A “good student” is described in many ways. Through common sense being a good student means to be a student who is your perfect little quiet, listening, attentive student who studies hard and participates in class all while getting everything in on time. The issue with this is it’s unrealistic and almost never in the case realistic or achievable. In real life all the students have lives outside of the classroom varying in intensity and maturity needed. Some students may be able to go home and continue being a kid while others go home and have to grow up and take on responsibilities.

Through Kumoshiro’s story about M he shows what a “bad student” is. Now in all reality M may not have been the best student by common sense standards but who’s to say it wasn’t being caused by a factor out of her control at home resulting in poor behavior at school. Being a good student by these standards is easier said than done but people who are more likely than not to benefit are those that are upper-class families, who have good relationships with each other. The benefit of beginning upper class means when you’re in school you don’t have to worry about getting to and from school, because regardless of whether you’ll have a way to get to and from. You also can concentrate on school because you don’t have to worry about if you’re going to eat that day. Also having good healthy relationships with your family when you get home means you can get help with work, you will be able to talk openly about emotions and won’t have to worry about getting into a fight when you get home.

The “good student” is shaped by decades old definitions of students that they built through barbaric means of teaching. We no longer beat kids into line during class or need to teach them to go work in lines in factories. Nowadays we understand every student is different with their different needs and that hitting them with a meterstick won’t do any good, but will only make things worse. Now the aim is to tailor to each student to help them reach their goals and learn the material at their own rate.

For my assignment one, the scholar I’ve been looking at is Arlo Kempf. He is currently a professor at the University of Toronto for education. One of his big focuses is the High-Stakes Standardized Testing (HSST) within curriculum. HSST is the portion in curriculum in Canada and the US recently that is the cause for so much testing so frequently and causing tests to be the be all end all.
Kempf’s viewpoint is that everything being tested is a stupid way to test knowledge and that HSST in the US and Canada should not be being used. The problem with HSST is that it causes too much emphasis on tests to be gauging comprehension. In certain circumstances tests are not a bad thing and can be a great way to benchmark where students are at. But having tests be the be all end all in all classes does not create a great way of teaching and learning.
What I’d like to learn and need to find out going forwards in the assignment is what other approaches can be taken to combat the current teaching methods. In some classes using HSST to a degree might still be useful. Not at the rate it is right now but certain classes like ELA for example, it makes no sense to have so many parts of the class to be tested.

Throughout all of elementary and high school I’d say that the Tyler theory was present, and now knowing what it is was very prominent. Teachers often had been saying how they had to hit all these topics and fit tests in by certain dates so that we could “meet curriculum”. This was all throughout even including some teachers cutting out minor “not as important points” because they were running low on time. Many of the benchmarks for our comprehension were done through tests, especially in the more core classes. They also had the same expectations for every student regardless of every student’s difference and needs.

Tylers rationale limits a lot of what students can do to grow and learn at their own pace. It also doesn’t help teachers to be able to teach the students at a rate that they’ll learn at as they need to always be keeping up with the curriculum and what needs to be done by when to meet every topic. Tylers plan does have some useful aspects as it does try to improve on what past models looked like and was a step in the right direction, however that was years ago and as of today more modern steps could be taken to help education not be living in the past.

Kumashiro refers to commonsense as what we here in Canada and North America are used to day to day. When we wake up, when we eat, go to school it’s all what we grew up learning. Our social norms seem like commonsense to us but it’s always something to keep in mind when we meet people from other countries and places of origin. Especially when going into teaching it is important to be aware of commonsense to us and be open to other ideas and methods of class. Also, it’s important to keep in mind the common sense of the situation and not to be critical in specific situations as it is not always well known to all people. It is also important to make sure they understand where you are coming from and equally for you to make sure you know where they come from in your own common knowledge. Coming into this I have a typical western view on common sense, and as for pedagogy I have a decent understanding of it and think of it almost as a philosophy for teaching.