more about computers than the teacher. Come to think of it why would the school have a teacher that knows nothing about computer teaching such a class, that like having someone that knows nothing about baseball coaching the school’s team.

This semester I’m doing my junior field and I’m doing it at the HS I went to. I was so surprised to see that the school is using more technology than they use to. The teacher I was observing use PowerPoint, which was non-existent when I was there, its like they moved from the Flintstone age to the Jetson age. One of the days I visited the students were working on their ends of the semester projects, which was their own PowerPoint presentation for class. It good to see that the school is taking some interest in assimilating technology into the classrooms and into teaching.