Category: Learning Goals

I hope to gain a better understanding of the education system throughout American history.

As a visiting student, I expect that this class will provide a unique perspective on present-day education reform by encouraging exploration through a historical lens. Much of my past experience and current realm of study engages learning and reform through  lenses of modern research and cognitive development. I am excited to look for historical patterns in order to newly inform my perspective in the current education reforms.

I recently became acquainted with the Educational Studies program at Trinity, and immediately fell in love with the courses that were offered. As a student who has been through many different types of educational institutions, including public and now private, I have noticed that there is a major problem that exists in the way schools teach our children. As an Educational Studies major, I hope to learn what causes these imperfections in the system, and particularly what have policy-makers in the past done to relieve many of the problems. As mentioned, this class will not only teach me the aims that educational reformers had in the past, but it will also teach me what we can do in the future. I also hope to polish my writing skills in order to properly execute my ideas about Education reform.

I spent the last two and a half years working at a community college. More often then not in attempting to implement a new program, activity or initiative I was met with a daunting series of bureaucratic red tape. It was all incredibly frustrating to me and I constantly was asking myself, “Why is change so hard?” along with “Where does this resistance stem from?” Attending Trinity and in particular taking this course is my attempt to begin to answer those questions. I want to learn about the process of change in our educational system, how and why some reforms succeed, what are the catalysts for educational reform and how all the moving pieces come together to break the barrier of inertia, as I have experienced it, in education.  Additionally, I have limited experience with many of the technologies being used in this course and look forward to gaining exposure to these.

Ed 300 will satisfy a requirement for the Educational Studies Major. I am excited about this class because I will have the opportunity to learn more about what Ed reform is and about strategies that have previously worked as well as getting the opportunity to analyze those that did not work (and somehow apply it to my Ed Studies Concentration: Race, Social Class and Social Relations in Urban Education.) My ultimate goal in life is to be a leader in a school district (hopefully Hartford) and I appreciate the opportunity to explore in depth the idea of Ed Reform in the hope that I can acquire the necessary tools to become an Ed “Reformer” one day, too.

Freshman year, I was enrolled in a first year seminar named after the lyrics within the famous song serious, “Just Another Brick in The Wall,” by Pink Floyd. This course focused on student movements, narrowing in on students’ intense desire to modify the system so that it better reflected and represented their needs.  In this class, I hope to discover more in depth how the education system has changed over time, and the social pressures that assisted in bringing about such change. Furthermore, I hope to better understand which societal groups (whether they be religious, political, racial, etc) have the most prominent impact in bringing about academic reform/change, and why.

As the spring semester begins, I am happy to have new learning opportunities. When I took Educ 200: Analyzing Schools last spring, I did not know that I would fall in love with the content of the course and discover my passion for education. Through this class, I hope to gain more knowledge on the education reform movements that have happened in the past and are currently happening to discover how I would like to make my mark in changing the education system. I am aware that in order to look forward to the future, I must look at the past. I look forward to the readings, videos, and class discussions to come.

Within this course, I first hope to learn about the history and current state of Education policies and reforms. I would like to see how policies have changed schools that I work and volunteer at as well as at the schools I attended. I look forward to watching documentaries about the current state of the education system and read about the history. My learning goal is to become better equipped to become involved in the education system.

Beyond the basic knowledge, I hope to gain skills to be a better writer and researcher. Whether looking at archives and books or searching sources online, I need help improving my skills of digging deeper. With my writing, I hope to be able to create stronger theses and clearer transitions.

I hope to learn more about the public side of schooling. From to going to school board meetings and hearings in Philadelphia, I found I was interested in how the school boards interact with the surrounding community. Reforming schools is a processe that requiers a large amount of community approval and involvement to be effective, so I hope to learn more about how that takes place.

Thoughout the course of the semester I would like to learn how to write as well as analyze web journals. In my previous class students never had the opportunity to do such a thing, so having this opportunity is helpful for me simply because it is a new skill as well as a challenging task that can improve my writing.

In Education 300 I hope to gain greater skill in research, writing, and reading. Through these I wish to obtain an understanding of education movements past and present. I especially look forward to utilizing the Watkinson Library.

As a history major, I am very interested in the history of the education system of America. Therefore, this class seems to fit perfectly in what I am interested. I hope to learn how the education system got to where it is now.  The main reason I want to learn this is because I want to be able to analyze potential ways to continue to reform and improve the education system. I hope to learn about the history and be able to apply it to the present and future.

In addition, I hope to learn journalistic writing and overall improve my writing skills. I am very excited about having to attend and critique a public event on educational policy. I think that it will be very interesting to view the current issues and problems that the education world is dealing with. Furthermore, I am excited to be able to relate it to the history of education reform.

In Ed 300, I hope to learn how past education policy and culture has informed our modern educational structure.  I would also like to utilize this learning to put current ed policies and practices in context.  I also hope to learn valuable research methods (particularly how to include technology resources) to assist in my coursework as a potential Ed Studies major.

Throughout this class, I hope to grasp an understanding of both education and it’s history in order to interpret the different types of reform now. I would really like to grasp the roots of education and be able to express my own opinions and understand the opinions of others as well about education reform. Being able to understand the past of education reform also is something I want to grasp in order to possibly understand the new reform throughout education at the moment and possible reform that can be created to prevent past wrongs or continue reform that has been continuously working.

I want to learn about how to write better research papers aswell as the different functions of educational reform in the real world.

In Ed 300, I’d like to learn more about the history of education reform and how it has shaped our country’s current education policies.  There is so much controversy and debate over what should be done about school systems, and I believe that it will be beneficial to learn about past reform movements and comparing them to what is going on now.

This semester I hope to learn more about the history of education reform as well as discuss current issues within the education system in our country.  I would also like to improve my researching skills by learning how to use and source texts in our library more effectively for future research papers.  I have never formally written anything on the web, so I look forward to learning how to properly do this.

I wish to learn about the policies that have come to shape today’s schooling system. I wonder which previously enacted polices essentially compromised certain individuals’ and/or group’s educations and which proved themselves to be considerably successful. Are there any plausible solutions to today’s arguably unequal educational system?

In taking this course, I hope to further my knowledge about the educational system of our country, and how they have changed along with the times. So far, I think I picked to the right course to learn about that kind of stuff.

Specifically, I am interested in System Building vs. Decentralization. I helped out in HPS last year and definitely recognized that things were different than I thought they’d be. I am curious to hear the opinions of scholars who have spent their lives trying to determine the best way to educate the American youth, and hopefully form a belief of my own.