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Environmental factors and learning
Environmental factors and learning
How does environment affect effective learning
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The contextual factors within a classroom are shaped by external environmental factors. These factors have a noticeable effect on the students’ learning process and the teacher’s ability to teach effectively and bridge gaps in learning that may occur from time to time. The community in which the high school is located is an extremely rural community, with a small population that is stable. The total population for the community at just over eighteen thousand people which has increased by approximately fifteen hundred people within a year. The community prides itself upon having an agribusiness economy, based on poultry and cattle production. Much of the growth that the community has experienced has been along two exits that are located off of the major interstate in the area. This has led to a stable community that has not seen any drastic changes in its economy, housing or population. Native born citizens make up ninety seven percent of the population. Banks County is located approximately seventy seven miles northeast of Atlanta’s Major airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, which is the leading factor in how the economy is based on agriculture and faming. The school district consists of four schools; a primary, elementary, middle and high school that are all within a mile of each other. The median family income is $40,455with 18% of the population living under the federal poverty limits (Census.gov, 2010).The community consists families of low to medium income status. The educational achievement of the district’s population is majorly centered around those that are high school graduates or possess a high school equivalency diploma at forty –two percent. The next degree of education attained by the population is attending nin...
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American FactFinder - Results. (n.d.). American FactFinder. Retrieved March 28, 2012, from http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_10_5YR_DP03&prodType=table
Banks County Georgia >> Community. (n.d.). Banks County Georgia >> Banks County Convention and Visitors Bureau. Retrieved March 28, 2012, from http://www.bankscountyga.org/community-v-15.html
Search for Public Schools - School Detail for Banks County High School. (n.d.). National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Home Page, a part of the U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved March 28, 2012, from http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/school_detail.asp?Search=1&InstName=banks+county+high+school&SchoolType=1&SchoolType=2&SchoolType=3&SchoolType=4&SpecificSchlTypes=all&IncGrade=-1&LoGrade=-1&HiGrade=-1&ID=130024000169
In the state of South Carolina, public school students are educated on a lower level than they are striving to complete. They are taught on the expectation of acquiring only a minimally adequate education, which only requires the rudimentary knowledge of the primary subjects. With expectations set beneath the level students should be learning, they are being hindered from seeing and reaching their full potential and lose sight of the dreams they have for their futures. Often these students become trapped in their social and cultural capitals due to these low expectations. Minimally adequate education provides the foundation for a lower quality of life and if left unchanged will create larger social and cultural dilemmas. The concept of minimally adequate education in South Carolina’s educational system must be changed in order to better the lives of the students and to prevent the hindering of our students by continuing to “norm” them to low expectations.
Nelson Mandela once said, "Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. YOU can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom” (Make Poverty History, 2005). Gwinnett county is third in the country when it comes to a high poverty rate, with 14% of the population living below poverty (Family Promise of Gwinnet County, 2013). As an educator it is important to familiarize with the county of which one is to teach in, and poverty is an issue in Gwinnett county. One must understand the affects of poverty on children's learning, how to recognize children of poverty and how to help those students, and what rights those children have to an education.
“When schools, parents, families, and communities work together to support learning, students tend to earn higher grades, attend school more regularly, stay in school longer, and enroll in higher level programs.” (Van Roeckel, 2008, p. 1) Deer Valley High School in Glendale, AZ is the first high school built in the Deer Valley Unified Scholl District, and with a population around 1800 students, the high school is one of the bigger schools in the state. It has a tradition of family on its’ campus, where there are still teachers teaching that were there when the school opened in 1980. A number of former students have become new teachers on campus and just about all the teachers’ children have attended and graduated from the campus. With a school like ours, there are many connections to the community around it and it is demonstrated by the programs that bring in parent and community to help with the development of our students. There are numerous booster clubs run on our campus to help support student achievement on the sports fields, a school to work programs to teach the students necessary skills in different areas of either nursing, sports medicine classes, and in the culinary arts classrooms, and funding to our school to help ensure all students graduate on time. There are many programs on our campus, but I will discuss four of the programs: baseball booster club, C2G program, “school-to-work”, and the special education program sponsored by Arrowhead Hospital. These programs are designed to improve the relationships between the campus and the people in the community, and give all students on campus every opportunity to succeed in their future.
Everyday students attend school, but not every single student attends the same type of school nor do they receive the same type of education. This thought may be very concerning to some, but for others, this is all too much a reality. For example, some may ask how is it possible that students in public schools that are located within the same state somehow receive a different education; the answer is simple. The concept of quality is a factor that can hinder or facilitate anything, especially ones education. The difference between a public school education in a particular town compared to another is its demographic. Some students are fortunate enough to be afforded the opportunity to attend school systems that perform well, while others do not have the privilege to do the same. Something as simple as a couple of miles can be the difference, the difference that makes some feel entitled to certain things such as higher education while others can only hope to appreciate a secondary or trade school education. Therefore, education is not a right rather a privilege, and the level of quality is contingent upon the environment wherein the learning takes place. The immense importance of environment is self-evident in examples
School funding is systemically unequal, partially because the majority of school funding comes from the school district’s local property taxes, positioning the poorest communities at the bottom rung of the education playing field. A student’s socioeconomic status often defines her success in a classroom for a number of reasons. Students who live below the poverty line have less motivation to succeed, and their parents are less inclined to participate in their child’s education, often because the parents cannot provide support for their children. Although it’s logical that school districts from poorer communities cannot collect as much funding as the richer communities, persons stuck in these low-income communities often pay higher taxes, and still their school dis...
Michael Oher was from an all-black neighborhood located in the third poorest zip code in the country. By the time he was a sophomore, he’d been to 11 different schools, he couldn’t read or write, and he had a GPA of 0.6. In his first-grade year alone, he missed 41 days of school and ended up repeating both the first and the second grade; he didn’t even go to the third grade. Oher was one of the thousands of children that have been identified as having four or more of the at-risk factors mentioned by the National Center of Education and Statistics (NCES). According to the NCES, poverty and race are high on the list of things that negatively affect students’ ability to succeed at school. Other risk factors include changing schools multiple times and being held back from one or more grades. Oher’s biography, The Blind Side by Michael Lewis, proves how socioeconomic status impacts a child’s academic success because placed in perspective, education is not as important as the hardships of reality.
For decades now, there have been educational problems in the inner city schools in the United States. The schools inability to teach some students relates to the poor conditions in the public schools. Some of the conditions are the lack of funds that give students with the proper supplies, inexperienced teachers, inadequate resources, low testing scores and the crime-infested neighborhoods. These conditions have been an issue for centuries, but there is nothing being done about it. Yet, state and local governments focus on other priorities, including schools with better academics. It is fair to say that some schools need more attention than other does. However, when schools have no academic problems then the attention should be focused elsewhere, particularly in the inner city schools.
Education is an integral part of society, school helps children learn social norms as well as teach them how to be successful adults. The school systems in United States, however are failing their students. In the world as a whole, the United States is quickly falling behind other countries in important math and reading scores. The United States ranked thirtieth in math on a global scale and twentieth in literacy. This is even more true in more urban, lower socio-economic areas in the United States. These schools have lower test scores and high dropout rates. In Trenton Central High School West, there was an 83% proficiency in literacy and only 49% of the students were proficient in math. Many of these students come from minority backgrounds and are often from low income families. There are many issues surrounding these urban schools. There is a severe lack of proper funding in these districts, and much of the money they do receive is sanctioned for non-crucial things. Schools also need a certain level of individualization with their students, and in many urban classes, this simply does not happen. While there are many factors affecting the low performance of urban schools, the lack of proper funding and distribution of funds, the cultural divide between teachers and students in urban districts, along with the lack of individualization in urban classrooms are crucial reasons to explain the poor performance in these districts. Through a process of teacher lead budget committees and further teacher education, urban schools can be transformed and be better equipped to prepare their students for the global stage.
[The school where I teach is the only high school within a city school district that is located within the confines of a larger metropolitan area. The school receives Title 1 funding, with 56 % of the students being eligible for free or reduced lunches. This high school offers a variety of degree programs and coursework, such as, advanced placement coursework and exams, international baccalaureate and culinary arts certification, technical and college prep diplomas, one of the largest Air Force ROTC programs in the area, and alternative programs through which students have the ability to earn credit for the courses that they had previously failed. This school is very diverse, of the 2,291 students 46.0% are African American, 30.0% are Hispanic, 18.0% are White, 3.0% are Multiracial, and 2.0% are Asian. The area surrounding the school is just as diverse as the students that attend the school. A majority of the homes within this school district are single-family homes and can range from small-scale mansions to unmaintained older homes. There are also a large number of apartment complexes and condos in the area as well. A portion of the student population comes from outside of the district in order to participate in the high school’s international baccal...
...o’s northern suburb, spend $20,000. Which shows that when the school district looks at the schools in their area, they are automatically looking at the demographics of the area opposed to what that school is in need of.
A teacher’s responsibilities are to ensure that every student gets the education that they deserve from a well-structured curriculum and materials. Within the teacher’s responsibilities a strong foundation of instruction has to be implemented, this is why instructional strategies are significant in a teacher’s career. The strategies for instruction vary from teacher to teacher; as a result there are no specific ways to employ strategies within instruction. The main purpose of this essay is to display knowledge of methods that are involved in teaching second language instruction for various ages and levels of students. This essay will also develop from the following components that methods and techniques are important to encourage tactical instructional strategies. These components are comprehensible input, feedback that is on-going, specific and immediate, grouping structures and techniques, building background and vocabulary development along with student engagement.
Constructivism is a method that says students learn by building their schema by adding to their prior knowledge by the use of scaffolding (Rhinehart Neas). Because the students are basically teaching themselves new information, the teacher is there mainly for support and guidance for the students.
Among many teaching styles and learning theories, there is one that is becoming more popular, the constructivist theory. The constructivist theory focuses on the way a person learns, a constructivist believes that the person will learn better when he/she is actively engaged. The person acts or views objects and events in their environment, in the process, this person then understands and learns from the object or events(P. Johnson, 2004). When we encounter a certain experience in our life, we think back to other things that have occurred in our life and use that to tackle this experience. In a lot of cases, we are creators of our own knowledge. In a classroom, the constructivist theory encourages more hands-on assignments or real-world situations, such as, experiments in science and math real-world problem solving. A constructivist teacher constantly checks up on the student, asking them to reflect what they are learning from this activity. The teacher should be keeping track on how they approached similar situations and help them build on that. The students can actually learning how to learn in a well-planned classroom. Many people look at this learning style as a spiral, the student is constantly learning from each new experience and their ideas become more complex and develop stronger abilities to integrate this information(P. Johnson, 2004). An example of a constructivist classroom would be, the student is in science class and everyone is asking questions, although the teacher knows the answer, instead of just giving it to them, she attempts to get the students to think through their knowledge and try to come up with a logical answer. A problem with this method of learning is that people believe that it is excusing the role of...
Scott and Teale (2009) identified three significant needs of children in an urban learning environment. Those needs consisted of the following: (1) emotional support, (2) exposure, and (3) changes in attitude toward education. Most urban learners come from families of low economic status, tend to have several siblings, and may live in single parent households. Many come to school hungry and tired from a disheartening evening, often entering school with a defeated spirit.
Have you heard the old adage, “It takes a village to raise a child?” Even in today’s busy world where villages are almost nonexistent and neighborhoods aren’t as closely knit as they once were, this saying holds true. The same principle applies to your child’s education—it takes more than a good school to educate children, just as takes more than a good home to make children well adjusted. It takes community, teachers, and it takes YOU!