Knowledge Race/Game

I want to make a game for my students that allows them to actually use what they learn in their classes. There would be teams consisting of at least one student from each year, and the teams would have to race around completing challenges in each of their subjects for the teachers. This would also be great so the students want to please their teachers and work together.

This could be a really big event at the school, possibly the biggest of the year, like a field day.

Computer Science

Apparently most computer science majors in college started studying the subject in middle school or before, so I need to start my students with it by that time then continue to offer it at an advanced level in high school.

Etiquette School of Atlanta

Other important lessons I think my students should learn in culture class: 


Why Do I Act the Way I Do?
Be Positive & Be Responsible
Set Goals for Now & Tomorrow
Manage Your Time
Practice on Abundance Mentality
Using Active & Emphatic Listening
Be Open To Continuous Improvement
Celebrate Diversity
Interviewing Skills
Time Management & A Study Inventory
Note Taking From Lectures
Listening Skills for Better Understanding
Constructing Study Sheets
Power Reading
Better Report Writing
Getting More From Textbooks
Graphic Organizers & Visualization
Test-Taking Skills



I think the school-focused topics should be taught to the younger classes especially. 


Etiquette School of Atlanta

Social and Dance Education

I want a huge part of my culture classes to be social and social dance education. I found a program that does just that:

Social I for fifth and sixth graders: self-esteem and confidence, handshakes, meeting and introductions, etiquette in public, telephone etiquette, everyday table manners, line dances, fox trot, waltz, shag, twist

Social II for second years: table manners, napkins, silverware, china, crystal, extending and receiving invitations, host/hostess and guest duties, dining, tipping, thank you notes, Slapppin' Leather, Amos Moses, line dances, fox trot, waltz, shag, confidence-building, courtesy, respect

Dance Club for third years: the first meeting, personal qualities, party savvy, dining, etiquette in public, confidence, boogie, cha-cha, fox trot, waltz, shag

Cotillion Club for fourth year eighth graders: extending and receiving invitations, host/hostess and guest duties, dining, napkins, silverware, china, crystal, being served and serving yourself, difficult to eat foods, tipping, grooming, posture, movies and concerts, thank-you notes, Caribbean Hustle, Vienna Waltz, line dances, fox trot, waltz, shag

Lead Dance for fifth to eighth years in high school: dancing at different parties, dining etiquette, introduction skills, art of toasting, first job interview, getting ready for firsts (date, prom, homecoming, job)


There are a few more classes for when students start at different ages, but above is the idea. I love how this is spread out over the years, but I think my class can go much more in-depth. I do need to be careful not to make this class tedious because a lot of these websites focus on making sure the students are having fun. 

Perfectly Polished

Modern Day Finishing School

I love the description for the Modern Day Finishing School for Men and Women by Gloria Starr. It has an emphasis on why finishing school and etiquette is important in a modern, professional setting. It is for adults, but I think it could very easily be translated into lessons for teens and kids for my culture classes.

Her units for the class are:
First Impressions-Lasting Impressions
The Six P's of Personal Marketing
Business Attire
Five Rules of Personal Marketing
The New Dress for Success Rules
Manners Really Do Matter
Ambassador Skills and Communication Essentials

I think this would be an especially great way to convince parents - and maybe even non-culture teachers - of the importance of this class.

Gloria Starr's Finishing School

Seminars

One subject I think would be very interesting for a seminar would be security. Things like national security and security in the school.

PE classes

I was thinking briefly about taking away PE class in the normal ten period schedule and putting physical education on the weekend, but I'm considering changing that. For balance, I should not take away PE. However, if I did, I could replace it with a life skills class that include things like home economics.

For PE, I'm thinking single-gender classes, and a few things I could teach in it would be martial arts and defense and tumbling.

Higher Math and Science

My resolve may waver at some point, so I must write this down now: I MUST require my students to have higher levels of science and math. In my comparative education class today, we watched a video called "2 Million Minutes" (apparently there are about two million minutes in the life of a high school student across the four years), which compared education in the United States to that in India and China, and I was a little ashamed to be an American.

One point that particularly stood out to me was that many American students do not take any science past general chemistry or math past algebra 2 and that most parents and administrators think we are teaching our students enough math and science. The video stressed that Americans do not realize that we are lagging behind on the global scale and that we need to step up our game.

Summary: We need a lot more science and a lot more math, and that is going into my school. I'm pretty sure I want my kids in math up to calculus and statistics and higher level science in at least a few of the subjects.

Sports and Arts

Things are changing in my mind! Maybe there won't be 10 classes as originally planned...I'm thinking the sports and arts should be separate from school, perhaps with a semester or two required of each in the four years of high school. When I was growing up, my parents required me to participate in one sport and one music thing every year, and past that I could choose. I've taken basketball, soccer, gymnastics, swimming, and dance, and piano, violin, and voice, and I think I have very much benefitted from all of these.

That is why I wanted to require arts and sports of all of my students. However, I am recently finding out that schools in high-achieving nations like Sweden and Finland do not offer as many of these activities to their students, nor are the students as pressured into them as they are in the United States. They're considered distractions and like they put too much pressure on students.

I still think sports and arts are very important for an education, and at the younger level, students should be required to try these things, but I think at the older level, it can be hard to require students to do these things - particularly, for example, sports if they are uncordinated or art if they are not talented in it - especially if they do not enjoy it.

So, my solution at the present is to require students to participate in at least one sport or art (or maybe club like debate) every year but that they can choose from there. Perhaps there could be auditions and try-outs for certain ones and other general classes. For example, an audition choir and an open choir.

It's Just a Marker

As part of my American Education class this semester, I tutor International students at the local high school. It is known as a fairly good school. Today, most of the class I work with was on a field trip, so I sat in on a Literature class with another teacher, and I found some appalling things.

First, much of this high school literature class did not know what personification is. I brushed that one off because their current unit is literary devices, so I assumed they were still learning. However, the next one was a shocker: one of the students did not know how to open the marker he was given. For a long time, I did not even know what to do with that information. How did a teenage survive without knowing how to open a marker. And no, he was not just joking about not knowing how to open it.

Next, the class had to go over what the five senses are. The teacher mentioned that this was something the students should have learned in elementary school, but she still had to go over it with them (they were talking about imagery or something). And last, when being quizzed on the word "hyperbole," some of the students did not know what the word exaggeration means, and that is not a terribly advanced word.

I was about to lose faith in education, but a few minutes later, I found out I was in a literature class with all international students. At least that accounts for their not knowing "personification" and "exaggeration." Also, identifying the five senses could be a cultural thing. However, every student in every country - at least in my opinion - should see a marker and be able to open it. The student was from Kenya, I believe. This is a major reflection on education in other countries, and this needs to be fixed.

Finland

In an article by Ellen Gamerman, "What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?" I read that one big aspect of education is that adults do not hover very much when the kids are young, which contributes heavily to their academic success. In fact, I also read in a parenting article a few months ago that French parents treat their kids similarly and often have much fewer discipline problems than do American parents.

Back to Finland, the article also talks about their having a back-to-basics teaching technique, so there are no sports teams, advanced classes, marching bands, or proms, which I found interesting because I believe in a very holistic education.

What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?

England

We had a educational comparativist come into my, shocker, Comparative Education class last week. One thing she showed us that I thought was interesting - particularly because I briefly went to a British School - was that in some schools, English children stand as the teacher enters the room at the beginning of class. Just something to think about in teaching a culture of respect.

Essay on Boarding Schools

I had to write an essay on an educational topic, so I picked boarding schools to start looking at if boarding school is good for kids. Here is my essay:

Notes on School Uniforms

I had to give a five-minute speech on any educational topic, and I picked school uniforms because I want to put my students in uniforms. Here are the notes from my speech:

Internationalism

As an International Baccalaureate graduate and a current student of one of the most international-student-friendly universities in the country, I think an internationally-focused education is extremely important. We need a certain amount of American nationalism, but it is so different knowing how easy it really is to know the world.

This can be done with an emphasis on foreign languages, culture, geography, and other things. I also think it's important to celebrate (or at least acknowledge) holidays and customs from all over the world and include lessons and such on the culture and country and importance of the holiday/custom.