Principals Panel

The Teacher Quality and Retention Program hosted a principal’s panel yesterday, hosting five principals from the surrounding area, who are Prairie View A&M graduates. They really educated and empowered the fellows in many ways. They shared insight on many things such as the interview process, hiring process, and success tips in the classroom, hook questions, character development, and much more. There were many lessons learned from the panel. Some of the other lessons learned were; being both highly qualified and highly effective, classroom management, developing creative and innovative programs to help enhance student learning and performance, and what it takes to develop a winning habit. The last few quotes from the panel are very powerful and sums up the entire panel and institute in many ways. Some of them include; It’s not about accepting students, it’s about accepting people, If it’s worth doing it’s worth celebrating, and if better is possible than good is not enough. The final tip is to know that good is the enemy of great! 

Christopher Graham

MOVIES

If there is one political issue that should be simple, it’s education. Everyone is for education; everyone agrees children deserve the best education possible. But trying to determine just how to give children that education is a raw subject, and that's where the problems begin. Continuing off the heels of the highly successful “Waiting for Superman”, "The Lottery" shows how just how many sides to a one-sided issue there can be.

The lottery is systematic way for student to be selected into highly prestigious charter schools. In particularly the one in the film named Harlem Success Academy, offer children in their area the opportunity for a better education and boast a higher literacy rate and better test scores than the public schools in the same area. "The Lottery" follows four families with young children entered in this year's lottery. Three live in one-parent homes. One has a father in prison; another has a mother living in Africa. Despite their circumstances though, all four kids seem bright, sweet, and full of potential, and that may be both the greatest tragedy and most powerful element of this film: watching it, we know that some or all of these children will not win this lottery and the rest of their lives will be profoundly affected by it.   

The Film presents urgency to this issue and illumined the bitter battle between the Charter schools and the traditional school. But further analyst clearly shows that charter schools are not the final solution. A 2009 study done by Stanford University found that, on average, charter schools perform on standardized tests about the same or worse than public schools. The film does note, however, that most charter schools do not outperform public schools and focuses on those that do. It also states that only one in five charter schools outperform (close to the 17% statistic).  This is will be a ongoing battle in the near future while all along our children will still suffer.

  

Raymond Beamon

Have you ever wonder why when you’re learning you can’t focus when somebody talking in the background?  Or why you can sit still for an extended amount time? It is simple you are not acclimating to your learning style. Groundbreaking research conducted in the 1960’s shows that if one was to examine their learning style inventory in a meticulous manner he/she should be able to vastly improve the initial learning and retention of new information. Dr Yates conducted this research on the TQRP fellows and the results were shocking and revealing. We were able to better understand why we cant focus or what conditions enable us learn at a proficient rate. The key element from Dr. Yates lecture was that we could do this exact same thing with our students.

          

Imagine if education profiled each one of the students and the potential from educators to better know the need of the students. Also student could be more cognitive of how to better help them learn. Dr. Yates gives simple solutions on how to deal with a student learning style that was not conducive to the class. For example if a student has a sensitivity to light place a transparency or print document to detract from the glare.  I truly think this will enhance my instruction in the new future and eagerly look forward to implementing it.  

 Raymond Beamon