Translation Services

      The article I found is about how the Philadelphia School District is beefing up their language – translation services for parents.  It’s their response to the settlement agreement with the US Department of Justice.  This steamed from a Feb 17^th memo from Obama’s administration that reinforces their 2000 executive order to develop and implement a system by with limited English proficient persons can meaningfully access the agency’s services and this is to include schools.

   In my opinion of this article I have mixed feeling because on one hand it’s a good thing because all parents’ deserve the right to be involved in their child’s school.  But on the other had I look at that their memo and granted parents should know what is going on at their child school, I just see that schools already have to deal with large budget cuts to save money, but now we are going to be spending money that could be spent more on the students, instead that money is going to be spent in creating school notices and forms in multiple languages.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/03/03/23language.h30.html?tkn=UTSFYf%2BtqU8FNNtIDI5atnVf7VWysozA7c3U&cmp=clp-edweek

Discrimination file still open after a year...

 

The initial article I found was about how there was an open discrimination file that was being investigated by the federal government in St Cloud school district.  It stated that this investigation have been open a year now and the Muslim civil rights group that requested the investigation still has not heard anything about how the investigation is going, even after a year of it being open.  After reading this I wanted to see if I could find any articles about the original claim and I did.

      The original article described that Somali & Muslim students were discriminated and harassed about their religion and race.  There was even one claim that a St. Cloud school bus driver left Muslim students behind at bus stops purposely multiple times. 

                When reading both articles it made me more annoyed because we are to be open minded as and to know that after a year that this investigation is still open and no one has heard any information of what is going on with it makes me upset.  I believe with it involves students an investigation should not take a year and have no response or answers yet.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/05/25/stcloudschool-investigation - original article
http://www.sctimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011103010033 - follow up article

70 students in one class.

 

This article that I read what about a school in the UK that has classes that have 70 students in a class, they do have two teachers in a class and sometimes they do have teacher’s aids.  They say students are learning more than they did in years past where class sizes where smaller.  My only problem with this is that they may have two teachers per class with a few teachers’ aids, I still think some students would still fall through the cracks cause even with all the adults in a class I don’t think all the student would be getting the attention they need.

 
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3397164/Class-act-for-70-pupil-lessons.html

Intercultural Development Inventory

With the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) results I was actually a bit surprised with where I scored.  I actually scored low where with me being in the military and having lived in another country for three years I thought I would have scored higher.  My only though is that maybe what caused me so score so low was my attitude and mind set.  Cause with me I look at everyone as human and it’s just their way of life.  I have a very relaxed attitude to different cultures, I show respect to other cultures but I look it as its their life and they can do whatever they want with their life.  And that is the only reason I could think of why I scored lower than I thought I would.

Bullied Video...

    Today I watched a video titled "Bullied" and as a future teacher I felt appalled by the attitude the main school staff and they way they looked at Jamie from the principle saying that Jamie should expect this treatment if he was going to be so open about being gay to later on in high school one of the faculty members just ignoring a teacher's and Jamie's request to do some thing about the bulling.
     I feel like they should have done more because they man not have physically taken an oath to help children, but becoming educators, I believe, we have been given the trust and respect from society and they children's parents to help and educate all children.  And with them saying that they are just kids.  Shows the kids that your approving of their actions towards Jamie and any other student that is bullied in school.