Week 4 Reflection - Maria Brown

Prompt:  If you were given a chance to re-organize schools in ways that made sense in the 21st century how would you do it? What would you keep and what would you get rid of? How would you make schools more reflective of a diverse student body with myriad and changing needs?

 The first thing I would do is a needs assessment for my school population.  This would help me assess what adjunct services were needed.  There are many grants and sources of money for different services.  Free breakfast and/or lunch, snack, supplies, technology, etc.  It's very difficult to teach without needed resources and technology and you're not going to reach a hungry student. 

 Next I would tailor the content to what is relevant to my kids population.  Some schools I went to had absolutely no african american history.  No one knew who George Washington Carver or Madam CJ Walker or Lewis Latimer were.  This isn't acceptable.  For core subjects, I would make them relevant to my students so they know why they are learning what they are learning.  I would get rid of all "fluff" - those assignments that have nothing to do with truly educating kids, the "busy work" to allow for more opportunity for valuable practice and/or acceleration of learning.  

 Each of my classes would take a diagnostic test in the beginning and middle of the year to assess scholarly needs - where are they when they start my class?  How about in the middle of the year?  Where do we need to do remediation?  I wouldn't teach to a (standardized) test, but above it.  

 I would teach my students how to test (if I couldn't get rid of standardized tests all together...).  ACT/SAT/GRE etc classes would be required as part of the curriculum.  I would make interview classes and classes on building resume's etc required.  

 There are just a few things I feel would be important. 

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