Interviews with scolars

Dr. Kirk Lewis was the first interview I selected mostly because of my personal interest in the Gates Foundation and all the great things they are doing.  He mentioned that the Gates Foundation was the funding mechanism for their research based Expectation Graduation.  The idea of the program is designed to help 9^th grades students to get them ready for graduation by teaching them techniques to understand more in-depth questions and information.  With E.O.C.’s on the way, learning at a deeper level is becoming ever so more important, and going deeper into the core curriculum is what Expectation Graduation is supposed to do by using data to better understand exactly what students need to be successful at the deeper level type of questions. 

He is interested in having a highly educated staff that they themselves can make the research themselves.  A high level of Masters degrees are part of his district, so he wants them to use that data experience they have learned to better improve their particular campus.  It is important to look at what others have done, and take that technical writing and understand it.  Likewise, practicality is important when looking at research.  This will make the researcher more interested, and thus create a better product. 

Reflection for Dr. Lewis - I like Dr. Lewis.  He has taught me that it is okay to pick and choose when it comes to research.  This is not to say that you should ignore data that you don’t like.  That is downright bad, but you need to find data that can help your district and your campus.  Data must be usable.  He mentions that you can create all kinds of important sounding data and look impressive, but that is silly unless you can actually use it on your campus. 

Dr. Timothy Chargois was the second interview I selected because of his candid take on going beyond pedagogy.  Pedagogy has been the sacred cow, if you will, in education for the past few years.  We have been told that following certain pedagogy strategies will yield high results.  Dr. Chargois has approached the situation, with the aid of the Dell Foundation, to look at data as a tool to better teach our kids.  It seems that technology is the reason we can have immediate results and better results when applying them to education.  If indeed pedagogy is working, the data will give us positive results, but if it is not, the results will be negative.  Perhaps some students don’t need the whole gambit of pedagogy to be successful, and this data driven approach will let us know if that is so. 

There is a look into effective vs. ineffective teachers with this research.  Dr. Chargois makes the point that if you should never stop learning, no matter how young or seasoned an educator is.  I agree with this.  In this world of performance based results, looking at data can help us to know where and what we need to do, and what direction we need to take.  Along with this, he discusses the ethical responsibilities a teacher has when looking at data and the ethical responsibilities in helping students. 

Reflection for Dr. Chargois - I liked how he made the point about ethics.  What is our moral / ethical responsibility to kids as a whole?  Are we to be mindless robots following the data, or caring individuals who care for kids?  We are to do both equally.  I know I don’t want to be a mindless robot, but I also don’t want to be an ineffective teacher or administrator. 

Reflection for Johnny Briseno – He reminded me that reinventing the wheel is a silly thing.  There are so many great minds out there that have done so much great work.  I’ve learned to continually look outside of myself and outside of my district to learn about the best way to educate kids.