Curriculum: From Theory to Practice
Blytheville New Tech High School is one of the largest schools in Arkansas. It is a school that welcomes parental involvement, provides strong professional development, and shares in collaborative planning. The teachers are highly qualifies and knows exactly what they are to teach and when they are to teach it. The teachers are also committed to providing an explicit, systematic education to the students they serve. Therefore, of all five of the curriculum approaches or models (Systemic, Existentialist, Radical, Pragmatic, and Deliberative), the Systematic Curriculum most closely matches the model practiced at my school, Blytheville New Tech High School. Blytheville New Tech High School matches the Systematic Curriculum in that it is heavily supportive of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and curriculum standards movement. It is also emphasized on measurement, efficiency, and universality.
Blytheville New Tech High School matches the Systematic Curriculum in that it is a strong advocate of the NCLB, which was signed into law by George W. Bush in 2002. The purpose of NCLB was to hold schools more accountable for student achievement. Blytheville New Tech High School goal is to prepare students to become productive citizens. “The law’s dominant goal is to prepare students to compete economically in the global marketplace (Null, 38)”. Blytheville New Tech High School strives to achieve this goal by using scientifically based research to plan a rigorous, explicit and systematic curriculum. NCLB has assisted Blytheville New Tech High School in consistently delivering a comprehensible curriculum that is built on sharing expectations, collaborative planning, and assessing and progress monitoring stude...
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... as students accountable for student learning. The curriculum also answers to the public community in order to keep the school community’s support. Since students, parents, teachers, administrators, and stakeholders are aware of Blytheville New Tech High School’s curriculum, terms such as “freshman English” is understood universally by the public due to the fundamental system that provides the foundation for the curriculum. Therefore, in my opinion, Blytheville New Tech High School is most closely related to the Systematic Curriculum. This school has been very effective because it encourages professional accountability, address individual need, and aligns teaching and assessment with curriculum every year.
Works Cited
Null, Wesley. (2011). Curriculum: from theory to practice. Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. ISBN 978-1-4422-0915-2 (paperback)
The granny and the misfit are two completely opposite characters that possess two different beliefs. The grandmother puts herself on a high pedestal and the way she calls the misfit ‘a good person’ based upon his family background gives the reader an idea of what the grandmother acknowledges to be considered as ‘good’. Self absorbed as sh...
The grandmother has never truly understood what being saved means. She is also ignorant to what salvation is. The Misfit is missing the ability to empathize and bind with other people. He does not hold respect for human life. In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, it says “She would of been a good woman, The Misfit said, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life” (430). In “‘One of My Babies’: The misfit and the grandmother”, written by Stephen C. Bandy, it says “The Misfit has already directed the execution of the Grandmother’s entire family, and it must be obvious to all including reader and the Grandmother, that she is next to die” (108). These example justifies that The Misfit does not have any regard for human life. The only people that he has are the two goons that help him murder people. The grandmother sees that The Misfit has never had anyone to take care of him. At the end of this story she tries reach out to him on a spiritual level, but he shoots her three times in the chest as soon as she touches
The story opens with the self-righteous grandmother trying to manipulate her son, Bailey. The family is planning a trip to Florida, but the grandmother wants to go Tennessee. She has tried to persuade him to change the trip, but he will not listen. The grandmother finds an article in the local newspaper about an escaped convict, the Misfit. She tries to convince Bailey the family should go a different direction because the Misfit is on the loose. “Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did” (O’Connor 356). The grandmother indicates she has a strong conscience, yet she continually lies throughout the story. If she really let her conscience guide her, then she would be more concerned about her own actions.
The story opens with a portrayal of a family in their home discussing a planned road trip to Florida. The family consists of a married couple, their three children, and the husband’s mother, the children’s maternal grandmother. The grandmother, who is never named in the story, begins the story by attempting to convince her son, Bailey, that they should change the destination of their road trip to avoid running into a convict who had escaped. While this might seem reasonable, the grandmother’s intentions are self-serving and foreshadow events to come in the story. She makes a few remarks including,
The way the grandmother connects with the misfit at the end of the story reinforces how similar they are despite being so outwardly different. The title of “Misfit” which he had given himself, was not his exclusively as an even greater misfit lay dead at his feet. It is this ending that lifts the tone of the story from one of narrow-minded bigotry and bleak and gratuitous violence to one of hope and the possibility of redemption, which is undoubtedly the author’s message.
The grandmother says “I know you’re a good man. You don’t look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people,” showing how she is trying to find a shred of hope in a murderer. O’Connor’s use of southern diction and religious banter develop the grandmother away from superficiality and towards genuineness. The grandmother says “’Listen,’…’you shouldn’t call yourself The Misfit because I know you’re a good man at heart. I can just look at you and tell.’” The Misfit replies “I pre-chate that, lady,’” by using the phonetic spelling instead of proper diction O’Connor is showing that the grandmother believes he is a fellow southerner. The grandmother is talking to The Misfit about salvation and she has an epiphany, O’Connor writes “His voice seemed to crack and the grandmother’s head cleared for an instant. She saw the man’s face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, ‘Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!’” After discussing religion and seeing his perspective the grandmother finally feels real sympathy for The Misfit; up until that point the grandmother had been trying to compliment and talk her way out of being killed along with the rest of her family. Unfortunately this is also when the struggle between good and evil ends with the grandmother being killed, “The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest.” The Misfit then says “‘She would of been a good woman’ … ‘if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.’” He realized that her gesture at that moment was out of pure kindness and
In A Good Man is Hard to Find, O’Connor introduces the Grandmother a small-minded, angry, and annoying old lady who reaches grace right before the end of her life. The Misfit is an escaped criminal who ends up killing the entire family when encountering them, but seems to believe that
They may even often immolate the same exact thing they see or hear from an adult. However, O’Connor puts the focus on the grandmother’s bad behavior to highlight her fate at the end of the story. Readers think the grandmother is a good person character because they relate her to their own grandmother. The grandmother puts her hand on the Misfit at the end of the story because she wants to try one also time to beg for her life. When she went on about the Misfit being a good person she was also begging fir help because she knew she was
The symbolism in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” truly represents Flanner O’Connor’s writing style and underlying theme. O’Connor exhibits the theme of religion in many of her works as she has written a majority of her stories “in the depth[s] of her Christian faith” (419). Having a strong Catholic background, O’Connor displays aspects of religious symbolism combined with her fascination of “grotesque incidents and characters” (420). In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor embodies the theme of religious symbolism through the setting as well as the main characters of her work, the Grandmother and The Misfit, as a glimpse of hope in a gruesome, sinister story.
...ting a new curriculum. The system needs an entire restructuring, from the top to the bottom.
Since the No Child Left Behind Act, also known as NCLB, has come into effect, it has caused some concerns with teachers and parents alike on how well it is working for the students. There have been issues that have arisen that needed to be addressed and instead been overlooked when a child does not meet with the school’s standardized testing and is pushed onto the next grade level.
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is bringing down the American education system for the sake of academic competition with other countries that use better methods. This country hasn’t changed its methods in decades. By addressing different aspects of the problem, it can be solved more efficiently and quickly. Three different aspects will be addressed here: what the American education system already does, what other countries are doing (as well as cultural differences), and what we should be doing. What we should be doing is a general combination of what other successful countries are doing, taking advice from experienced educators, and abolishing stressful, unnecessary practices.
As students in a Structure & Philosophy class, one of the main components has been to introduce and familiarize us with the No Child Left Behind Act. President Bush passed this legislation on January 8, 2002. The NCLB Act was designed to ensure each and every student the right to a fair education, to give parents more options in their child’s education, and to guarantee all teachers are highly qualified. By highly qualified, the act means teachers must have at least a bachelor’s degree, have full state certification or licensure, and have demonstrated competence in their subject areas (US Dept. of Education).
“A cornerstone to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is that educators should engage classroom practices that work”. The law specifically implies that there is a great importance in choosing instructional approaches that are “based on scientific research and have a proven track record of success”. (http://www.ballard-tighe.com) With scientifically based approaches this law hopes to “close the student achievement gap”. One of the scientific approaches often used is the “Active Learning” approach. Learning with this approach takes on a view that “learning is most effective when students actively apply new knowledge in meaningful activities that link to their existing knowledge and skill development”. (http://www.ballard-tighe.com) This learning scheme or approach adheres to principles in Piaget’s theory of cognitive child development.
The need to evaluate curriculum arises because it is necessary for both teachers and students to determine the extent to which their current curricular program and its implementation have produced positive and curricularly suitable outcomes for students. To evaluate curricular effectiveness we must identify and describe the curriculum and its objectives first and then check its contents for accuracy, comprehensiveness, depth, timeliness, depth and quality.