Educational Alternatives

The best practice that I can see for closing the achievement gap would have to be increasing funding for economically disadvantaged or limited English proficiency students. I chose this practice mainly because if you can not read what you are looking at, how can you even begin to learn. I have wintessed this first hand at my job as a para at a local high school. I help a lot of hispanic students take tests and the level of reading they have is very poor a lot of the time. I have to read a lot of the test questions to these students because they have not learned to read english very well. We only have one ESL teacher at our high school, which is kind of sad considering that 1/3 of Vally High School is hispanic. These students come from low-income homes and their parents most likely know very little English as well. By increasing the funding for new and inproved ESL-type programs, we could start to close this literacy gap.

Great Classroom Management

I would consider myself to have a foundation of basic Christian beliefs. These have helped me avoid a lot of hassle growing up I think. When it comes to being with students in a learning environment, having a genuine respect for each student and their background will help a lot. If a situation arises that might require some level of dicipline, I would just remind the child that he/she would not want this for themselves. I believe that remaining consistent will help big time because if you do not follow through on what you say you are going to do, that could possibly give a student a foothold for future incidents to occur. Also, if you have a serious desire and love as a role model, these qualities will come through and the students will definetely pick up on it. You do not need to try to "convert" students to your belief system, just be sure to maintain a level of respect that definetely create a much more positive learning environment.

Standards-Based Education and Assessment

One type of assessment that I remember very well was when I took the English and Math placement tests at Aims so I could enroll in classes here. I had not taken the ACT nor the SAT test in high school. The questions on the test started out being rather easy, and got harder and harder as the test went on. I felt that a lot of the questions tested your ability to remember what you have memorized in years past. I did not have to turn in any work because all the questions were multiple choice. The reading portion did test your ability to read on a upper elementary to middle school level, so I guess that was used to see if you read the text books that you would buy later on. So in asnwering the question of whether or not it really tested what I knew how to do, I really do not think so.