Equity, is it possible?

I touched  a little on it in my other postings, but wanted to address the whole question.  Yes, I feel that it is possible by an extraordinary teacher in an extraordinary school.  I feel that in order to be equitable in the classroom, the first thing that must take place is the administration must also be equitable in their distribution of discipline, policies, and time. There is no way that you can control a classroom and keep the students all working equitably when you have some students that do the same thing wrong as others, but don’t get in the same trouble.  A school has to be consistent with the students so they know what they can expect from the administrators if they do something wrong.  This is equitable treatment because the punishments get more severe when the student does it more often.  So following policy will make the discipline more equitable which in turn will let the students know that they will not receive special treatment and thus must behave.  Now, once your School is equitable, the classroom will run smoother making it easier to conduct class and get around to all students helping them equitably.   I do feel it is possible, but it almost has to be an educational utopia school in order for it to occur.  Now lets talk about educational equity on the internet.  If you are taking a online course, is it a given that it will be equitable.  Since the professor is not in the classroom and does not contact the students personally unless the students is in need of assistant, does that imply equitable treatment for all.  I don’t really think that it is because that would mean that if the professor made a comment to one students he also made a comment geared towards every student.  With that in mind, I think I have changed my view of “is equity possible “,  I just though of the fact that it is probably not because of the effort other students put into class.  Every students is different and thus each need different types and levels of teacher attention.  Not all students get the kind of attention they need, thus it is not equitable.  NCLB is based off the premise that all students can learn, but it fails to take into consideration at the pace that they learn.   So, NCLB does want equity among students, but doesn’t know how to go about doing it besides testing to make sure we have done it.  I don’t think that some students are capable of grasping the higher thinking of physics or calculus, but does that mean they can’t learn it.  According the NCLB it doesn’t mean that.  By my definition it does mean they can’t learn it.  If they learned it they would be able to apply it later in life.  I don’t think that most of the students I have will ever apply anything they are learning in my class later in life.  Like my students said when I asked them how are they going to be able to determine how much gas they have left before they run out, they replied, “look at the gas level which tells you how many miles you have left”.  I didn’t know that they had cars that would tell you that.  So, really, what do they need to know algebra for?What is it about blogging that makes your mind ramble.  I always seem to think of a thousand things to say and it makes it hard to get all of it in before I forget what my point of the blog was.  Hopefully you can interpret what I am trying to say.   

mob rules

I loved the article about the mob.  It enlightened me on the ways of the mob.  I am also glad that they implicated a company that I think is fast becoming a monopoly and a poor service provider, At&t. The article described AT&T as a “politically power” because they are too large for their own good.  I have just written a blog about the problems I was having with At&t not providing good service because they know that there is no other option for me to turn to.  I feel that since I am blogging that I am part of the mob and as a member of the mob, I have a voice that I may help to cause a change in AT&T.  Not likely, but that is the message that I took from the article.  If enough people communicate together than they can create a difference.  This to me is the way that it can effect learning and education.  If teachers and administrators come together all on one topic, they can create a change, like the article said.  I feel that just communicating with people that feel the same way you do will help to create change.  Maybe not world change, but just a change in the way you teach or use technology.  We as teachers and life long learners are always looking for ideas and new ideas to use in our classes, so why not create that on the web.  TappedIn creates this, but we just don’t have enough people using it to make it really useful and it doesn’t have a storage system that teachers could upload lesson plans or activities to.  The time is now and the ones that are in the mob are going to go places, but those outside might just get left behind.  

Conditions to educational equity

I have always said that I will treat each person equitably in my class.  That means, I’ll treat you the way you deserve to be treated by the way you act in the classroom.  That isn’t the same with the educational equity.  The conditions for educational equity would be to treat everyone in the class the same.  This I know is hard for me to do because of the personalities of the girls compared to the boys.  This is not always the case, but usually the girls will listen and the boys are usually talking, sleeping, or acting like they aren’t listening to be cool.  I can easily prove my point with the classes I have now.  I have a class of 20 students first period where all but 4 are girls.  That is my only class that I can actually ask a question and there is silence.  No one wants to say anything.  The males are either sleeping or not paying attention.  Now, contrary to that come visit my 5th, 6ht or 7th period class where in all three classes there are 8 females total in all three classes.  These classes are loud with students constantly talking, not listening, or busy doing something else. These classes are very loud and aren’t what I would call equitable.   This shows the differences in girls and boys attitudes in the classes so of course I will have to treat them differently, but I’m not supposed to.  That is something I would like to know how not to.  If a student is disrupting class you have to get them to stop doing which is giving them he attention that they wanted.  If you don’t get them to be quiet then that is inequitable to those that are trying to learn.  So being able to give each student regardless of gender or ethnicity is equity, but I feel it is very hard to do.  I would like to say that I can treat everyone the same and I try to get to each of the students, but the ones that are quiet and don’t cause any trouble when you have a class of trouble makers, it is hard to do.  I do offer students time in morning or afternoon everyday to have one on one tutoring, but no one willing has come yet.  So I do know that equity is something that I need to work on because I can name several students that I have probably not said more than 10 words to the whole semester because of all the other “squeaky wheel” type students. We also just went 7 periods from 4 period block schedule that doesn’t allow me much time to go around and answer questions like I used to be able to do. I know that is no excuse and I am trying to work on that, but where most of the good students are passing, I have put it on the back burner.