Task 1-1- educ 533- Best Practices Research

Here is a link to the best practices in education website that I found. The website has a list of the nine standards for best practices in education with explanations on what those standards entail. These standards are very appropriate for most settings. I think it is a good overview about all of the bases teachers need to touch to give students a successful education. Obviously you don't need to do all of these perfectly to be a productive teacher, but these have been found the most effective parts. Most of them are pretty obvious like strong leadership and curriculum and instruction, but there are a few that are a little more surprising. If I had to guess the nine, I probably could have come up with half off the top of my head, but a few things like parent/community involvement and supportive, personalized and relevant learning would not have been things I thought of off the top of my head. The surprising parts were more the idea that they were not really things that I have seen being very relevant in the schools that I have visited or been a part of. The ideas are great, but carrying them out seems to be a monumental task if I have not been in an environment where I have seen all of these working together, especially when this information is readily available to anyone with internet. I am growing more and more frustrated with public education because it seems like what I am learning is what all teachers with master's degrees have learned and there is something about teaching that draws you away from what you already know will work. No one has told me why teachers do that and that is what I am most interested in learning right now. If you have all the answers to a test, you can't fail right? Here is a link to my best practices in instruction site that I found. My main impression of what this website talks about is what the student needs to do to be most successful. I think it is trying to get you to implement these values into students like test taking and homwork strategies, but you can't force them to do it. It would be more effective to learn strategies on how to get students interested in putting in extra time to doing well in school. Not all students are motivated to do well. I like some of the strategies this website has to offer, they are mostly things we have already been taught but they are good refreshers. Things like "identifying simiarities and differences" and "cooperative learning" are good reminders to relate to students on a level that makes the material relevant and appealing and to also help them to work together. A classroom is a team, the teacher is the coach and the students are the players and you can't win if everyone isn't working together.