Daniella Fusaro Blog #2

Going Public: NCLB and Literacy Practices in Teacher Education
by Dorothy C. Suskind

Dorothy Suskind focuses many topics within this article. She believes in real life experiences and having her students learn through experience. She raises many good points throughout the article especially when she says that it is ulimately the children and not the teachers that make the curriculum. I agree with her on that because the students should be interested in the topics that they learn about or they will be bored.

I feel that too many schools are concerned with standardized tests scores and not enough about the actual content knowledge or basic information. That is where not so well test-takers, like myself get left behind or lost in the shuffle. With No Child Left Behind it ensures that all children get the education they deserve. I feel that the article makes a valid point when it states that "standardized testing may damage students' motivation and self-esteem, and that standardized teaching disempowers teachers as it 'confine(s) and constrict(s) reading curriculum and distrupt(s) high quality teaching and learning". I know that from my own experiences standardized tests make me nervous and I never did well on them so schools should not put as much pressure as they do to do so well. Also, from the classrooms that I have observed teachers teach for the tests and I feel that is wrong because there are not teaching their students any long term information. I guarantee once they take the test most students will forget more than have of the material that was on it because they crammed for it.

Home life and neighborhood can have an impact a child's learning experience. A child that grows up in poverty with a single parent will have a very different experience than one who has two working parents and mansion. As quoted in the article, "All educational efforts that focus on classrooms and schools, as does NCLB, could be reversed by family, could be negated by neighborhood, and might well be minimized by what happend to children outside of school." This further shows that as teachers we always need to be aware of our students' backgrounds and home situations so that we know what to expect from them and of them. It also helps us know who will need more extra help because studies have shown a correlation of low test scores and poverty.

I really enjoyed this article because it was rich with information about NCLB and at the end she brought up many good strategies about bringing literacy into the classroom. Suskind is very big with personal experiences and I am the same way. I feel there is no better way to learn than getting out there and seeing it first hand. There is only so much you can learn from a book, the rest you have to actually see for yourself.