School Organization

In order to serve students best, schools should be organized in a way that each student can feel as if they are a part of the community.
In order to do this, individual teachers need to collaborate with other teachers in the same grade to create a professional learning community amongst themselves. Then, teachers can create a community of learners within their own classroom by keeping thier room a safe place for children. By that, I mean that students will not be afraid to voice their opinions or give an incorrect answer. Giving students choices, cooperative learning experiences, and a good example will increase a sense of security within their classroom community.
Schools are already serving their students well, teachers can reinforce these ideas and help their students to increase the feeling of belonging and learning.

Disability Labeling

Labeling those with disabilites can be beneficial in identification and knowledge. However, it is also very damaging to those who are labeled. Labeling causes us to have a prejudgment in our minds about those individuals. Before we even meet a person who has been labeled as something, we have a preconceived notion of how that person will be. Whether that notion is true or not, we will treat those differently than the rest of us who are "normal". Labeling is a permanent stereotype that will haunt the person throughout most of his or her life.

Privileges

Because I am a white female, part of a dominant religious group, and around many of those in my social class, I have many privileges that I have failed to notice until recently. Some privileges I have realized are the following: I can be in company with those of my race or religion whenever I choose to. I can be sure that my neighbors will be pleasant towards me and all of my family. I can purchase a home in a nice community. I never have to speak for all of my race or religion. I can speak out against the government without the fear of being punished or cast out as an outsider. Finally, my race will not speak against me in cases when I have been pulled over or paid for a purchase with a check.
Because I am not a minority, I do not have access to specific scholarships. However, there are so many grants out there that I do have access to. This point seems almost comical when compared to some of the privileges minority students are excluded from.
I have all these privileges because I am part of the majority society where we live. I don't think anyone decided I can have these and others cannot, it is just how it is. Although it is unfair to others who come to live here, I do not think I would prefer to have it any other way. I don't think these privileges should be withheld from anyone, but I wouldn't like to have them taken away.

The Changing Family Structure

It seems as if when I was in elementary school everyone I knew had the same type of family I had. That is, all my friends had a normal family with both parents at home and siblings with the same last name. My aunt was divorced and raising her family alone, but I didn't know of any other families like that. Now however, I see students who come from all different types of families, not just single parent families.
I find it interesting that these days, it is inappropriate to tell your students to have them tell their parents something. Instead, you need to tell them to tell their guardian or whoever they live with. Students today come from all sorts of families and situations. Not only do we need to be careful when we tell our students to tell their guardian something, we also need to be aware when we read stories, have discussions, or show pictures about anything that has to deal with family life. The only way to incorporate each different family is to talk about them. However, I find it difficult to see myself discussing gay/lesbian parents with any student of mine. I guess the topic could just be avoided unless specifically brought up.

Standardized Test Prep

My first response to this prompt would be to browse through the test and make sure you teach each different section from it in your classroom. However, I can only think of a couple truly ethical ways to help students prepare for standardized tests. As teachers, we can only be sure that each content area is covered thoroughly. You could also take information from an older test and base your lessons off the core curriculum and that information. We can also give practice tests and prepare by reviewing basic information throughout the year. I cannot think of any other way to be totally ethical in helping with test preparation.
From my experience, I have found you need to be very careful to not base each lesson solely on the test. In the end, I found that focusing on the student first produced some of the best results. Helping students truly learn is more influential than pounding facts into their heads.

Stadardized Testing

Pros
Standardized testing has some good aspects as well as some negative aspects. The positive views of this form of testing are the following: practicality, standardization, identification of problems, and accountability of teachers and students.
Standardized tests are, for the most part, easy to administer and easy to grade. They can be given to most of the class at once and do not require personal time and assistance with each individual student. This aspect of the test provides a good and quick way to measure our students' learning.
All students are held accountable for the knowledge of the same material. Students cannot be left behind based on any "disadvantages". Race, disabilities, language barriers, and economic status cannot be blamed for failure of these tests. Each student is held to the same standard.
This form of testing also provides a powerful way to let administration know if there is a problem in student learning or classroom teaching. Change can then be implemented after a problem is diagnosed.
When each student across a district passes the same parts of a standardized test, teachers are shown what needs to be emphasized across the different classrooms. Students take learning and testing more seriously for themselves. Individual teachers can also see what content areas they need to work on.
Some of these pros can also be viewed as cons.
Cons
The following are cons: each student is held to the same standard regardless of disability, standardized tests can be biased against some students, there are huge negative impacts to teachers and students, and meaningful learning is often affected.
While students who have disabilities or language barriers can have an alternative assessment given, the test frequently does not measure these students' knowledge. It is not appropriate to have each student measured on the same scale when they are not on the same scale in the first place. I worked in a special education classroom and assisted during end-of-year testing. This time of the year was the most stressful for my cooperating teacher. We had to know what accomodations could be used with each student and administer the tests one-on-one. Although we tried our best to prepare our students throughout the year for this test, we knew there was no fighting chance some of them would pass. My teacher had even only taught to the test. She only cared about getting our students to pass. Even though we only worked with special needs students, it was apparent the tests were biased towards "normal" education students. Those tests can often be biased towards the main population, and are therefore unfit for distribution to each individual student.
If a school does not reach its AYP according to the passing percentage of the tests, there can be very negative impacts and changes for that school. Many of the staff can lose their jobs and students are given the opportunity choose a different school. 95% of the school is required to take the test. There is a very good chance that, by holding each student to the same standard, some schools will not pass.
In my own experience, I have seen that certain content areas are left out because they are not covered on the end-of-year test. Teachers have begun to teach to the test, not the students. Real life skills are not convered in those tests and are consequently left untaught.

WebSite Reflections

http://www.ed.gov/pubs/FirstYear/index.html What to Expect Your First Year of Teaching

This site was really easy to access. I liked that it had personal quotes from other teachers about their first years of teaching. Some of the opinions and trials were helpful to learn about and prepare for. I think it is interesting that there can be so many different viewpoints from people doing the same thing. This would be helpful to see that everyone struggles but to not give up!

http://www.nea.org/home/ToolsAndIdeas.html NEA Tools and Ideas

The accessibility of this site was very easy. All the different links made the site very useful. My favorite part about this site was the lesson plans. I liked how each lesson had a brief abstract. One thing that would make it a little more user-friendly would be if there were a subject search, like UEN's site. The articles concerning classroom management also seemed to have a useful place for me, as a future teacher.

http://www.aft.org/teachers/index.htm AFT Teachers A Union of Professionals

This site also pulled up easily. It seemed to be more of a teacher update/newsletter. The section I explored was called A Year In the Life of a Teacher. I previewed some articles about reading, common curriculum, and poverty. I might use this site. However, I really don't know if I will have enough time to read through each article and section. We will see.