Effecting Change at the School and District Levels

Even though I have only taught science education for one year in my school district, I have been a driving force behind creating a STEM junior high at our school. At monthly staff meetings, anytime the topic of STEM came up, the Principal and Staff members referred their questions to me.

I have been an active member of the science committee for my school. The science chair often told me that my love for science was contagious at the meetings. I was bursting with ideas on ways to improve the science program throughout the district. I believe that in order to be productive, we have to work together as a team to build up the knowledge of our students, rather than blame the grade level before for not fully preparing the students.

We have begun to openly review the science curriculum as a whole, rather than just narrowing the focus of only knowing what standards we must teach. The high school teachers were not aware of the importance of the 1-8 achievement tests, because they just have to worry about getting their students to pass one graduation test in four years. The open communication has helped us to unite the science program across the district. I am glad to be a part of it.

Week 2- Blog: What is Our Sputnik?

In his article, “What Is Our Sputnik?”, Friedman (2010, January 17) makes some pretty bold, opinionated claims. While reading most of the article, I was thinking, “Wow! I can not believe he wrote that!” or “Great point!” or “Why isn’t anyone listening to this guy?”. I often wonder why America spends so much time and money trying to “fix” other countries while we need to be fixed ourselves, first.

I do feel strongly that the money we spend on other countries could be put to some great use in educating our youth to help build up our country to surpass China. That may at least help us become independent from them if we can at least buy back our country from them.

I was also not aware of anything that occurred in the Strait of Taiwan. It would be nice to see the news focusing on their peace and suggesting that other countries can work things out without us micromanaging everything.

Again, I feel that if we did take much of our efforts away from foreign issues and put that money into educating or own children, we could create our own Sputnik type phenomenon before we have the threat of another country beating us to the punch.


Reference

Friedman, T. L. (2010, January 17). What’s our sputnik? [Op-Ed]. The New York Times [Late Edition (East Coast)], p. WK.8.