Israeli Educational System Conference

In October, I attended the Israeli Educational System Conference keynote. Jack Pastor presented this keynote. He is the dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Oranim Academic College in Israel. He gave us the history of Israel including when educational acts were put in place. He then explained the problems with the educational system in Israel.

In 1948, the state of Israel was established. In just one year, the law of compulsory education was recognized. Four years later, the National Education Act was passed. There were many problems with the education in Israel. The most important of these, I think, was “The Bagrut”. This is a set of sixteen matriculation exams. These exams cause teachers to teach to the test. It also deters the teachers from originality. On top of these problems, only 48% of students pass the exam. Of the 48%, 15% will not be accepted to higher education. Although there are all of these problems with the exam, nobody wants to cancel it. Because of these exams throughout the education of students, nobody wants to become a teacher. Most teachers are teaching as their second career (after they retire from their first career). At the end of the keynote, Jack Pastor explained that there is a new minister of education who has an agenda. He wants to rework “The Bagrut” system.

I was very surprised when hearing about the educational system in Israel. I thought that New England was bad with all of the NECAP testing, but after hearing about Israel, we have it pretty good. The amount of testing there is way too much. They need to cut it back. It is hurting the students’ learning, the teachers’ teaching, as well as the students’ post high school lives. I am glad that the new minister is planning to improve the testing system. I hope that he is able to implement his ideas for the sake of the future leaders of Israel.

From going to this keynote, I was able to put into perspective that we are over-testing our students. We cannot continue to torture our students with all of the testing. I am certain that we need to drop some of the testing of our students.

Observation #4

1) What do you think the objective is?

The students will solve one-step linear equations using tables and algebra tiles.

2) What level of Bloom’s Taxonomy is that?

Comprehension

3) How will you assess it in 10 minutes or less?

Name: ____________    Date: ________

Solving One-Step Linear Equations Quiz

Solve:

1.     y - 3 = 6                  

Answer: y = 9

2.     3x = 12   

Answer: x = 4

Multiple Choice:

3.      Pick what we need to add to the following equation to get y by itself? (Circle your answer) 

         y + 4 = 5

         

a.)    4            b.) -4           c.)    5          d.)    -5

Answer: B

Observation #3

         I observed a geometry class during the lunch period. I assumed it wasn’t going to be the best class to observe due to the fact that it was lunch block, but I was hoping that it would give me a good sense of some management skills. As the students entered the classroom, the teacher told them that they had to sit in their newly assigned seats that she assigned the previous day. About half of them listened to her. Those that did sit in their seats were given their folder with their materials and worksheets in it. There was a Do Now on the board and as they were going over the Do Now the teacher realized that one of her students had a portable Wi-Fi connector that she was using to play games on her phone. The teacher called the administration down to the room and took the girl with them as they left. The girl did not come back until later and I assumed that they took her Wi-Fi away when she came back. The students were learning about proofs of triangles and were given a handout on how to do it after walking through an example on the SMART board together as a class. Nobody was really doing the proof on the handout. Throughout the entire class one student in particular was making it extremely difficult for the teacher. He would give her attitude, talk with his neighbors instead of doing his work (which in turn made them not pay attention), and even stormed out of the classroom after claiming that the teacher “touched him” and he had to go “clean up”.

The teacher of this class was having a hard time taking control of her students and not allowing them to push her around. Throughout the entire class, she was making a detention list and continually adding to it, but it seemed to have no effect on the students. If I were to guess why this didn’t work, I would assume she does not enforce the detention list.

I believe that this teacher had poor classroom management skills. She wasn’t as consistent as she could be to her own rules and everyone in her class knew it. I felt bad for the teacher because she seemed to be a really nice person, but I believe that may have just been another reason the students knew that they could get away with that stuff. I know that this class was probably a very low preforming class and that probably had something to do with their misbehaviors. It didn’t help that the teacher didn’t take the time to try to do something other than direct instruction with them.  I think that if she allowed them to move around and do some hands on activities, the class would have preformed a lot better.

I feel bad for those students that were in the class who were trying to do their work. They were trying to understand the material and couldn’t due to all of the other students misbehaving. Those students are really affected in a negative way and they did nothing to deserve being in that class with those misbehaved students. If the teacher had better management skills, she could have eliminated a lot of the problems in the class and some learning could have actually occurred. I think in particular this teacher does the same thing every day in class and the students are bored. She needs to find some training in some different approaches to teaching as well as some classroom management skills. Overall, this class was not conductive to student learning.

Microteaching 2

Microteaching #2 done. Glad that it all worked out. Feel free to leave me some comments on how I did! I really appreciate it!

Thanks,
Tiffany