Blog #9

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Image result for advanced placement courses in high schoolI am choosing to write this post off of Laura's blog. I love how she connected the readings back to her own life as well as, the service learning project. Laura talk's a lot about advanced placement classes in high school and how they were very different then the other classes. I would have to agree that the teachers who taught the advanced placement courses at my school also seemed very interested and enthusiastic about the course. However, these classes were not hard to get into. If you signed up for the class then you could take it. Everyone knew the level and ability you needed to do well in this class. I think it was great to have the opportunity to work at a higher level. Like Jeannie Oakes would say, these classes allowed me to have better instructors, better organization, more compelling work, and freedom. There are many pros to learning in this type of environment! 
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A quote I can totally relate to is "One quote that stood out to me from the article is 'In low ability classes, for example, teachers seem to be less encouraging and more punitive, placing more emphasis on discipline and behavior and less on academic learning.' I have seen this first hand in my kindergarten project placement. My teacher is more focused on yelling at the kids than helping them academically. She is very stern with the kids which distracts them from their learning." My service learning teacher acts the same way. For example, one boy, who struggles greatly in class, was practicing his numbers when he was suppose to be quiet. The teacher yelled at him and told him he had to stop. She put discipline at a higher importance than his ability to count numbers.

Comments

  1. Nick BerlingNovember 19, 2018 at 5:09 AM

    Great post! I think it is so cool how your school lets a student take his/ her education to a higher level by allowing a student to at least attempt to take a higher level course and not be forced to take a course level that is belittling of the student's potential.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JayNovember 26, 2018 at 5:10 AM

    In my high school, Classical, over 24 AP classes were offered which is more than triple than most of the other schools in Providence. I attended 3 of them, but only passed 2, and was made to feel really bad because the AP US History was too hard for me. I felt so out of place in that class, and always lost so I understand why tracking is beneficial. But I feel like only in the case of AP classes where there is more content to cover. I don't think that different classes covering the same content and material should be categorized into higher ability and lower ability.

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