Hello bloggers, I have returned from my hibernation of blogging. Or would it more appropriately be deemed a hiatus? Either way, I have returned in full force!
Last you heard I was in Paris enjoying life, and almost three months later here I am. Unfortunately, I put an exorbitant amount of pressure on myself to keep my blogs up to date that when I miss that I become intimidated to come back. Because, you know, I have so many people that rely on my posts being in a timely manner and full of information that if I don't follow that I might as well stop altogether! But at the same time, I blog for me, and I know this. I blog when I know I have something on my mind and the only way for me to sort it out is by writing about it. So either my life has been content enough to where I haven't had a need to blog, or I'm just really good at keeping things in and I don't need to blog until it's all about to explode.
And who knows which one I'm demonstrating?
I suppose the biggest thing on my mind is the fact that it's my senior year of college. Wrapping my head around it is....excruciatingly hard. Part of me is jumping for joy that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel...part of me is scared shitless that I can see the end of the tunnel, and part of me is absolutely frustrated that I feel like I'm the only person on track to graduate in May. I feel like I'm surrounded by either underclassmen or senior who are taking extra semesters to finish up. Now don't get me wrong, I definitely believe that there are some people who need to take the extra time to finish up, and I certainly wouldn't chastise someone for choosing to take more time in order to graduate with something I know he/she'd be happy with, but I'm feeling a little selfish when I say I am disappointed that I feel alone in this aspect.
The biggest thing that's been on my mind is my future. I've had a rude awakening as far as our education system and the real life opportunities that are not as guaranteed as they want you to believe when you're choosing your major your freshman year. I was told my freshman year that getting a teaching degree from Ball State, no matter what subject area, would guarantee me a job once I graduated. I did everything I was supposed to do, I even did it all in four years. I'm in my second to last semester and I'm told that they can't find a teacher for me to do my participating teaching with, and I can't student teach until I get through my participating teaching.
And honestly, hearing that makes me want to just quit. You know I'm sick of it. I wasn't told that some French classes were only offered certain semesters of certain years and ended up blocking myself out of taking french for two semesters. Now I find out that I haven't been told that the direction of education has made world languages (minus Spanish) nearly impossible to place, let alone find jobs for in the future. Excuse me? Whatever happened to making strides towards globalization? Whatever happened to needing language experience to get advanced high school diplomas, or even into colleges?
It was during this time that I also found out that more and more schools are switching to an "8-Step Plan" that gets standardized testing scores up as well as increases attendance and graduation rates. This plan essentially makes every single teacher adapt their lessons to better prepare students for the standardized tests, be it going over specific objectives and seeing where students struggle and where they don't, or taking time out of your art class to teach a basic algebra lesson. Yes, that's right, non-content classes are being told they have to give 20 minutes of class to teach either a 9th grade algebra lesson or a 10th grade English lesson.
The reason why more and more schools are doing this? Because they're seeing the numbers. They're seeing the test scores go up and in turn the attendance and graduation rates go up as well. And as we all know, the numbers don't lie so it must be the most beneficial option in the world!
Please realize the above paragraph is meant to be read in complete sarcasm.
I really want to do a coloration study to see how many of these students who have benefited from the 8-Step Plan have graduated college in 4 years. Because, it sounds like by the time they graduate high school, all they know how to do is 9th grade Algebra and 10th grade English. So when they get to choose what they think they want to do for the rest of their life, they realize that they've had absolutely no exposure to a range of electives and end up making a rash decision out of the blue because they feel the need to decide. Then, when they realize they've made a terrible choice and need to start over, they end up taking more than four years to graduate, the universities don't get funding, and tuition rises year after year in order to make ends meet.
All because some stupid politician saw that numbers went up therefore nothing else could possibly be wrong with this plan.
And to think, I want to congratulate myself for completing 16 years of education by sentencing myself to a life-long career dealing with this bullshit? I truly must be out of my mind.
I've always been able to convince myself that I'm doing this because I want to be part of the solution. I want to be able to show that I have a clue about education and know how to create solutions to the current problems we face.
And this is the first time I've wanted to just graduate and never step inside another classroom again.
Hello senior year. How I am looking ever so forward to seeing how you pan out these next coming months.
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