This year I am excited to work hard, grow as a family and watch as my little one develops and changes.
When we came home from the hospital I quickly observed that Kumquat had his own schedule, he would be awake and alert for part of the morning and most of the evening; from about 7 PM until 1 or 2 AM. He would also sleep all afternoon and the rest of the night. That was his own schedule, and for my part it is easy enough to work around.
At this point though I am starting to consider how life will change when I return to work, not to mention when I start taking Kumquat long for daycare. Towards that consideration I am attempting to introduce a bedtime routine. I have been getting to know him, and I know what soothes and comforts him, so I can use that for guidance to meet his and my own needs.
My plan is to begin at seven o'clock by turning off distractions such as TV, turning down the lights, and turning on peaceful music using Pandora Radio. The next step will be to give Kumquat a bath, he loves the Tummy Tub so this works to relax him. Bath time is followed by infant massage or baby yoga, which I am still trying to get the hang of, I am not sure yet what he enjoys. With the rub down over, I put him in a cozy sleeper and we move the party to the bedroom where I feed him while singing lullabies and bedtime prayers, which ideally puts him right sleep.
Realistically he does not go right down so enter my fitness ball where I bounce while I sing and he does slowly drift off. If that does not work, but I can see that he is ready to sleep, my last resort is to lie down in bed and nurse him, which he enjoys so much that it is a near guarantee he will sleep.
My success with this has been spotty, so I am trying to be persistent without letting my expectations be too high. He's only four weeks old! I believe that in time and with thoughtful modifications he will learn regular sleep. When we do get the hang of it, we can do a modified version for naps.
It feels like he is very young for me to be expecting a routine to matter, but even if he only falls asleep for an hour, I will have that regular hour to meet some of my own needs, such as eating dinner, taking a shower, or sleeping myself. Additionally by making a ritual of this, it will be something we can share when I am not with him all day every day, and I treasure every minute I do get with him.
What rituals and routines do you and your family have?
This is the final assignment from SOFD 328 with Joe Ramsey. I enjoyed the class quite a lot as it challenged me to think about what education should really look like. The professor also provided the class with an extensive lists of books that will stimulate thought about educational diversity. I am keeping the list to read some of the books in my spare time. What is below is a short essay on what I feel the purpose of education is.
I am always happy when given an opportunity to share my philosophy of education; this is my passion.I am seeking a school where I will have the support to pursue what I consider an ideal classroom experience for my students.My goal is to foster their innate desire to know by providing them with opportunities to ask questions and find answers.
Today more and more education has been driven by the goal of passing children on artificially developed tests, in this situation the students are short-changed a good education and true learning is forgotten.This summer I first learned from a colleague about highly structured curricula wherein the teacher has no creative or adaptive power but simply follows the step-by-step directions for teaching a class.The goal is that all students in the school at a given level will be covering identical materials at any given time.I learned more about this schooling method by reading “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s educational apartheid” by Jonathan Kozol (2005).Kozol discusses the trend in inner city schools to follow a program called Success For All (SFA) inspired by the scholarship of B.F. Skinner.As I understand it, this program serves the sole purpose of manufacturing students to pass high stakes tests, not to stimulate true learning or a passion for life-long scholarship; it is designed to cheaply graduate the masses.
Further understanding of the current trend of high-stakes testing in education brings us to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) the legislation which was first published in 2001 requires that annual state assessment be given to children in grades 3-8 on the subjects of math and reading, stating that this will ensure goals are being met for every child.The program has effectively placed far too much emphasis on testing by using high-stakes tests as a yardstick to measure school success, then rewarding “exceptional” schools with extra funding and interfering in the control of “failing” schools while taking away their funding.
The modern educational system is a descendent of over a century and a half of educational reform in out country.Some of what we see today is in direct response to mistakes made in the past and some is the ongoing repetition of mistakes that we have not yet removed from our system.The public school system is set up to be highly secular, this is a reaction to the common schools which were exclusively Protestant.The creation of tracking occurred around the turn of the eighteenth century, and although it is much scrutinized has not been removed.Tracking brought the beginning of high stakes testing, when a test was used to determine what program a student would pursue in his or her school career (Nasaw, 1979).
The proper purpose of education is to foster students learning and to create life-long seekers of knowledge.This is my firm belief.The ideal classroom must be one where students are encouraged to take ownership of the curriculum.Barbara L. Brodhagen (Apple, 2007 p. 83-106) describes a class where this happened when the students were given the power to control what they would learn.The teachers’ goal in this classroom was to let the students experience a democratic approach to school.At the start of the year the whole class developed and signed a class constitution and discussed questions they were interested in finding answers to.Units were created around those questions and the students teamed with the teachers as they sought their answers.Many teachers today are afraid to take this type of approach for fear that the students will under perform on state assessments or will not have covered all of the standards set by the state and federal governments.Brodhagen said they were backtracking to the standards and the result was that everything that needed to be covered was, while the students took more away from the year in this class then in any other; they also performed at or above the average on assessments.This is a model classroom because the students learned not just content, but also discovered that learning could be a great benefit to them.
It is an absolute fact that every child is capable of learning, but as Nel Noddings points out in The Challenge to Care in Schools, it is not always the case that every child will learn the same materials, or will learn in the same way.This is important for me as an educator to keep in mind, as my goal is to offer challenges to all my students, but not to ask the impossible from them.This requires some extra work on my part to offer a differentiated curriculum wherein every student receives the maximum benefit from his or her work.Although there is a broad range of topics that students need to master to some degree, a teacher must recognize that each students will have special skills in some, not all topics.This is why the curriculum must be planned in a way that is cross-curricular.Brian D. Schulz (Apple, 2007 p. 62-82) tells the story of a class that sought to change the community through seeking a new school building.In this class something has been identified which is important to every student, so as they work to get a new building they cover many topics, and work to perfect the skills, understanding that it is important to do so in order to achieve their goal.For every student there is something that is important to him or her, and if that topic is integrated into other topics the student will have an authentic motivation to perfect all related topics.This is why units must be cross-curricular, when a student is passionate about sharks, he or she can read about the shark and be done, or the shark can become the topic of writing, presenting, and mathematics, all important to the student because the topic of sharks is important to him or her.
Students need a teacher who is concerned and interested in them as a person.I am committed to recognizing the needs of my students, and creating an environment where diversity is valued.Barbara L. Brodhagen (Apple, 2007 p. 83-106) discussed the choice made in her class to take time every Monday morning to allow students to share about themselves, their weekends, what they had learned, or other topics that were important to them.This created an awareness of the differences that existed in that class and sent a message to the students that they were important as a whole person, not just as students.An educator needs to look for opportunities like this to care for the emotional needs of his or her students so they will be more at home in the classroom. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Works Cited
Apple, Michael W., and James A. Beane. Democratic Schools, Second Edition Lessons in Powerful Education. Chicago: Heinemann, 2007.
Frasen, James W., ed. The School in the United States: A Documnetory History. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2001.
My name is Anne and I am a graduate of the Department of Teacher Education at Eastern Michigan University. My degree is in elementary education with a major focus in Social Studies and a minor in Language Arts.
I am also a new mom, trying to translate my education and experience into being the best parent I can be.
I am very interested in what I have learned about children so this blog is to function as a journal of what I am doing in my class and at home. Anyone with an interest in education, child development, and parenting will hopefully find this an interesting read.
Children and education are my passions which is evident to anyone who knows me, and I hope that through the blogosphere I can build connections and get to know you.
