Sunday, April 19, 2015

After School
                One category American excels at is post-high school opportunities. We have so many possibilities for students after graduation.
                College is big here, everyone wants to go to college and for most people college is the only way to have success in life (it is not). Our country is known for having some of the best colleges in the world. Colleges like Princeton, Harvard, Yale, or even less prestigious schools such as U of I or other schools in the area are extremely good schools and offer amazing opportunities. People travel from all across the world just to get an American education at one of these colleges. You see so many foreign students from China, India, Europe, and everywhere all wanting to join in.
                I feel our colleges don’t get enough credit for the great educations they are providing.  Things like the reasonable cost, research and internships also make future after high school extremely bright for Americans. We have amazing people working on research and things like that to better our world and to make everyone smarter. Joining research teams in this country is so much easier and better than everywhere else in the world.  Also, getting internships to learn about jobs and get better credentials is relatively easy. Opportunities arise often and it makes the future of all students in the country extremely bright.

                WE have such a negative outlook on our American education system but the amount of opportunities and options for students after graduation is amazing. It allows people to pursue what they really enjoy and have a happy life.
Education
                The United States education system has been hated on for the past few decades for not posting very good numbers and not keeping up with other countries around the world.
                I’m going to do three blogs this week, the bad about our education system, the good, and I feel the main problem with education – the teachers.
                So let’s first address some issues that have been discussed about how are our country is lagging in education. We are far behind some of the leaders in reading, math and science proficiency. With countries like South Korea, Japan, Canada, and Germany at the top, we can see the United States, the greatest country in the world, falling far behind other countries. Education should be a major priority in our country but to a lot of people, it’s just a bore.
                First everyone’s, including students’; attitude towards school needs to be changed. Education is the future to successful and world-leading country. Students need to realize they are the future and education is what they need to get a brighter future. Learning needs to be cool, nerds need to be the cool ones, and working hard in school should be a normal thing, not just for the smart people.

                I feel like although some programs offered by schools are amazing, they can always do more. Adding funding to schools will always increase student performance and their ability to learn. New opportunities can lead to a better education system, letting our generation of students become the brightest of the bright.
Teachers
                Teachers get so undercut in the school education system. NO one wants to be a teacher, they don’t pay well at all and you need tons of experience to be called a good teacher. Our education system has put all the blame on how teachers don’t care, how students don’t care, and how everyone just hates school. I’ll agree that there are teachers who don’t care about teaching and just do it and there are students who don’t care either. There are good teachers and there are bad teachers.
                Now I have a lot of experience with teachers.   I’m coming to the end of my high school career and I’ve been around different types of teachers for 12 years now. From personal experience, the teacher is the most important part in what I get out of a class. The teacher is the most important part in how much I learn. If a teacher is always there when I need help, bombastic about what they are actually teaching, excited to teach, and love what they do, they are going to be a great teacher. I get so much out of a class when the teacher is enthusiastic, then I become enthusiastic. If they find cool ways to teach and have fun with their students it makes the classroom a fun and amazing place. Good teachers make me want to pursue the topic they are teaching, I could absolutely hate a subject but if I have a good teacher, I could learn so much and do so much and love the subject. Good teachers allow us, the students, to learn so much more.
                But of course, not all teachers are good teachers, there are the bad ones. The ones that don’t care about you, they just want the least work for themselves, the ones who show videos the whole time and read lessons from a script make learning boring. The ones who do the littlest work possible and just give their students busy work are the ones that hurt our education. From personal experience, I learn absolutely nothing with bad teachers. If a teacher doesn’t know what they’re doing, what they’re teaching, or how to even teach, then I don’t learn anything from their class. With some teachers I don’t even bother, I just look up video and use other tools to learn as much as I can in a subject. These bad teachers are the ones that make school boring and I feel like there are sometimes a lot more bad teachers out there than good ones.
                Good teachers influence what we learn. Good teachers make our schools better places to learn and teach us how to become a better person. Some bad apples can just ruin the whole experience. I feel like the main reason our education system is stuttering is because of teachers. I see so many teachers, who just don’t care about their jobs, but there are those few amazing teachers that make school a total blast and I learn so much. If we want education to compete with the rest of the world, we need to find good teachers. We look at countries like South Korea and Finland who are top in all categories, they pay their teachers, and they make teaching a lucrative job, like an engineer or a doctor. These countries will even go so far that they will recruit top teachers from other countries to come teach at their schools. We need to make teachers more valuable here, being a teacher isn’t really the best job, their pay is mediocre with few benefits. When teaching is more appealing, more and smarter people will want to go into teaching, leading to more of those good teachers.  

                We also need to make good teaching the standard and make the teaching scene competitive. Not just standardized tests, ask the students how they feel, have administration watch a few classes, really look into how teachers are teaching to get the best ones. Find those bad apples and get them out of teaching, teaching isn’t for everyone. Getting rid of the bad apples and finding the good apples will make the American education system soar. Students will love coming to school and teachers will love to teach and make their students fulfill their potential.