Project #3 C4T #1

On September 7th, 2012, Will Richardson posted on his blog and titled it "Why Does Algebra Need to be Tackled?" He had extreme concerns about the way Algebra is being taught. He doesn't understand why students are being put in front of computers to learn Algebra when so many are struggling with it in traditional classrooms. Dr. Moore, a professor at U.T. Arlington and an advocate of using this method to teach Algebra, said that he "hoped" the pass rate for Algebra would increase to 75 percent. Will Richardson commented that it seemed as though Dr. Moore didn't care at all about Algebra actually being relevant to students' lives. He said that maybe the goal was to just pass the course. He states that the way we talk about things have to change and the value we place on the exercise has to change.
My comment to his post asked the question, What happened to the teachers teaching? It seems as though teachers now have become lazy and just want to hand out a grade and for students to just pass the class. What about the students actually learning what they are being taught? I think that is more important.

Will Richardson titled his blog post "This is Student Learning" on September 17th, 2012. In this post, he very briefly talks about the definition of student learning from the Indiana DOE's RISE teacher evaluation system. Indiana's teacher evaluation system defines student learning as a teacher's contribution to academic progress over the course of the school year. All he had to say about that was "WOW."
I commented and said that "WOW" was right. There is no way you can base student learning solely on the teacher's contribution. A teacher can teach all day long, but if the student does not participate, the student will not learn. Also, academic progress is not the only thing that teachers should be focusing on. Part of a teacher's job is to instill their students with morals and values. They are there to be role models and prepare students for the adult world in the future.