Kyle Bjorem ES3950 Final Reflection 1. Evaluate your performance throughout the semester.

Do you think you have worked up to your potential? Why or why not? I would probably have to say that I did not work up to my full potential. My optimum output would have been produced in a situation where I didnt have four other classes and a rather stressful job, honestly. I think that my written work was good, but probably not close to the best I have done. Then again, the types of assignments given in this class are of the kind that I have not experienced before so perhaps I dont know how to measure them against the things I have done in the past. I am very much used to a more traditional/academic type setting with lecture, essays, and exams. I do not have confidence in my ability to perform well in a less structured course, nor do I have much of a taste for working in groups. In terms of in class performance, I am generally not one to talk a whole lot but will contribute when I feel that there is something that I see as important that is not being touched on. This is simply an aspect of my personality type; I will generally be about 80% contemplation and 20% vocalization. I dont like to join a discussion simply to be a part of it, but rather to contribute something original. I am avoidant of redundancy. I do feel as though I had a lot to contribute in my reflections on the readings.

2. What do you feel has been your most important contribution to the class? Explain why. My most important contribution to the class is probably just contributing the point of view of somebody who has a lot of experience already not only in an academic setting but post-school in the real world. Most in the class are around the age of 20 while I am almost 30, which sort of put me on the outside of a lot of conversations but also gave me a different perspective on a lot of things. Ive lived in a tiny rural town and a sprawling metropolis, which also gives me a unique perspective on some of the social issues explored in class. I currently have a job where working with children in rather dire situations is part of what I do every day, I administer psychological tests to kids in the Child Protective Services system and write reports on the results. I used to work at a nine to five office job with strict deadlines and demands. I dont think that most of the people in class have had any of these types of experiences yet, so probably it is beneficial to everyone to have that sort of angle be added to the dialogue. If there is one thing that I have learned in my life it is that everything is much more complex and interdependent on causes and conditions than people immediately assume. When I was younger I would have been much more cocksure about many of the issues discussed in class but finally everything depends on context and hundreds of factors that may not be immediately visible. I could describe my contribution to class as being one who is anti-dogmatism, someone who will bring up something that makes the question at hand more difficult to inquire about rather than more simple.

3. List some of the things that you have gained from this course. Then, select the ONE thing from your list that you value the most. Explain why you value it. Some of the things that I have gained from this course include a much better understanding of the history of schooling in this country and the social debates surrounding its flux and evolution, a clear idea of what my own personal history with education has been and how different aspects of it have shaped who I am today, a better understanding of censorship and book banning in schools and what can be done if such a situation arises, the way that cultures different from your own can seem like absurd and wholly backwards if seen purely from your own ethnocentric view, the value of diversity and the destructiveness of demonizing the other, a better understanding of the current debate on the value of charter school reform, the value of an environment oriented and interactive education, and the role of unions in education both historically and contemporaneously. The one aspect of the course that I value the most would probably have to be the experience with the personal education narrative, honestly. That may seem selfish but it is something that I have never even began to think about before and now it seems abundantly obviously to me that one should mine all those years of actual experience with schooling to get a better idea of what you want to do as a teacher. I thought about times in my life and experience I had that had been stricken from memory for quite some time. I realized what teachers I liked and connected with and what ones did nothing for me, as well as why that was and how I can emulate/avoid those things. I also came to a realization that my education was a process that was formed by elements all around me, not just at school, and that things that happened in the past will alter the course of ones education in the future. Some things

that I hated at the time ended up being valuable to me as I matured, and some things I still view as complete mistakes on the part of the grown-ups in my life.

4. A. What was your favorite topic of study in ES 3950? Why? My favorite topic of study was the charter school / public school debate. It is one that I have been engaged with previously but it is an intensely complex subject that demands rigorous research and continual updating of information as new schools are closed and opened and results change over time. I guess I finally see it as an outdated model, and I think it is very odd that this 20th century business ideal is being applied to education. The example of Finland in recent years should point us toward less competition and less focus on testing but I suppose that where-ever there is money to be made somebody is going to try to make it. With unions and public education under continual attack by not only the right but also elements within the Democratic Party, we may have to get used to the idea of more and more of the opportunities in education being in private industry with no collective bargaining. B. What was your least favorite topic? Why? My least favorite topic was reading some of the sections in the School book, simply because I was already quite familiar with them. Lyndon Johnson, the Selma March, and other subjects I have studied previously and done work with. Other than that, I suppose some of the conversations in class seemed to drag, which has to do with the class being too long more than anything. In the future it would probably be better to break the class into two sessions a week, or that is just a personal preference on my part.

5. Throughout this course, I made a deliberate effort to avoid using authoritarian means in order to motivate you to learn. Please describe how this approach enabled (or hindered) your learning in ES 3950. Giving students free reign to explore a subject, pick out what they find most engaging, and then critically engage that aspect is a very important method of approach. Students should be able to at least partially define their own paths and their own areas of focus. Some aspects of the I-Search paper and Literature Circle were not exactly attuned to how I operate, and I honestly think that more traditional assignments would have been more rewarding for me in the sense of amount of research and critical inquiry involved. However, since they were new to me they expanded my horizons a bit more and gave me ideas that I could use in my own classroom (I kind of think that these types of assignments are better and more adapted for younger students, so perhaps I am not the best person to critique them in any case). Being allowed to have a lot of freedom in how class is conducted and in the assignments may end up being used as an excuse for not putting much work in, and I believe that even if there is that element of freedom there needs to be a challenge. One goal of good teaching should be that you are able to make something understandable and engaging to your students that at the beginning of class they may not have believed they could have an understanding of, something that looks (from the bottom of the mountain) as daunting or difficult. I feel as though a good balance was struck in this class of expectations of good work and cognitively complex investigation along with the freedom to make things personally relevant. This sort of balance optimizes motivation and prevents burn-out, in my experience.