The Beginning of the End

I begin the last semester of my Master's degree this week.  In fact, I began writing this post while sitting in a course called "Applications of Multimedia."  Yes, it's that challenging.

In the days before this course began, our instructor sent us an email with directions to our class.  She gave us the wrong room number, and I ended up in the same room where I had my very first class at Notre Dame.  I talked with that class's instructor and learned that she was teaching that same course that began my journey over two years ago.

When I found my way to the correct classroom downstairs and settled in, I thought of the people in the classroom upstairs, beginning the same journey to teacher certification and advanced degree that I started in that same room.  I was envious of the excitement and anticipation they were likely feeling, but I wouldn't have traded places with them for anything.

Education Irony

This weekend, I ordered the textbook for the class I'm taking this fall.  The book is on its 9th edition, which means it's been edited nine times.

Nine times.

Take a good look at the cover and find the irony.  Recall that this book is required reading for an education class.

An education class.

A cultured smarty pants

I'm not proud of this, but back in college, I wasn't sure if Matt was the one for me. He wasn't doing as well in school as he could have (a fact that he is the first to admit), and I always imagined marrying a cultured smarty pants. I shared these feelings with Matt, and he said, "But that's you. And you would drive you crazy." Truer words were never spoken.

Now, nearly a decade later, Matt is the first person in our little family to earn a Master's degree. I'm so proud of him that I'm even enjoying the fact that he keeps rubbing it in my face. In fact, reminding me of his academic success has become part of Matt's daily routine. "Well, I would do the dishes, but I'm the one with the Master's degree, so..." And at this rate, I'll never win another argument: "I mean, who should we listen to? The person with the Master's degree or the one with just a little Bachelor's?" I think the worst is the faux pity: "Don't worry, Rachie. You'll get your Master's, too...someday."

What a cultured smarty pants.

Getting rid of the gifted students. It's about time.

I was in gifted education programs throughotu elementary and middle school. The theory was (and largely still is) that students who are labeled "gifted" aren't challenged in the standard classroom, and therefore require additional, more rigorous, classes.

By the time I got to high school, however, it became obvious that the "gifted" program was more of a status division than one designed to challenge the students who needed challenging. Moreover, many students who would have benefited from such a program couldn't participate because they didn't pass the arbitrary "are you gifted or aren't you" test.

By telling one group of children that they're gifted, the message to the rest of the student body is that they're somehow inferior. The education and personal lives of those other students ("the great unwashed," as a teacher mentor used to say) become a self-fulfilling prophecy. "I'm not gifted? Fine. I'll show you what a 'not gifted' student looks like." For this and other reasons, Montgomery County, a Washington, D.C. suburb is doing away with the gifted label.

Montgomery County is one of the most lucrative in the country (if not the most lucrative), and it's home to bankers, Senators and all sorts of other muckety-mucks. Not surprisingly, these people--people who base their self-worth on how gifted others perceive them to be--are less than happy that their children are no longer "gifted." For the sake of "the great unwashed" in Montgomery Country and the rest of the country, it's about time.