Education is Politics

Extended Comments
This week we had to read Education is Politics by Ira Shor.  This article focuses on what kind of educational system we have, what is going on in the classroom, and what we need to do to help the students with their education.  For this week's blog I would like to extend from Luke's blog.  In Luke's blog he pointed out 9 topics that teachers should focus on teaching in their classrooms...1)participatory 2)affective 3)problem-posing 4)situated 5)multicultural 6)democratic 7)researching 8)interdisciplinary 9)activists

I like and agree with Luke on how he focused on the topic of participation in the classroom.  I also believe that by having a student participate in a classroom as much as they can is very key to a student's success in the classroom.  As Luke said in his blog you need action to gain knowledge and he said that all of this can get started on the very first day of class.  I think by having students participate in the classroom on the very first day it shows the teacher that you are very serious about learning and it shows them that you're not there to just make the teacher's life absolutely miserable.  I know that in some of my classes I am pretty shy so it's kind of hard for me to participate and talk in class but I am a serious learner and I do all the work that my teacher's assign.  I found some websites that give tips on how to get students to participate during class and in this website I found something that caught my eye.  It said that a good way to help class participation or to get a classroom discussion going is to set your classroom up in either a circle or a u-shape.  I thought this was funny because we sit in a circle every single day and I can see that it helps a lot because every day our class discussions get so in depth and interesting and I never leave the class saying "ughhh class was so boring today!"

Points I would like to bring up in class:  What other ways do you think would help a student participate more in a classroom?  Do you agree with the fact that participation is very key in the student's success in the classroom?
Hope everyone had a good Easter!