In Chapter One, the concept of leave no child left behind is a powerful effort in keeping our youth aligned with one another. With the dramatic diversity today in our schools and society it's vital for our students to feel equal and understand it's our role to provide them with the knowledge to excel and move forward in life. At the beginning of the chapter it explains how in 2015, 25% of U.S. children under the age of 18 are living in immigrant families. By 2044, more than half of the U.S. population will be members of a minority group. Based on these statistics, Eric Turner concluded, "American society and schools are more diverse and more unequal than ever." I understand that the statistics of minorities increasing doesn't necessarily tie into the grades and percentages of tests regarding the NCLB, however, how can you not relate each other? Does a child's learning ability drop due to their ethnicity or race? No. Yet it can be argued that isolation of the minorities in our classrooms today can leave a child feeling left out, or left behind resulting in less interaction in class, test scores dropping, little to no engagement with other students. There's absolutely something there to relate between the two and I find it our responsibility as teachers and future teachers to implement plans/procedures to exemplify how we're providing for our students.
In Chapter Two, we take a dive into how children develop and our approach to increase development over time. On page 33 it asks us if human development is a continuous process of increasing abilities or are there leaps to new stages when abilities change? I found this interesting as I've blogged in the past about how life itself is a learning process. It's like the saying goes, we live and we learn. I believe in both that we progress as we get older and that we can make leaps to new stages since as we grow our abilities change. Cognitive development, according to Piaget, is that our thinking processes change radically, though slowly, from birth to maturity because we constantly strive to make sense of the world. This can be relatable to what I mentioned earlier about how we live and we learn. We take in new occurrences daily and are constantly learning and evolving as we grow. Piaget is saying how we change frequently yet slowly due to everything that evolves around us.
In Chapter Three we cover the self, social and moral development. As a child, we begin with our physical development. Over time, our bodies change and we become bigger and stronger, yet these times can become puzzling but also exciting. As preschoolers, they start to develop their motor skills as their brain starts to develop for the integration of information on movements, balance and center of gravity increasing their ability to run, jump, climb, and hop. In the adolescent years, their bodies begin to change as they go through puberty and this can be puzzling to some. Although it happens over time, confusion can occur as the child's body encounters these changes. Looking back on my adolescent years I can remember the time when friends' bodies were making changes. Voices started to change, muscle development kicked in, kids started growing facial hair. I find it a pivotal moment in a kid's life as they go through these changes and as a future educator we can help with the transition and provide an understanding of what is happening.
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