Book Club Final Post

For this weeks book club, we finally finished reading all the chapters within the book. It was a long and hard book to read. If you as a person are to use to the idea of looking at research articles constantly and familiar with the terminology, it was a very hard read. The book its itself was a very big research project from the author. It's I had to pick a type of research I would say its Qualitative with a mix of meta-analysis with all the effort put into this book I can imagine if needed it could be much more. The biggest theme of the whole book was finding out what was wrong with the schools throughout Chicago and what exactly was needed to fix them. The book took a primary focus on the support the school was getting which ultimately led to its downfall. It tells us in the ends that parent involvement was the key it was one of the factors schools couldn't account for and whether the parents decided to help the child or not played a huge role. The parents pushed for kids to go to school and do homework and often it was found that push was not there. Kids were being raised in a single parent home and often did not see their parents at all. When speaking to the other book club members we all discussed how important a parent can be when it comes to school. Almost all of my groupmates grew up with strict parents and agreed that without them who knows where they might have ended up. Although the book talked about a tremendous amount of issues found in the public school system. As a group, we all agreed on with the conclusion that parents are the key and downfall to the school. Without enough parental support, the institution's foundations cannot function. 

The group also discussed the quality of the book where a lot of us found that the book repeated itself a lot throughout its entirety. It gets to a point where information was so repetitive that you stop listening and gets almost boring. While the serves a good purpose and research as a group we do not recommend this book for a undergrad class. I feel that this book would serve better at a higher graduate level course.

Organizing Schools for Improvement, Lessons from Chicago Post 2

Within our last group chat, we were all able to be present, and all caught up on the material. The conversations were great, and we topics touched upon full of information to share with each other. The info we shared came from chapter 3 and 4 we are doing 2 chapters week in order to successfully complete the book before the due date. We discussed the need for a principle within the school system. Why it is so detrimental that schools have a good principle and a good leader make good teachers which makes good students. Within the chapters, the faculty and principles were continually being changed and shifted which seemed to play a role in why the school system in Chicago was failing. Shifting power from the board to the principle and having good parents creating change as well creates a great formula for improvement. As mentioned in the book teachers are the key to which a students mind can be transformed into a learning machine. Which brought up one of the key topics discussed later in class as a whole when comparing other books within the book club where other book discussed getting rid of teachers altogether and moving on to computing. Where there is less of a margin of error and at the same time, students can learn to better grasp technology moving on with their studies. While the concept seems fine in practice, it's tough for students to sometimes do everything on a computer and studies have shown that that personal connection with a teacher makes the difference when it comes to taking in information. You can throw a textbook full of knowledge at a kid have him read it and hope he performs well, but the key word is hope. Teaching at a slow pace and taking into account your students what they need help with and making sure everyone is moving at the same speed. Curriculums are like a map to a course put that in a computer, and it will never stray from that path but there's no guarantee that everyone will learn but sometimes as a teacher, you need to change things up for the better of the class, and that's why teachers are so important to schools. As well as curriculums which the books touches upon shortly where principles and boards struggled to decide if every school should be following the same curriculum. Where in my personal opinion they should and shouldn't where all kids should be learning the same thing but all learning in different ways. 

Book Club Blog Week 1 for "Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago"

Within the first group meeting, there was a lot of things mentioned and discussed. Although I missed the first group meeting, I was able to reconnect and share thoughts. After reading a lot of the book, there was a lot of information to take in. After reading through the prologue and Introduction, the information within the book is quite shocking. Based on the intro and prologue its safe to say that Chicago public schools are in awful condition and need a lot of help. From what was read on the book so far the book is designed to be a massive research paper that the author did on Chicago schools for people to understand and hopefully be able to offer support and help. The book started off explaining what was wrong with the schools and how they were currently working. Showing the reader what is causing this issue. They use different measures to indicate whether a school is efficient enough or not compared to other schools in Illinois.  Within our group discussion, we were able to locate where we thought schools needed to change. We started targeting the principles and questioning leadership. Where we exchanged comments about what a school which is run by teachers and leaders who care in comparison to teachers who are there just to collect a paycheck. Which seemed like the issue was in CPS. We traded stories and began trying to find our own solutions modern day to run a better school system and taking in what the book had taught us. There needs to be a school with a balanced attendance rate where the numbers aren't too high or fall below 90% because it would pose an issue. Teachers play a significant role in the way kids are taught and how they teach it. In Chapter 1 It mentions that not all of the kids were learning the same way and the same material. They all began to lack in English and mathematics because of the different curriculums. As a group, we agreed on everything the chapter discussed and sincerely looked forward into reading the rest of the book because we had all an interest in learning about Chicago's history.