All parents should be required to volunteer- Please Rate
[#permalink]
17 Jun 2012, 15:06
This is my first time posting. I currently work as a Kindergarten teacher in a high poverty rural school. Because of my job, I haven't had the need to write essays in years so any ratings or critiques would be very appreciated!
*Disclosure: I picked the essay topics randomly and somehow ended up with two concerning education!*
All parents should be required to volunteer time to their children's schools.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, describe specific circumstances in which adopting the recommendation would or would not be advantageous and explain how these examples shape your position.[i][/i]
Although parental involvement is ideal and allows parents to become even more involved in their child’s education, parents should not be required to volunteer time to their children’s school.
First requiring parents to volunteer in their children’s school puts undue pressure on working parents especially parents that work more than one job to support their families. Forcing parents to volunteer at school could cause a financial loss for some families. Parents would be forced to miss work or lose sick time that they may need another day when an emergency happens. Without full financial support, children may suffer from home instability ranging from loss of meal security to missing the necessities of school supplies.
Secondly requiring parents to volunteer time to their children’s school puts pressure on staff to accommodate parents. Although it is invaluable to have parents involved in the school, it will be undue and unnecessary pressure on the school staff. The front office staff will see an influx of visitors that can lead to distraction from school duties. Teachers will have more parents in the classrooms but will it make the classrooms better? Parent volunteers would need to be objective in the classrooms they are volunteering in. They would need to avoid interfering with the teacher’s instruction and management of the classroom. If parents are unable to be objective, it will require the teacher to manage with yet another distraction in his or her classroom.
Furthermore requiring parents to volunteer in a classroom may negatively impact the relationship between the parent and the school and its staff members. Unless a parent wants to volunteer forcing parents may cause them to negatively interact with staff members and students. Students that observe these negative interactions may believe it is okay for them to treat the same adults that way. This will cause even more problems in a school and can change the school from a positive safe environment to one full of negativity and disrespect.
Thus parents should not be required to volunteer time to their children’s school. It would not be of a school’s advantage to adopt such a requirement. Adopting such a requirement would negatively change the environment of a school as well its relationships with parents and families.
Educators should take students' interests into account when planning the content of the courses they teach.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, describe specific circumstances in which adopting the recommendation would or would not be advantageous and explain how these examples shape your position.
Educators are often assigned standards and curriculum from which they must teach students and assess them. The standards tell the educator what goals the students must achieve by the end of the year but do not tell the educator how he or she must teach it to the students. Ultimately the content and its delivery is the educator’s responsibility. However when planning the content of their course, educators must take students’ interests into account.
First when educators take students’ into account when planning their content, educators are giving students’ a higher position of involvement in their learning. By having more students involved in the content planning, educators are ensuring that students will be more interested in the topics learned. Thus more interest in the topic will cause more students to participate in the class requirements. If a student is truly interested in the topic, he or she would produce class work of a higher quality. No longer would the student perform and try to write about what they think the educator wants to hear but what they truly believe; it is here where true learning starts.
Moreover students gain more ownership of their learning if an educator uses students’ interests in designing the content. If educators use students’ interests as a guide to content planning, students will take more responsibility and consequently more ownership over their learning. Once students feel more responsible for what they need to learn, they can be pushed to master the skills necessary for future success. The point of our education system is to prepare our students for future success whether that is the work place or college. However that cannot be done successfully if educators do not give students more ownership over their learning.
Finally by using students’ interests as a guide for content planning, educators will learn more about the students and gain an advantage. If educators learn more about the students, they can use this knowledge to push the student towards success; an educator that truly knows his or her students can use this knowledge to build better relationships with the students and their families and tailor the course’s contents to fit the needs of the students. Students in any grade are more eager to learn from someone that they believe cares about them and does not see them as another body in the room. Furthermore building positive relationships with students can determine the excitement and desire to learn in a room and the first way an educator can do this is finding out the students’ interests and using that as the foundation to creating a long-lasting relationship.
Thus educators use the students’ interests as a guide when they plan a course’s content. By using these interests, educators allow students to be more involved in the learning and have more responsibility and ownership. Furthermore educators learn more about their students from these interests and can use it as the foundation to build a positive relationship with the students.