post 10

Last week as I was waiting for transport to pick me up from Manenberg a terrible fight broke out between two 7^th grade boys. All of the teachers were in a staff meeting and oddly the security guards who usually patrol school grounds were nowhere to be found. All of a sudden Sam, Eva, Bre and I heard all of this shouting and whistling. When we rushed around the corner we saw a mob of about 20 kids marching down the hall. Before I knew what was happening two of the boys were in the center of the mob, one had a pair of child scissors and the other had a sharp piece of metal, they were trying to stab each other. A third boy was carrying a brick. We began to yell at the children to stop fighting and go home. Eva recognized the boy holding the scissors and began to try and get him to sit down so she could figure out what the conflict was about. As the boy was struggling to get away from her, he scratched her in the stomach with the scissors. At about this time, two teachers finally realized what was happening. They were able to find the two boys and bring them into the office. Eva was very upset about the situation, as we all were, but she wasn’t badly hurt. We were mostly concerned about how the safety of the children and really wondering why there hadn’t been any supervision after school hours. Eva briefly talked to the assistant principle, a teacher, and the two boys. The boys were smacked in their heads by the adults, and yelled at. While Eva was in the office, the 7^th grade teacher who had just let the boys out of class approached me to talk about the incident. Nothing could have prepared for the conversation we were about to have. He began by explaining to me that his entire class had been out of control all day. The two involved in the fight were on edge all afternoon. It was as if he knew something would happen between them but let them go regardless. Next he tells me that on the previous day he “beat the child (who scratched Eva) to a pulp” because the child had cursed out his mother. It took me a few moments to process what I had just heard. Finally I responded by saying, “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but you just told me that you, personally, beat that very child who just got into a fight.” I asked him how he expected this child to handle his conflicts? He admitted that violence breads violence and he understood where I was coming from. He continued to talk about how the children shouldn’t blame their poor behavior on their socio-economic statuses, how he grew up in the very same neighborhoods, during apartheid, and in rougher conditions but that he did not turn out like a gangster or a criminal. I explained that I thought it had much more to do with family environment, support, and love rather then socio-economics. He tried to tell me that 80% of the children come from loving homes. These are the very same homes where brothers, uncles, and fathers are frontrunners for dozens of gangs. It was outstanding. He wondered aloud how this child could have been so disrespectful to go so far as to hurt Eva, an American, who was simply there to help. He compared Eva to Amy Biehl, an American student who was murdered in 1993 in a black township. The comparison was beyond ridiculous. Although I believe that all adults deserve respect, why should these children treat us American students any different than anyone else? What do they owe us? Here we are, foreigners, coming into their world. This is a world filled with violence, drugs, abuse, hunger, improper housing and poor education and they are angry. They have every right to be angry, and I’m angry for them. I left Manenberg feeling really stressed out and upset about the entire situation.

The next morning when we got to Manenberg the children had just had an assembly with people from prison. They were there to talk about what will happen to them if they make bad choices and get involved in criminal activity. The principle ended the assembly by announcing that one of the American teachers had been stabbed. It was completely untrue to the actual event. All of the children were coming up to us and asking if Eva was okay and if she had been hospitalized. They were really scared! This afternoon we had a meeting with the principle and two other members of the school body. Their main focus of the meeting was to apologize for the behavior and to ensure us that our safety is their number one concern. I couldn’t help but voice that although I realize we must stay safe, Eva, Sam and I are just as concerned about the safety of the children. It is unreasonable to compare one life to another and we would refuse to do so. They made it clear that if a fight was ever to break out in the future we mustn’t get involved. We explained that we didn’t actually get involved and the whole thing was an accident for the most part. But I inquired, must we just stand there if something like this was to happen again, or turn our backs while children are trying to stab one another? They seemed to receive our message well. If nothing else the incident turned out to be a way in which we were able to open a conversation with the principle and get some of our frustrations regarding the school and staff members out into the open. I now feel more comfortable voicing my concerns within the school.

Last week as I was waiting for transport to pick me up from Manenberg a terrible fight broke out between two 7^th grade boys. All of the teachers were in a staff meeting and oddly the security guards who usually patrol school grounds were nowhere to be found. All of a sudden Sam, Eva, Bre and I heard all of this shouting and whistling. When we rushed around the corner we saw a mob of about 20 kids marching down the hall. Before I knew what was happening two of the boys were in the center of the mob, one had a pair of child scissors and the other had a sharp piece of metal, they were trying to stab each other. A third boy was carrying a brick. We began to yell at the children to stop fighting and go home. Eva recognized the boy holding the scissors and began to try and get him to sit down so she could figure out what the conflict was about. As the boy was struggling to get away from her, he scratched her in the stomach with the scissors. At about this time, two teachers finally realized what was happening. They were able to find the two boys and bring them into the office. Eva was very upset about the situation, as we all were, but she wasn’t badly hurt. We were mostly concerned about how the safety of the children and really wondering why there hadn’t been any supervision after school hours. Eva briefly talked to the assistant principle, a teacher, and the two boys. The boys were smacked in their heads by the adults, and yelled at. While Eva was in the office, the 7^th grade teacher who had just let the boys out of class approached me to talk about the incident. Nothing could have prepared for the conversation we were about to have. He began by explaining to me that his entire class had been out of control all day. The two involved in the fight were on edge all afternoon. It was as if he knew something would happen between them but let them go regardless. Next he tells me that on the previous day he “beat the child (who scratched Eva) to a pulp” because the child had cursed out his mother. It took me a few moments to process what I had just heard. Finally I responded by saying, “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but you just told me that you, personally, beat that very child who just got into a fight.” I asked him how he expected this child to handle his conflicts? He admitted that violence breads violence and he understood where I was coming from. He continued to talk about how the children shouldn’t blame their poor behavior on their socio-economic statuses, how he grew up in the very same neighborhoods, during apartheid, and in rougher conditions but that he did not turn out like a gangster or a criminal. I explained that I thought it had much more to do with family environment, support, and love rather then socio-economics. He tried to tell me that 80% of the children come from loving homes. These are the very same homes where brothers, uncles, and fathers are frontrunners for dozens of gangs. It was outstanding. He wondered aloud how this child could have been so disrespectful to go so far as to hurt Eva, an American, who was simply there to help. He compared Eva to Amy Biehl, an American student who was murdered in 1993 in a black township. The comparison was beyond ridiculous. Although I believe that all adults deserve respect, why should these children treat us American students any different than anyone else? What do they owe us? Here we are, foreigners, coming into their world. This is a world filled with violence, drugs, abuse, hunger, improper housing and poor education and they are angry. They have every right to be angry, and I’m angry for them. I left Manenberg feeling really stressed out and upset about the entire situation.

The next morning when we got to Manenberg the children had just had an assembly with people from prison. They were there to talk about what will happen to them if they make bad choices and get involved in criminal activity. The principle ended the assembly by announcing that one of the American teachers had been stabbed. It was completely untrue to the actual event. All of the children were coming up to us and asking if Eva was okay and if she had been hospitalized. They were really scared! This afternoon we had a meeting with the principle and two other members of the school body. Their main focus of the meeting was to apologize for the behavior and to ensure us that our safety is their number one concern. I couldn’t help but voice that although I realize we must stay safe, Eva, Sam and I are just as concerned about the safety of the children. It is unreasonable to compare one life to another and we would refuse to do so. They made it clear that if a fight was ever to break out in the future we mustn’t get involved. We explained that we didn’t actually get involved and the whole thing was an accident for the most part. But I inquired, must we just stand there if something like this was to happen again, or turn our backs while children are trying to stab one another? They seemed to receive our message well. If nothing else the incident turned out to be a way in which we were able to open a conversation with the principle and get some of our frustrations regarding the school and staff members out into the open. I now feel more comfortable voicing my concerns within the school.

Cheater Cheater Internet User

Do you remember in school taking that Friday spelling test and inevitably there was that kid who wrote the answers on their arm or hid the spelling words in their desk, hey maybe that kid was you. However 9 out of 10 times the kid would get caught because she or he looked oh so obvious and then the when the teacher called the student outside to talk, the whole class whispered "Cheater, Cheater, Pumpkin Eater"? Well now in the 21st century as the world evolves and everything is being googled, blogged about, or recorded and then posted on You tube; the art of cheating is also changing. Now when a students gets caught with the answers to a test its on their i-phone or being texted to them. Does this mean that the old adage of eating pumpkins will be changed to "Cheater Cheater Internet User"?
More and more teachers are trying to combat the problem of cyber-cheating and plagiarism in the classroom, but with the emergence of electronic devices that have web capability and the amazing resource that the web provides; keeping the internet out of the classroom is impossible and impractical. So how do teachers address this new problem? Well the answer lies in what a teacher considers to be cheating. As technology develops this definition is often blurred. Recently David Thornburg posted an article entitled "Cheating and the Internet Age" in it he argued that when a student uses the internet to their advantage on a test they are not really cheating but rather meeting the content standards of using technology as a resource. He further argues hat teachers must go beyond Bloom's first level of basic memorization in their tests because these types of assessments make using wikipedia to find a simple answer so appealing especially when it is just a few text messages away.
As a future teacher myself and a native to the internet age I find his outlook refreshing and in touch with the youth culture of today. Memorization, although helpful in a game of Go-fish, is becoming increasingly obsolete as the access of information via the internet is so readily avilable. For example the students of today in a hypothetical economics class might find the value of memorizing the statistics of this years Gross Domestic Product next to zero, not because its not important, but rather it is just a Google search away. What students of today would find value in, is in recognizing the impact of the decrease of our GDP and then posting their thoughts to a Live Journal account or creating a You Tube video that expresses the correlation of this fact with the Recession. If as educators we can recognize this shift in thought about testing and information then we can better accommodate our students instead of worry about if their cell phones are telling them the answer to number 13 is "A".
It is important to note however that cyber-cheating is not just relegated to finding simple answers, students are also using the internet for their papers and often are plagiarizing intentionally or unintentionally. Whether or not this is a way to meet content standards for technology is debatable. Using other peoples work and claiming it as your own is cheating no matter how you word it . Our challenge as teachers is to not find better ways of catching plagiarizers but finding creative solutions so that the option of using other peoples work is not appealing. Thornburg suggests that if a students does not want to write her or his own paper than have them grade the papers they found on the net with commentary. As educators if we are willing to create these types of options plagarizing in our classrooms will decrease. I also believe that if students know that their teacher is techno-literate and very aware of all the resources on the web for research papers and the like students will be more reluctant to use this method of teaching.
Today's teachers must recognize the value of the internet and use it to their advantage rather than view the Web as their enemy. I am of the standpoint that instead of punishing students for using their cell phones to find answers, encourage the use of technology and ask the students critical thinking questions. Student's individual thoughts are not on a Wiki page. I know that this testing takes much more time and effort and is particularly hard because of the high stakes tests that are all about recalling and repeating. But it is our duty as educators to make sure that children are getting the best possible education and this means understanding the capabilities of the Net and using them in the classroom. The internet is not the bad guy and neither are cell phones, sites that have papers for sale aren't that bad either. All of these things can be used to help our students think critically and keep them engaged. If we truly understand and embrace this fact then maybe we can keep naming calling old school and when I finally finish school and get my credential I too can hear "Cheater Cheater Pumpkin Eater" when I catch a kid cheating on their spelling test. Then again isn't it my duty to create tests where cheating isn't an option?

Shift Happens

I recently watched the "Shift Happens" video that has been circulating on You Tube. This video is about globalization, consequences of our new information age and the apparent shift of world power that is currently taking place. The video is a compilation of facts and figures that make it simple to understand that as a nation and members of the world community we can either adapt to the changing times or be passed up by them. What does this mean in context to education? Why does it matter that over half of all four year olds have been on a computer or that all of India's college graduates, two million more than U.S graduates, speak English? How does the fact that people have instant access to information, media, friends, jobs etc.; effect future classrooms? It is the duty and responsibility of educators to make sure that their students are literate in this new technology not only so they can compete globally for jobs and resources but also so that they can connect with the rest of the world. Computer class is no longer a time for teachers to sit and check their e-mails while their students make yet another power point or play some repetitive computer game on fractions. Students have the chance to communicate with the world and learn the capabilities of what this new age of reason has to offer. It is the job of the teacher to expand the world of the child so that they can grow. I am so excited to learn about the capabilities of these new technologies and ways to learn and communicate. I am even more excited to apply this to the classroom.