Blog #13

By: Brian Crosby
Video:Back To The Future

Brian explains that his fourth grade class is dealing with poverty. These students were asked simple questions like: what country do you live in? What is your home phone number? What is your home address? Many of the kids could not answer these simple questions, that by now they should know with no sweat. All of his students have their own blogs and he explains that it lets them think out of the box. They "High Hopes"project they did was very interesting. They sent a balloon  up into space with a camera attached. It was part of the state standards which is supposed to show the layers of the atmosphere. The examples he shows in the classroom are very interesting, it keeps the students wanting to know more. He also incorporated language arts into this science lesson about altitude. He made the students act as if they were the balloon, and write a paper about their journey. I think that this was very impressive, because not only does he just teach the standards but he lets the students interact with these projects and papers. They used Wikkis and Flicker to upload there space pictures. The kids also get to see that people are really readying their papers. After this project they had to write a "High Hope" for their community or neighborhoods. Their class then opened up the "High Hope" to the world, and they got so many people from Australia, Canada, China, they also got to send their High Hopes up with the class. This was just amazing that this is offered in a public school class, I want to be a teacher like this that gets the students on fire. He definitely has high hopes for his classroom and you can tell by watching this video, this was very inspiring.

Video:A Vision of Students Today

So when I saw this video I completely related to each and every single one of the students holding up the cue cards. Especially the cue card that stated, "I will be $20,000 in debt after I graduate", because this will probably be true for me as well. It makes me sick how our education system has turned from learning basic knowledge, to a endless money pit. Just like the above picture says "I buy hundred dollar textbooks that I never open, that is so true. Why are college classes making students buy $300 textbooks? In high school the books were issued to you for free, colleges have 10 times more money then any local high school near you. Everything is about money, and 1/2 of whats left is about knowledge. What this video is trying to say is that, if we can look beyond the money and textbooks we have it all wrong. One of the students held out a computer that said "This computer cost more than some people make in a year." While watching this video as a student it made me mad to be honest and even as a future educator I see that it will only get worse. The world is headed down a road of poverty, with college costing so much money a lot of students will give up. And the ones that get government funding and aren't paying for it out of their own bank accounts like the video showed do not show up for class. School needs to be reevaluated and not be centered around being a money pit.