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In a few short years, I will be attending graduate school in pursuit of an education license. This is scary but very exciting. I am going to be entering a field that is changing all the time, so I will have to be willing to adjust and compromise along the way to become the best teacher I can. Although my time at Venture Academy has not been the greatest experience of my life, I do think the time spent in a school seeing how teachers teach and students act has been helpful, and I have learned a few things about what to do and what not to do. Thank you, Karla, for teaching this class and getting everybody excited for the field of education!

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Because of the things I have learned in this class, I plan to implement some cutting-edge teaching techniques when I have a classroom of my own in the coming years. I want to be an inclusive teacher and a positive role model for my students and techniques I learned in this class will help me to achieve those things.

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Education as we know it is currently in a state of flux and it will be interesting to see how it changes in the next few years and beyond. My hope is that it improves in the ways I have mentioned throughout this reflection.

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My favorite video we watched this semester

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My favorite video we watched this semester

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I really enjoyed this TED talk from Brian Lozenski. In it, he discusses how education should change to better include underprivileged students, such as changing the curriculum to include culturally relevant material to excite kids about their education. I think the ideas Brian Lozenski brings up in this talk could be implemented to improve the American education system.

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Bringing Cultural Context and Self-Identity into Education: Brian Lozenski at TEDxUMN

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In the blog post below, I detail how I think education should change to better serve every child in America. I think the best way to do that is to encourage more people that are not white to go into teaching. I believe that could do a lot for children who identify the same as those teachers. We have talked about how role models can be very good for students, so that could be something that will help a lot of kids.

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In this class thus far, we have learned about many different perspectives of schooling in America, both positive and negative. One of the biggest things I have taken away from this class is the achievement gap between white children and children who come from families or cultures that are in the minority in America.

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How will education fare under Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos?

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How will education fare under Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos?

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Donald Trump recently named Betsy DeVos the Secretary of Education. DeVos is a proponent of charter schools and school choice, in general. Only time will tell how that will affect education as a whole, but it is fair to think there will be major changes coming soon.

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President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday tapped Michigan billionaire and charter school advocate Betsy DeVos as his choice for education secretary, a move that has prompted a flurry of praise and backlash from either political side throughout the week.

DeVos, a fierce proponent of school vouchers allowing students to use public funds to attend private schools, heads up the nonprofit American Federation for Children and is a former chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party.

She has been active in politics for almost 40 years, since she began volunteering for President Gerald Ford in 1976, and has since served on the Republican National Committee, the Alliance for School Choice, and the Foundation for Excellence in Education.

Trump, who supports vouchers and charter schools, called DeVos a "brilliant and passionate education advocate."

DeVos is still a relatively unknown name at the national level, but she has become a prominent and polarizing figure in Michigan, where she fought for years against charter school regulation.

She helped pass the state's charter school law in 1993, and she later funded a ballot initiative in 2000 that would have enshrined a right to vouchers in the state's constitution. Her advocacy has made her appointment a lightning rod for Democrats, while Republicans who opposed Trump's candidacy, such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, have heaped praise on the move.

The Michigan Democratic Party released a statement calling DeVos a "dangerous and ill-advised pick" and an "anti-public education activist," accusing her of attacking the state's public school system and its teachers for the sake of profits of investors in charter schools.

"Here is someone, in Betsy DeVos, who has made it her life's work to channel her family's massive wealth toward destroying Michigan's public education system," the party said in a statement.

The Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union called her school-vouchers advocacy "misguided" and urged the Senate to consider her record before confirming her.

"She has ardently supported the unlimited, unregulated growth of charter schools in Michigan, elevating for-profit schools with no consideration of the severe harm done to traditional public schools," wrote the chapter's executive director, Kary Moss.

Teachers unions across the country, too, have been highly critical of DeVos, arguing that despite her years advocating charter schools and vouchers, she lacks firsthand experience working in or with public schools and sends her own children to private schools.

The head of the American Federation of Teachers, the country's largest teachers' union, decried DeVos in a statement on Wednesday, calling her "the most ideological, anti-public education nominee" since the creation of the Department of Education.

"In nominating DeVos, Trump makes it loud and clear that his education policy will focus on privatizing, defunding and destroying public education in America," president Randi Weingarten wrote.

The National Education Association, too, blasted DeVos for lobbying for school vouchers and pushing for private-school funding at taxpayers' expense.

"She has consistently pushed a corporate agenda to privatize, de-professionalize and impose cookie-cutter solutions to public education," president Lily Eskelsen Garcia said in a statement.

DeVos has, however, won the praise of her fellow school-choice advocates, such as Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who called her an "excellent choice," and Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who hailed her selection as a victory for "educational freedom."

DeVos "has made a career out of standing up to powerful and connected special interests on behalf of poor kids who are too often forgotten by Washington," Sasse, a critic of Trump along the campaign trail, wrote in a statement on Facebook.

The president of the National Charter Schools Institute had kind words for her as well, calling her a "bold pick."

"She has been an outspoken advocate for years for school choice and charter schools and challenging the status quo," James Goenner told The Wall Street Journal.

But DeVos has also attracted criticism from some conservatives because of her association with organizations that have supported the Common Core education standards. The website Breitbart, which was fervently supportive of Trump's candidacy, blared in a headline: "Donald Trump Announces Pro-Common Core Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary."

DeVos has since disavowed the standards in a statement and on social media.

"I am not a supporter - period," she tweeted on Wednesday.

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Meet Betsy DeVos, the polarizing charter-school advocate Trump has tapped as education secretary

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President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday tapped Michigan billionaire and charter school advocate Betsy DeVos as his choice for education secretary, a move that has prompted a flurry of praise and backlash from either political side throughout the week.

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I will now take the aspects I like and possibly integrate them into my own classroom someday and I will be sure to shy away from the things I have seen in Venture that I was not pleased with.

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So there are some things I like about Venture Academy and some things I do not like/could work better. So what? I am still glad I have experienced the good and the bad because it can give me some ideas of what to do and what not to do when I am running a classroom.

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As unfortunate as it is, our race, class, gender, and other factors shape just about everything we do from how we are perceived walking around at night to how often we are pulled over/given a ticket. It is the same in teaching and learning experiences. From a statistical point of view, white students do drastically...

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There are some things that work really well at Venture that I should mention:
1. The teachers and paraprofessionals are very supportive and the students respect them.
2. The school leader, Kerry, does all he can to allow the students to succeed after they leave Venture.
3. Venture's mission to serve the underprivileged children of the Twin Cities area is noble and I think they are already starting to fulfill that.
4. In Ayers' "To Teach: The Journey, In Comics," on page 100, its says "Good schools are geared toward continuous improvement."  I think Venture embodies that idea by willing to do whatever is necessary to improve the children's education.
5. In my own blog post, I talked about how race, gender, socioeconomic class, etc. affect education today.  One thing I like about Venture Academy is its drive to not let those factors influence their students' educations.

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I believe PLP gives students a chance to play on their computers instead of learning. While I do not disapprove of using technology in the classroom, I do think Venture Academy could improve the way it executes the PLP platform. My experience with PLP has led me to believe that the students are more motivated to simply pass the test than actually learn the material. Also, when I was in Jose's PLT class, most of the students were not working on anything and the teacher was not encouraging them to continue working.

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Student engagement

We help schools create a culture where all students are invested in their own learning and understand how lessons apply to life outside the classroom. By working with their teachers to set goals and track progress, students are empowered to approach learning with a sense of motivation and accomplishment.

Meaningful learning

Instead of simply memorizing information, students are given the time, support, and resources they need to master new material and apply what they've learned before moving on. Teachers see the day-to-day progress of each student, enabling them to meet students where they need support and help students advance quickly where they are most engaged. This approach ensures students don't fall through the cracks.

Strong relationships

The dynamic relationships between teachers and students are the heart of every Summit Learning classroom. In addition to the individualized and small group instruction students receive in the classroom, every student also has a teacher who serves as a mentor and meets with them weekly to discuss goals, motivations and challenges. The real connections formed between students and teachers support confidence and deeper learning.

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We help schools create a culture where all students are invested in their own learning and understand how lessons apply to life outside the classroom. By working with their teachers to set goals and track progress, students are empowered to approach learning with a sense of motivation and accomplishment.

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PLP (Personalized Learning Plan) is an acronym that Venture Academy uses for the learning model they employ.  It is an online program that has lessons in different subjects on many different topics.  The program tells the students where they should be at that point in the year and where they are now.  PLP is mastery-based, which means that the students need to pass a short test to master a topic, after which they can move onto the next topic.
PLT (Personalized Learning Time) is the acronym that Venture Academy uses when describing the time they use to let the students work on their PLPs.  Jose was in his PLT class when I would work with him.

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I will now be able to easier make connections with students that do not identify the same as myself. I feel more confident in that aspect.

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Because of this service-learning experience, I now have familiarity with working with students that do not identify the same as I do. In fact, many aspects of Venture Academy are very different to what I am used to. I will get into more detail about those things later on.

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Venture Academy presented a welcomed divergence from my own experience with its diverse student population.
Source: http://rc.education.state.mn.us/#mySchool/orgId--74218010000__p--1

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This graph shows the demographics of the junior high I attended.  90% of the students were white and all of my teachers were white.
Source: http://rc.education.state.mn.us/#mySchool/orgId--12899030000__p--1

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Going into this experience, my expectation were to practice building meaningful relationships with school-aged children and to learn whatever I could learn from working at a school so different from the school in which I grew up.

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Hindrances to fulfilling my expectations

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Hindrances to fulfilling my expectations

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As I mentioned in the "How it went" section, my assignment to Rosa was not very good for me because I learned very little about the teaching profession or even interacting with the kids.  Rosa did not want to talk to me or work with me, so it was very challenging and awkward to try to work with her when she always acted embarrassed to work with me.  Also, the time I spent with her was not a good time to even start to work with her.
I actually mentioned these problems toward the middle of the semester, but nothing was done to fix those issues, so I ended up doing very little in that classroom because I had no other place to be during that time.

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Overall, I do not think I accomplished or learned as much as I was expecting to. The time frame I was there was not very well-suited to me being able to really work with the kids I worked with. When I walked into the sixth grade classroom I worked in, they were silent reading and then the teacher read a book to them. I did not even really have time to talk to Rosa.  To make it harder, she did not want to work with me.
I really enjoyed working with Jose. I was told that he is generally a shy kid, and he was able to talk to me easily. However, the time I spent with him could have been better spent, because I was with him for part of the time during PLT, which I will talk about in more detail later.

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My official title was a middle school tutor. What I actually did was sit in class with two different students. One was a sixth grade girl who I will call Rosa and one was an eighth grade boy who I will call Jose. During the time I was with the sixth grade girl, she was in Humanities class, and during the time I was with the eighth grade boy, he was in PLT, then Math.

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"Venture Academy is a public charter school serving students grades 6-8 in Minneapolis. Our teachers and students are changing the way education happens in the 21st century."
-Venture Academy website

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Venture Academy - Take charge of learning.

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Venture Academy is a public charter school serving students grades 6-11 (expanding to 12th in 2019) in Minneapolis. Our teachers and students are changing the way education happens in the 21st century. Check out what makes us a unique and exciting place to learn.

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I volunteered at Venture Academy.