As I read this article, I found myself feeling both optimistic and depressed all at once. Over my long tenure here studying music education at UMass Lowell, I've often read about progressive methods for teaching, and the struggles teachers face in implementing these progressive techniques. We tend to fall back to what we know and how we were taught even though we may have found it boring when we were being taught the material. I've even caught myself doing it with my students, for which afterward I kick myself, thinking "I don't even think these students retained any of that information it was so dry..." and I teach music, a subject that is supposed to be fun and exciting! Humans as a species are afraid of change. This being said I was less than surprised by the challenges faced in progressing schools for the Southeast Asian population in New England. Even still it was saddening to me that change was such a slow process for these students, despite my knowledge in that change is such a slow process not only in creating resources and programming for this population but in methodologies in teaching in general.
What I found to be optimistic however was that change was occurring and developing. I was happy that it wasn't faltering like a lot of school programming tends to do (based on various reasons such as funding, space, and understanding from the population this programming is supposed to provide aid and resources for). I've seen programs in the schools in which I've been working in begin to fall apart (mostly music programming, but a lot of other specialist programming was cut in the last two years there), and some of these programs (like engineering programs within schools) are ones that could potentially help a student that is struggling. What will be next in these schools, the ESL and ELL classes? Special Education? As it is in the district I'm teaching in the only behavioral and emotion programming that is available is in two of the schools, and they are the schools that are known as the "trouble schools" in the district. These students have to be driven to school in a school they aren't zoned for just because the richer schools do not want to fund such programming for students. I do remain optimistic however that ESL and ELL classes will remain, and that these summer programs for Southeast Asian students (wherever they are located) can remain in place to help aid these students.
I definitely found this article to be an interesting and eye-opening read into Southeast Asian culture and its differences to American culture. I also wish more schools would find ways to engage more students, rather than assuming that all students have the background in order to succeed in these schools. From reading this article, it has been made apparent that this is not the case right now, and that things are changing awfully slowly.
Even though I never picked up music I really feel bad for the programs that are being cut. The are being cut because between the MCAS and SpEd and ELL students no one sees the importance of music. But music is such a good conduit for math, English, science, and history that it's worth far more then the credit given. I hope that the importance of music gets rediscovered soon.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that the number one priority of us as educators is to engage our students. I think that programs such as the one we are in try to promote new progressive ways of teaching not in hopes that at every moment of every day we use the newest tactics, but that we instead have a wide collection of strategies to use to engage our students. Traditional educational tactics aren't necessarily bad. However, we need to use them when appropriate, just as we need to use the new progressive tactics we are learning about appropriately. So long as we strive to include and educate all of our students and are looking for new ways to peak their interest, I feel we will be just fine!
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