Reflection Statements of a Student Teacher

by Hugh M. Lewis

I have chosen to professionally retool myself and change my career trajectory in my post-male menopausal middle age in order to provide for my family the larger sense of domestic security and context, as much as possible, that they deserve and need. Teaching is a relatively stable and respectable profession to transition into, and I have found a large degree of carry-over and feedback between my previous training and experience in anthropological research and in learning how to be a teacher in a classroom. This has occurred on several levels, theoretically, methodologically and operationally in terms of actual fieldwork and school behavior settings. It is not that I haven't taught before, but all my previous training and experience in teaching was at the level of the adult student, where issues of primary socialization and enculturation are not at the foreground and a safe presupposition can usually be made that the student is bring prior knowledge and experience into the classroom that can be elicited and built upon. I think in my middle age I cannot "transform" and mold myself into a conventional teacher's suit as easily or as naively than if I were just starting out as a young adult in my early twenties. I have found this to be as true in the class-rooms where I teach as in those where I am still learning, and it is true that it is difficult to "teach an old dog new tricks" though, I would say, not impossible.

With increasing full-time involvement in my first-grade assignment, I am finding that I am gradually getting the hang of working with 6 to 7 year old children. I am reminded at every turn of the event structure of my normal day that I cannot take for granted the prior knowledge or understanding of my students, and I'm always catching myself for presuming they know more than they really do. At the same time, though I frequently find working at this age level frustrating, I've seen a tremendous amount of growth on the part of my students over the last three months that I've been in this classroom, and it is clear to me that kids at this age are not only in a very plastic and malleable stage of their development, all the more innocent for this, but that they are also possibly at their most optimal period during which their growing brains are beginning to structurally organize themselves in a more specialized, differentiated and subsequently more integrated manner than previously. This process is most evident in their acquisition of literacy skills and related writing-reading abilities, but it is also clearly found in a wide range of skills that that acquire and improve upon, in drawing, cutting, organization, behavior and social development, that occurs concomitantly with acquisition of literacy skills.

It is clear that the processes that different kids are undergoing are similar but not all identical, and it seems almost uniquely individual the way the kids begin putting all their different and newly learned skills into one behavioral "bag" so to speak. Increasingly clear to me also is how cross-cultural issues and also basic behavioral and social issues can intervene and at times interfere in this process of development, and how often and how poorly we, as teachers, are equipped to deal with their real needs, whether this is in context of the whole class as a single group, or individually. Ideally all instruction should be differentiated to the level of the individual, but in any group we also expect natural analytical stratification into those "advanced," those mid-range, and those who are behind on the developmental curve. These notes and observations lead to an alternative class-room management and discipline framework that permits flexible and modular articulation of classroom activities at three levels simultaneous--whole group, differentiated guided groups, and individual needs. Greater attention must be paid to this. Greater attention should also be paid to the larger context of the child, the class and the school.

I have been a student observer in Room 8 since the first week of December, with only a two week break over Christmas holidays. I have gradually gotten to know all the students of the class and they have become comfortable with me. I have also gotten to know pretty well the teacher and her style of classroom management and expectations for her students. We stay busy with one thing or another everyday.

We have struggled with a few students, and have had a regular addition to the class of several more incoming students, all of whom have presented a problem of needing remedial work done, mainly as a result of cross-cultural differentials. I forget that these kids are only 6 or 7 years old, as our academic expectations of their performance and learning exceed their ages. I have subsequently attended several Student Study Teams with students presenting particular behavioral or academic needs and difficulties, as well as sitting in on staff meetings and sacred talk time with the teachers of the First Grade.

I have gradually assumed more independent control for periods of time, across all subject matters, in the class. I have instructed in language arts, math, character development, art, and physical education. As an anthropologist, I have made a conscientious effort not to negative disturb or interfere with the sense of equilibrium that my master teacher has established in her classroom, nor with the students of the class, though I know that my presence has had an unavoidable impact on the course of events and developmental trajectories of the various members of Room 8. I have adopted a very relaxed and friendly attitude in relation to these students, though I think the students know not to test my limits. I have tried various things out in this class, and am experimenting with different things to see what might work and what might be modified to fit the frameworks and standards for this class.

The pressure from the district is very strong, and as a result the teacher and almost all of the staff are under a tremendous amount of stress-generating tension to produce results on assessments, etc. Testing is taking a large percentage of the classroom instruction time, and as a result, we do not make the progress in teaching thematically and developmentally that we would like to see, and believe ourselves capable of under the best of conditions. The consequence has been a growing frustration with teaching to the test, even though lip-service is paid to the ideals of teaching the student and not the test. A great deal of dissatisfaction is voiced by all of the teachers about this situation, which if not eventually remedied, can be expected to result in high rates of teacher burnout at this school. This is unfortunate, because I see this consequence not only as unnecessary, but as the result of policies that are ultimately destructive rather than constructive of a better educational system. I see the administrative authoritarianism this represents, upon district, state and federal levels, as remaining at this time in our history beyond self-reform, and growing worse as a general social situation, reflecting increasing class polarization in the host society, rather than improving in the future. The role of education as a cornerstone of a democratic society will therefore be fundamentally altered.

During this last week of February, I have gradually become more involved and active in taking over the class during times when the teacher is out, and in terms of after-school planning and preparation activities and meetings with the other teachers. I took the whole day without advanced notice on Thursday, February 27th, and for the afternoon on Tuesday, Feb. 25th, while the teacher was rehearsing the up coming poetry pageant, and again with one day notice on February while the teachers completed some mandated testing they needed to do.

I feel more relaxed and comfortable in handling the students this week than on previous occasions, and I think as a result the students are a bit more relaxed and comfortable with me, though a few students are still testing me out to find out how much they can get away with. While I'm in control of the classroom, I am perceiving the class in a different manner than when was just observing and participating in class activities. I am seeing behavior by some students, both in response to me as a new teacher, and in relation to other students, that I had not previously observed before and this is insightful in helping me to understand the personality dynamics and how this affects the behavior of the class individually and as a whole.

I take a bit more relaxed approach to discipline than my master teacher, and as a consequence there is tolerance for greater range of deviance and for a higher threshold of noise and variability of behavior in the classroom. This is both good and bad. For instance, I have made a point of having a special reading time each day for the students, while I am reading to them their first chapter book from The Frog and Toad Treasury. I allow them to lie down on the floor and to close their eyes and make-believe as I read the story, and they really seem to enjoy this. It looks like March at least will have green frogs as a part of a larger thematic build up.

Have seen significant progress finally with my ELL student, Johnny. He has finally gotten the alphabet down and is beginning to open up more with his speech and oral language. I am forcing his independent thinking a bit and am extending his basic cognitive repertory to counting in English, and to basic sight words. Have been reading to him more with basic readers, and he is finally getting the idea of concepts of print and literature down. During the day I took the entire class, I had him join us for almost the entire day and Javier, who is very close in Spanish/English, really helped him a lot. Got him in early and made him even write the name "bee" on a shared group activity at the front of the class, a word we had worked on the previous day. I think it was good for both of them to have this experience and I noticed they were openly communicating with each other in Spanish over problems posed in English. By the time of math and money counting, Johnny was actually volunteering with the white board activity.

The physical education activity at the end of the week went better for me than the previous week, as I think the other teachers caught on that they should possibly assist me a little bit in the management of three classes at the same time. This was good. Had the students running a make-shift maze that emphasized jumping, running, tag. Students seemed to really enjoy it except for a couple of unfortunate "accidents" with Juan mostly and a couple of other boys from the other classes who had to be timed out for not listening to my instructions.

Early in the week was busy because my master teacher had to rehearse and conduct the poetry pageant. She forgot to leave me directions on Tuesday morning to conduct the class, though I winged it from her lesson plan book with a few teachable moments and momentary lapses of standard management form. I found the afternoon PE lesson, which arrived off-schedule and unplanned, to be successful. I did the relays, in simplified form, which were planned for Friday. We did three sets of relays passing tennis balls, and then kicking and passing soccer balls. The children enjoyed the activity a great deal, even though they had at first to be modeled how to pass the balls, and even though they never got down the idea that they were working as a team from beginning to end. It is evident that kids at this age do not have a concept of team-competition down yet, and only like the excitement and the actual Zen "koan" of doing the activity itself. I wish I could put myself so unreservedly and naively into all that I do like they are capable of. After the relays I did ten minutes of battle ball with them, and we had more than a few "casualties" with crocodile wounds. I gave the children limits all day long, and it was evident that whatever boundaries they are set with they tend to bend them until they break apart and no longer exist in their unbounded imaginations.

After returning to class, fifteen minutes before the end of school, the class was hot, tired, "wounded" and thirsty. I allowed them to get drinks and settle down on the front carpet where I tried doing our fourth chapter of the Frog and Toad book. One student said she didn't want to participate, as she didn't participate either in the PE activities, so I had her sit by herself at the back of the table. A couple of other kids began getting the idea that they could bail out of the activity as well, and so my charmer Cynthia told me she didn't want to hear the story any more. Next thing, about five or six students chimed in. I felt off-guard by this unexpected response, though in hindsight I should of seen it coming, and I was a bit offended by it. I closed my book and told the class that it sounded to me like they didn't want me to read to them anymore and therefore I wouldn't bother.

At the end of the day I told my master teacher that I decided I didn't want to teach first graders because there were too many "drama queens" and children crying wolf, and too few kids who could actually follow even simple directions with an sense of consistency from minute to minute, much less from day to day. It is difficult to me sometimes to distinguish between truths, half-truths and untruths, especially every other time I turn around, all day long. I am used to teaching students of college age in which some sense of reality and mutual reliability and respect existed. I told her that I felt like that kids didn't respect me as their new and as yet untested teacher.

That night, I went home and thought about it, and I changed my mind about how I want to define my own professional identity vis-à-vis this class. It bothered me deeply that more than 80 percent of the class appears not to be internalizing the culture or the constraints of the classroom in any significant manner, and it therefore suggests from the theoretical position of the anthropological construction of reality the background existence of discrepant ethnocultural realities between a domestic and extra-domestic context, with the former outweighing for children of this age in terms of its influence. To some extent this is, in modernizing contexts, a reflection of ethno-class relations.

Therefore, I decided to change my tact and identity with the class, and, while I'm teaching them, to provide them a new rule system and system of reinforcement that is complementary to the one that the teacher is already using. I went in on Wednesday morning and talked with the teacher about it. She agreed to my plan, and in the morning spoke with the class about respect for the teacher. This was serendipitously reinforced by an assembly held by the principal on respect, to reinforce play-ground rules and behavior that seemed to be hedging on the normal boundaries. There was more to it than serendipity though, as the edgy behavior in the playground was reflected by a growing tendency in the classroom as well for bending and ignoring the basic rules of behavior.

Frankly, I find the basic system used by the teacher, in which the students change their clips, to be too arbitrarily defined and therefore delivered with inconsistent effect that becomes the consequence of the teacher's own patience and level of frustration to reinforce, and therefore results in too much inconsistency in pattern of reinforcement. I think the kids have learned to manipulate this system though, and have become little experts in playing it all to their own advantage.

I came on Wednesday morning therefore, and changed my name from a friendly "Mr. Hugh" to a more serious sounding "Doctor Lewis." This set the framework for redefining my identity. I would only answer kids who raised their hands first and called my by my proper title, and who did not jump out of their seats at the slightest provocation. Both the teacher and I noticed how well behaved the class was the rest of the day, and for the days following until Friday, except for little princess Veronica and little prince David, whose behavior by contrast to the rest of the class became very clearly marked as an unintended but fortunate consequence (at least from the teacher's perspective).

I have decided to impose a very simple rule system for the kids, starting next Monday morning, for at least the two weeks remaining that I will be in charge of the class. My three rules will be as follows:

1. I will sit properly in my chair, including not jumping up for any little excuse.

2. I will raise my hand first if I need to ask a question or need help.

3. I always do first what the teacher directs me to do, and listen carefully to my teacher's directions.

I will buy the class into a verbal contract at a positive discipline meeting that I will hold first thing in the morning on Mondays and last thing in the afternoon on Fridays, and any other time such a meeting will be appropriate. I will set time structured frameworks in an explicit manner using timers for children's activities throughout the day, for all the students. Finally, I will keep track of the students behavior on a regular basis with a clipboard and a spreadsheet with their names and the categories of behavior and a tally for each time they violate their rules. If a child gets more than five tally marks during a day, that child will change their clip. This will be explained to them at the meeting on the first Monday.

By Friday, we did another PE lesson. This PE lesson went much more smoothly, even though I took once again all the First Grade classes together. Andrea Harris from the other class helped me. She did parachute activities with each class while I took the other two classes and played a beach-ball game in a circle and then "Duck, duck, goose" with them. They enjoyed the game thoroughly, though I observed clearly the same "boundary bending" behavior as on previous periods and during free play.

In spite of early inconsistencies and difficulties, the week overall proved to be the most successful and probably the most important to me from the standpoint of my professional development as a teacher compared to any previous week that I've spent in this classroom. Children, especially in contexts with a predominantly Hispanic-American background, need structure and need to internalize basic rules as a part of their socialization/enculturation and their psychological identity formation. There must be a solid and consistent middle ground between a relaxed and fairly permissive framework that promotes self-expression and free-style play activities on one hand, and a stricter disciplinary framework that puts conformity and obedience to rules always in the foreground.

I think the kids already figured out that by the end of the week, though I'm a new "Dr. Lewis" that just beneath my armor I'm still the friendly and kind old "Mr. Hugh."

The week was a "short week" because of parent-teacher conferences in the afternoon. The conferences proved useful for building bridges between the teacher and the parents in relation to the different students. It was a business as usual week otherwise. Brainstormed with the teacher on the teaching of drawing the clock hands for teaching math, and came up with a set of white-paper activities in step-wise manner. The step-wise approach is usefully generalizable to the teaching of counting money and other mathematics-based skills. The end of the week had a substitute teacher. Maybe by the time I'm old enough to retire, I will be considered mature enough to handle my own class in our Great Society, but will not hold my breath in anticipation. Either that or in my next life.

My brief reflection this week is upon the contradictions that are embedded in the contemporary American system, including especially education, and how this system sets itself fundamentally beyond the possibility of meaningful reform as long as there persists a culture of denial and deceit regarding double standards and administrative manipulation of authority and resources. The students have been better behaved this week except for a few lapses by the usual students. Am looking forward now to a change of academic scenery and another level upon which to work. It is as the substitute teacher confided to me, things go much smoother when one is left alone and not always being "supervised" and "observed. So much for the social construction of educational reality.

My anthropological attention this past week has been drawn particularly to my relationship with my primary mentor, my master teacher, for I feel that basic issues that have some structural significance have surfaced momentarily if in not too obvious a way from the background of our normal teaching duties. There is a latent sense of tension in our developing relationship that we both normally maintain a handle upon--I think this complex tension would exist anytime a teacher must share the class with another. Overall I would characterize our ongoing affair as an interesting kind of "joking" relationship that covers over particular structural tensions and social contradictions that the relationship embodies.

I therefore write my final reflection paper in relation to my involvement at this elementary school as a cultural anthropologist who is also a teacher. The observation and teaching work I have done over the past six months represents a form of participant observation for which I have had previous fieldwork precedents, particularly in China in 1998-9, and for an ethnography of an Anthropology department that I carried out in 1989-90, as well as for informal and systematic involvement in several other anthropology departments as well as various contemporary and typically modern American ethnocultural contexts across the United States over the past 24 years.

My concern is for representing what I would call a typically American social construction of reality within the framework of the elementary school as both a government encapsulated market place and work place that comes to focus upon the structural issues of the professional socialization and identification of the teacher. American social solidarity may be said to be organic, or what I would even call "superorganic" and to be articulated primarily in the contexts of labor and work. This concern centrally involves the construction of images of both a sense of self and "otherness" vis-à-vis one another within the everyday contexts of a typical, contemporary American elementary school. Human social organization the world over demonstrates a similar central dynamic in the relations of power and identity in small world contexts that are increasingly globalized, perhaps best exemplified by Victor Turner's ethnographic research on social conflict and organization, and these relations are marked by status and resource competition, the formation of coalition groups for both interference and scramble competition, and the increasing ossification and encapsulization of bureaucratic control structures tied to the redistribution of educational resources upon federal, state and local levels, that may be said to be marked in American education today by what Kent Flannery has called hyper-coherence and meddling in state systems.

In this case, the sense of "other" is represented generally by the generic label "student"--in this particular instance the non-American or ethnocultural minority student who now comprises the majority of the student body of most of Southern California, and, indeed, of most of the core metropolitan areas of the United States--and the sense of professional "self" that is represented by the teacher and student-teacher. Labels and conceptual-symbolic systems that the professional ego, or "self" as a teacher, develops in the classroom and larger school-ground context, in relation to both students, and perhaps more importantly, among compeers and administrative principals and other personnel, have a tremendous impact upon the relations and interactions that develop between these people in contexts, the life trajectory and complex outcomes of which can be both positive and negative, often at the same time in a contradictory manner. Often, the primary reference group of one's behaviors and intentions are not directly the counter-reference group of one's immediate attention or direction, but unconsciously and symbolically the latter group may provide the vehicle for the expression and construction of one's and other's identity in relation to what I would call the primary reference group. In this case I would label the students, and to a lesser extent, their parents, as the counter-reference group, and the faculty and administration as the primary reference group that are involved in the dialectical dynamics of teaching and professionalization of teachers.

The professionalization of the teaching ego involves what I would claim to be a form of Goffmanesque symbolic transaction that entails fore-grounding positive assets and facets of one's self, and the back-grounding of other aspects of one's self-identity that may be deemed, especially by significant others, as detracting from or diminishing one's status-role identity. We may remark upon the role and function of gossip, socio-linguistic praxis and the deployment of the conversational apparatus as a central mechanism for the manipulation of one's own, and perhaps more importantly, other's identities within such a framework. Recent cross-cultural studies in persuasion bear out the consistency and centrality of these socio-structural patterns around the world, albeit with a wide degree of variability in the style, associated values and manner of its everyday articulation.

From an ethnographic standpoint, in terms of my own field experiences, this issue comes to focus not directly upon my relationship with the students with whom I work, but primarily in relationship to my "master" teachers, and secondarily with the other members of the staff and administration with whom I work. I would say initially that I like my master teacher a great deal, and, perhaps more importantly, I respect her sense of professionalism and commitment to teaching which is quite mature given her relatively young age. I would say I enjoy her company immensely and we find common ground in many ways in relation to the students and the class. At the same time, there are obvious differences of age, temperament, personality, values and I would say background experience that we both bring to the class. As an anthropologist who takes one's own sense of professional ethics quite seriously, I've learned through experience to be careful in not disturbing the sense of complex equilibrium that she has developed in her class as the lead teacher. I have for the most part adopted her classroom management style and techniques, even though I would set up and manage my own class in a different manner. I know that she has developed a keen and intuitive understanding of the needs and situation of each of the students, which comes through particularly in her guided reading activities, the one-on-one instructional and disciplinary QT that she gives to various students during the day, her on-going assessment files, and the informal and formal conferences that we hold daily about different students, their needs, problems and progress. She has frequently voiced to me as well what I would consider a central dilemma that she struggles with in relation to her own professional identity and trajectory, and that is the contradiction between meeting the many, often cross-cutting demands that are imposed upon her time as a teacher in the wider school context, and her desire both to give greater QT to her students and well as greater QT to herself and her other social relationships, which she well deserves and highly values. I would say that a part of this dilemma is a function of her relatively young age and also a certain lack of "anthropological" experience in human systems, which I would characterize symptomatically as exhibiting a certain lack of flexibility of response pattern at certain social and structural levels and a lack of intuitive understanding of basic principles of human social organizations, particularly well described by Raymond Firth. I would expect that this issue would be related to a certain lack of critical and I would say in her case potential differentiation of instruction in certain areas especially, but I think these are gaps in her own professionalization as a teacher that will be quickly filled in time.

I believe to some extent that, as I was supposed to solo in her class, these issues have suddenly emerged in the foreground, as she has felt suddenly threatened in her sense of overall control over the class and the situation. I talked with her the previous week to try to alleviate for her this sense of insecurity about my presence in her class, and with the aim of allowing her to have as much involvement, flexibility and especially one-on-one interaction with her students as possible during this period of time. Her preoccupation with the control of her class was reflected by her initial and repeatedly expressed reluctance to take a few days off, beginning the previous Friday, and her concern over leaving us very detailed instructions in how to manage the class, as well as by subsequent attempts during the remaining three days of the week when she returned to class to reestablish her sense of control over the class.

It is interesting in this regard that a very similar kind of reaction developed in my previous mentor teacher in relation to my involvement in her class, while observing in the Baldwin Park district, which issues were even more marked by this former mentor's relative characteriological rigidity and seriousness, and by what I would characterize as a very strong need to control her class. My current mentor teacher, by comparison, appears much more relaxed and even intimately personal with her students. I would define this preoccupation with control in the classroom, as well as the reluctance to yield control in a flexible, situationally defined manner, as a form of relative academic authoritarianism. I think both teachers are very good and effective in their own way. In hindsight, the outcomes of both situations were probably to be expected, and reflect, as I have mentioned before, the manner of professionalization and development that the teaching ego undergoes, especially in everyday adaptation to real teaching contexts from year to year. I would say as well that the increasing administrative demands for greater assessment and accountability of teachers in relation to their students has served to exaggerate and bring to the foreground these kinds of patterns exhibited by teachers, marked by a central dichotomization of ego between a professional, "presented" teacher who is a master of everything and supposedly an expert in all their student's needs, and the personal, and even intimate sense of "self" as a "human other" who may make many mistakes but whom can forge more authentic personal bonds and bridges with their students in a Buberian "I-thou" kind of relationship. The consequence I would claim for trends in education is the rendering more spurious, in the sense used by Edward Sapir, social relationships between teachers and their students, versus the realization of more genuine inter-human relationship upon which, I would claim, "effective" educational environments depend.

I therefore, in conclusion, see my mentor teacher, at this time my principle reference other, as reacting in a displaced and indirect manner to a general life-situation she has found herself caught in as a teacher attempting to meet too many cross-cutting demands simultaneously. Given her age and her great natural abilities, I believe she will quickly resolve these dilemmas in her favor, even if it involves an alternative life-trajectory.

How about myself in relation to my mentor teacher and her class? My only desire in the remaining two weeks is to withdraw from the entire situation as imperceptibly as possible, providing for her students the least sense of loss possible upon my final departure, and allowing the teacher to reestablish the delicate sense of equilibrium with her class she worked so hard to achieve before my arrival in her class. The only meeting I have so far had with our principal, initiated by myself, was to straight-forwardly explain myself to her, as much and as honestly as possible, focusing upon this central issue relating to status-identity and manipulation in human social organization, and my own professional relationship and ethics, which I take very seriously as an anthropologist, in this regard. I do not think she comprehended the full implication of what I was trying to say to her at the time. I think for most of us in life it is very difficult to see the entire forest, or even just our own neck of the woods, for all the trees that surround us and tower over us.

I have reached a stage in my life where there are some social facts about my own identity that are essentially non-negotiable. I am not very interested in networking and status manipulation or mongering, even though one's own class identity, social mobility and life-trajectory are ultimately tied to the development of these kinds of social skills and on-going relationships. I have actually defined and found my professional identity as a teacher long before I even entered the teaching program often in far more arduous circumstances, and my current program has allowed me primarily the opportunity to refine and render these teaching competencies in a more sophisticated manner, especially attuned to younger age sets. When and if ever I find myself in a classroom situation as a teacher, my central and nearly exclusive professional preoccupation is with the needs and what I define as the best academic interests of the students. I am quite earnest and straightforward about these educational priorities. I simply do not have time nor professional patience of all the other kinds of stuff that goes on daily in school situations, nor for worrying about what other people may or may not think about me or the things I do in my life. I would make a case for a complex, emergent modern identity and "superorganic" sense of solidarity in a global framework that tends to transcend both narrow ethnocentric and ego-centric considerations and boundaries, and that defines the individual as a potential master of many different walks in life. The central lesson I believe have learned this week reinforces basic lessons I have learned in previous episodes of my life--excessively strong preoccupation with control in a classroom tends to interfere with the effective transmission of information and the processes of enculturative transformation, and is a mark of the authoritarian dichotomization of the professional ego based upon repression and projection of what is symbolically significant but unconscious. No teacher is immune to such a character state, and I believe it is the manner and degree to which we allow our preoccupation with control to influence our style and approach to classroom management. Contemporary trends in American ethnoculture appear to be reinforcing this pattern toward greater authoritarianism, clearly, especially increasing closure and stratification of society as a consequence of unconstrained globalization, and is perhaps more deeply ingrained as a basic contradiction of traditional American ethnoculture than we may realize, if we accept what Ruth Benedict, Francis Hsu, Margaret Mead and others have so aptly described for ourselves.

There is a natural curiosity by children in the relationships and things of their world. Somehow, by adolescence, this curiosity seems to turn off, perhaps as the product of too many lessons that are "boring." Teachers must not accept the rationalization that modern students are merely spoiled and indolent, but instead take to heart the possibility of structural role reversal--that modern education must now learn something from its youth. In spite of all our educational theories, research and experience, we do not yet know the true extent of the enculturative capacities of the human being or the full and complete consequences of the effective learning environment upon the individual. Within relatively broad biological parameters, the human brain shows a remarkable flexibility, plasticity and adaptability to varying conditions, constraints and circumstances, and it is without parallel in the known universe as the central organ of human knowledge and comprehension of the world guiding adaptive response and behavior. We should therefore not allow simple genetic models and stereotypical preconceptions to deny to others or predetermine without warrant what can and cannot be accomplished through appropriate education. Reforming modern educational systems entails breaking with traditional and conventional models of educational organization, management and curriculum, without throwing the baby out with the bath water in terms of the needs and basic requirements of the average student. It will entail a revolutionary redesign of the total educational system from top to bottom, and a rethinking and restructuring in terms of general systems theory how we might go about learning and teaching not only our youth, but ourselves as well. Education lends itself well to general systems theory, models and methods, as education requires an eclecticism and cross-disciplinary orientation to knowledge that is inherent to such a systems framework. Because education is preeminently a human system, it brings to the forefront the dilemmas and complexities that underlie all human systems and it provides a constructive framework, a natural laboratory, for the testing of new ideas and the demonstration of systems-based models.

Education is basically knowledge system. It is not an information system nor a communication system per se, though it involves part of these kinds of related systems. Its primary institutional function in any modern state society is the transmission of the common stock of knowledge through the enculturation and socialization of successive generations of a society's members. Its secondary institutional function is the symbolic reinforcement of the society's institutions and ways of life, values and ethos, oriented especially toward the problem of the reinforcement and training of its youth in appropriate modes of behaving and believing. The primary educational mode of knowledge transmission is referred to as diagonal, reinforced (or otherwise) by vertical transmission in the context of the home and family based ethnocultural value systems and horizontal transmission in the larger contexts of nested communities and communications media.

The chief structural characteristics of modern, versus traditional, education systems are their comparative degree of stratified differentiation and compartmentalization in terms of subject matter and lengthened educational trajectories. Modern systems tend to be secular in orientation, and tend to stress skill-based competencies and increased varieties of advanced literacy. We may divide modern educational systems into primary (elementary), secondary or intermediate (High School) and tertiary or advanced levels (college), and it makes a critical difference what level we are referring to in our explanation and description of such systems.

The chief influences impacting modern educational systems are the processes of acculturative modernization, developmental globalization, and the revolution of electronic information storage and digital information processing that is changing the profile and very structure and function of literacy in the larger world. These can all be characterized as processes of transition and transformation that are marked by rapid change and a frequent sense of dislocation of traditional and increasingly obsolete elements, values and components of older educational systems as new technologies and possibilities emerge in the foreground. There is a rush to keep up and a common feeling of falling forever behind.

The central problem of configuring modern education within a general systems framework can be said to be marked by the features of the inherent complexity of human systems and the intrinsic sense of paradox that such complex human systems entail. Though the dynamics of educational change are complex and variable, the emphasis toward standardization of curriculum at all grade levels and across the board serves to render the equilibrium in terms of management, curriculum and achievement that is attained in classes at the same level remarkably similar across a wide demographic landscape. This serves to push to the background "hidden" factors that may be affecting differential outcomes and consequences that are persistent, embedded and intractable of clear resolution--these include factors of ethnocultural differentiation, class stratification, personality differentials, variability of life circumstances, etc.

The critical problem and paradox of educational systems remains centered upon the educational requirements and response patterns of the individual student, and upon the dyadic relationship that the teacher can establish with the student. Because knowledge systems are human constructed systems, and because human knowledge is symbolic in structure and organization, educational achievement continues to remain subject to the vicissitudes and vagaries of individual personality variables, unique life-history trajectories, patterns of adaptation and situation. All other things being equal, basic factors like student to teacher ratio and the consistency and relative quality of student-teacher interactions remain critical to achieving long term success of such systems. It follows that any reforms in the institutional frameworks of the educational system, upon whichever level, that would directly affect these variables, will be the most decisive to achieving positive gain in such systems.

After a year of study and participant observation in a variety of classrooms, augmented by cross-cultural and intra-cultural research and participant-observation in a variety of school settings, I can offer the following sets of suggestions for improving the effectiveness of the educational environment and the overall efficiency of educational systems:

1. A broader definition of the special needs of individual students, and an attempt to create partially inclusive frameworks for students with special needs. This especially entails early recognition, identification and intervention of special needs of students before learning and behavioral problems have time to develop beyond simple repair.

2. A greater attempt to integrate parents and families in the overall educational formula, which can be achieved in a variety of ways and programs.

3. A distributive-integrative system of educational resource distribution and articulation that permits greater flexibility of the class room context and curriculum framework to embrace a wider range of potential and otherwise unrealized educational resources.

4. Redefinition and redesign of the school and classroom contexts through strategic and creative rethinking to realize greater efficiency and return from educational environments. This includes redefining the classroom to embrace a multiplicity and range of constructed environments within a school campus and larger community setting.

5. The greater use of integrative and digital-based technology in "smart" classrooms with educational production systems that provide students and teachers with a range of multi-media resources for use that entail increasing interactivity and effective involvement of students.

6. Natural, partial but complete differentiation of class-room curriculum instruction at each grade level.

7. An intelligent, relevant and on-going file-tracking system of individual students that is augmented by continuous assessments that are rooted in symbolic framing methods, socio-grid analysis and ethnocultural/ethno-class stratification.

8. Development and elaboration of educational anti-structural methods and systems that serve to reinforce normal educational structures.

9. Distributive networking of a wide range of resources between classrooms and teachers.

10. Rotation and shifting of teachers and students to broaden the range of contexts and exposure of teaching experience to students.

Many aspects of these suggestions can already be found commonly in practice in schools, though often as not in a relatively unsystematic and spontaneous adaptation to the immediate or local requirements of the teaching situation. Two related sets of methods can serve together to make the distribution of educational resources more flexible, efficient and effective. These are coordinate methods of systematic, componential modularization of curriculum content, materials, contexts and frameworks, and corresponding systematic integrative multiplexing of these same resources at different levels and across different areas of a curriculum and environments of a school framework. While the first set of methods is more or less self-evident in its rudimentary forms at least, the second set of methods involving multiplexing is less obvious of definition. In its simplest form multiplexing refers to manifold aspects or elements of a single related problem set--in this case, the problem of the articulation of educational frameworks. In its technical sense, it refers to the multiple transmission of more than a single signal or message over a single channel, and hence, the more efficient and flexible use of signal capacity than can be otherwise achieved.

Implicit to the problem of education therefore is the creation of a working system of organization and order in knowledge transmission and symbolic inculcation against a background of confusing and disconcerting tendencies towards incoherence, disorder and "noise" of the signal process. Achievement of adaptive equilibrium within any educational context, by both the teacher and the individual students, as well as the class as a whole as a working system, depends upon a variety of interacting factors that must be taken clearly and carefully into account. This in turn depends critically on improvement of the communication processes that occur, or that can be expected to occur, in such settings. Standardization and reinforcement of step-wise lesson plans are a common device used to improve effective communication within educational contexts. But the problem of communication extends beyond the somewhat restrictive boundaries of the traditional classroom, that can as frequently be a prison for teacher and students alike as it can serve as a portal to a bigger and better world beyond. It includes improved communications between staff-members, administration, with parents, and other community leaders and members. Communication includes improvement in comprehension and agreement of shared frameworks of mutual expectation. Improving control in classrooms and upon school grounds entails effective feedback and monitoring systems and the nature and quantity of the interactivity between the components of any such system. The consequence of these improvements should be seen in terms of increasing integration of the system overall and the principle of improved reticulation of the system albeit in a flexible and adaptive manner. Teachers learn what to expect of their students, students learn what to expect of their teachers, parents learn what to expect from both students and teachers, vice versa. In part the articulation of this involves what can be called conflict management and resolution. Increasing distribution and integration of educational resources are interdependent and both depend critically upon the improvement of the channel capacity of educational systems (i.e., the improvement of effective inter-human communication or knowledge transmission) between such subsystems or components.

The second point in this essay concerns especially the changing and potentially revolutionary role of systems theory at the level of tertiary education. Tertiary education remains marked by disciplinary and sub-disciplinary divisiveness and hyper-compartmentalization of knowledge into specialized domains of scholarship and interest. Cross-disciplinary studies remain partial and limited in their scope and aim, and inter-disciplinary and eclectic in focus rather than integrated and to date there has been no significant effort to introduce a fully integrated program of tertiary study based upon a general systems design. Such a program would necessarily effect every level and area of the university, and comprehend and incorporate every resource available or potentially available to a campus. It would imply furthermore the integration of campuses and university contexts around the world.

Two related solutions to this problem concern what I call natural problem sets and the naturalistic organization of knowledge, and the deployment of a meta-systems framework for dealing with natural problem sets in logical, rational ways. Real problem sets do not define disciplinary boundaries or exclusive knowledge domains, and complex natural problems tend to involve multiple levels of analysis and numerous subsystems or related extra-systems that defy such traditional and emerging boundaries driving academic and technical specialization. Thus, I would recommend what I call a problem-oriented approach to the organization of knowledge in the university, and this can be achieved through the establishment of an academic or university meta-system, or a system of knowledge systems, that is truly comprehensive and integrative in terms of a general systems theory and operational methodology.

A residual question remains to be asked or answered concerning how reforms from the bottom and revolutionary alterations at the top would affect and impact upon intermediate levels of secondary education. Secondary education can incorporate the reforms initiated from both ends of the educational ladder, but there are clearly central problems and issues that concern articulation of educational systems at this level in particular. There are aspects of socialization, leadership development, achievement motivation, ego-development, maturation, individuation and experimental and experiential involvement in the world that are particularly acute and focal in the teens and that require the articulation of variety of alternative educational frameworks and programs in a broad range of settings to meet these important and otherwise unmet needs. It is true that around the world issues of modernization, acculturation, globalization and information revolution come to a point of maximum stress and conflict during this period of human development, and therefore it is especially important for host societies to take into account and elaborate a more effective and rounded system of secondary education that is offered by traditional high school and middle school models. Keeping kids involved and active during this period, in one extended way or another, keeps them off the street and out of harm's way.

A final note concerns the cost and potential gain of instituting these kinds of educational reforms. All reform does not have to be expensive or cost-prohibitive, in fact, genuine reform should be more economically efficient in reducing costs up front as well as increasing gains down the road. A systems approach to education therefore represents an optimal solution strategy for the structural problems of education in terms of a rational calculus of costs and benefits. We may look at it the conventional way and say that a top heavy, self-serving administrative bureaucracy characterized by an examination paper-chase, hyper-coherence of centralized, remote control and meddling into the daily affairs of the classroom, are not necessarily the most efficient and economic ways to manage modern educational systems, and therefore some more effective and realistic solution is in order. The real gain from achieving realistic and effective reform of educational systems will of course be the gain in human development measured not in any quantitative terms but in inestimable quality of life factors. What we need to try to measure would be the potential and continuing cost of failing to achieve and construct an integrated systems approach in education when the means to do so, and how to do so, is already well in hand. The true wealth of any society can be measured in terms of how it invests in its own posterity.

As I grow older, I find life-changes increasingly difficult to deal with and requiring greater amounts of time and attention to resolve. The transition to sixth grade from a first grade context was especially trying as it took several weeks for me to get my feet on the ground and to feel comfortable working with this age level. The needs and responses of sixth graders are far more developed and sophisticated than that of first graders, and in some ways there is already built in resistance to influence and suggestion. On top of this, the two classes I deal with, one "normal" and the other "gate" demonstrate a basic dilemma in terms of ethnocultural background, sense of ego-development, group dynamics and differentials of ethno-class stratification. This is the more marked because for the most part average IQ and native mental abilities between the two groups appear to me to be unremarkably similar and probably just above average, whatever average really might be in regard to something as complex as cognitive ability and behavioral competence. The real differences between the two groups strike me as motivational, self-ego with continuous social reinforcement, greater involvement, interest and enrichment by the parents, fundamental differences in social values and ethos between predominantly Chinese, American and Mexican-American patterns of enculturation and socialization, and especially perhaps the different ways the two groups are treated by the master teacher.

Though they run on parallel schedules in terms of their curriculum, it is clear that much more is expected from, and hence received from, the Gate group compared to the other, while the other tends to be scolded, admonished and shouted at far more frequently for transgressions that are minor and similar in kind and frequency for both groups. I do not think the teacher realizes she is doing this, though she tends to try out new lessons on the "normal" class before modifying them to fit the Gate class. Both groups appear to have similar kinds of questions and problems with the math work, and the rates and amounts of retention between the two groups appears to be similar, though I would say because the Gate group tends to get greater and perhaps more consistent reinforcement in the home and in other extra-curricular contexts, they tend to revisit and retain a greater amount than the other group, over the long run. I must say I have warmed up to the "normal" class far more readily and easily than to the Gate class, except for a few individuals in the latter group. Perhaps this is a reflection of my own biases and prejudices, having worked with other, generally less affluent Chinese in other contexts.

To a great extent I would say the educational system is creating its own self-fulfilling prophecy of success and failure in the growing gap between those students who are successfully competing and those who, already saddled with low self-esteem and low achievement motivation, are learning to "phase" themselves out of the learning loop with increasingly negative feedback and growing threat of punishment to which they quickly become inured. By six grade, an average gap of 2 or 3 years or more of cognitive/mental development and associated behavioral competencies may exist between different groups with different contexts and backgrounds and different kinds of reward and opportunity structures. I see clear ethnocultural differentials operating in the background of this growing gap that are not being effectively taken into account or dealt with in our current educational system.

My master teacher presents to me something of a paradox as well. I like her a great deal, and find her fundamentally more relaxed about her sense of control than the previous two master teachers I have dealt with this year. I would say she is closer to retirement and is fairly affluent herself, and is quite comfortable with her own habit and identity in her senior years. She is consistently able to substitute the wisdom of her years of teaching for a certain consistent lack of preparation, and I would say, comprehension of some of the concepts that are involved in the daily lessons. She is able to "roll with the punches" doled out on a daily basis quite easily and in this regard shows a great deal of adaptability and resilience. On the other hand, I think she is from an old school framework where lecturing was a central preoccupation of teachers, and she tends to do the majority of talking and lecturing in the classroom context and discourages students somewhat from interactive participation. I think this combined with a lack of consistent preparation or planning of lessons, which are largely taught on the fly, tends to shortchange the students and is not an efficient use of the classes time. I would like to see the use of the opaque overhead projector daily, especially in the solution of math problems by the students. I would like to see all the students with their own literature book to read in the first hour, and I would like to see students engage in hands on projects and open discussion of the science projects and related problems that we have been teaching in relation to ecosystems. In this regard I believe her management techniques and teaching style runs against much of what I have learned about being a good teacher in school.

Perhaps in some ways this last few weeks of student teaching will be a difficult but valuable learning experience for me to model for me methods and styles that I should try to avoid and not emulate, as well as some aspects of personal and professional style that are worth of emulation, such as calmness of character, demonstrations of respect for the student at all times, a basic sense of kindness and empathy for the student as both an individual and as a member of a larger group.

I must question the degree to which a teacher should go to try to get students to want to learn, especially if they consistently show no such indication or desire in terms of their behavior and manifest attitudes, and especially when culture and other circumstances appear to be reinforcing this pattern. One can lead a horse to water, but not make it drink. On the other hand, it remains the teacher's responsibility to try to encourage learning and motivate students to learn whenever, wherever and however possible. My question then is what is the reasonable limit, the point beyond which diminishing returns no longer clearly justify sometimes enormous expenditures of extra energy? One cannot force a child to learn if that child really does not desire to, or appears too lazy to bother. Otherwise I am slowly adjusting to my new classes and new situation in the sixth grade. I do not mind being here as much as when I first started, and am finding things getting easier almost daily. I am slowly discovering ways in which I might help the class and intervene effectively without disturbing, if not enhancing, the equilibrium that my new master teacher has already established.

My Reflections II

A Basic Theory of Cross-cultural Differentials of Cognitive Development:

Hidden Factors underlying Acquisition and affecting Educational Facilitation

Based upon participant-observation conducted in various classrooms this year, and upon previous comparative anthropological research in symbolic framing and secondary acquisition processes, I offer the following theory. Cross-cultural differentials of symbolic organization affecting cognitive styles and behavioral patterns of adaptive response can be empirically demonstrated in a statistically valid manner upon a number of levels of elicitation and analysis of symbolic, behavioral and cognitive response pattern. Affective secondary socialization and successful development of the adult ego depend upon the relative degree of compatibility and consistency of patterns of structuration and organization between what can be designated as primary social institutions of the family and the local community, and secondary socio-cultural institutions of the larger state system that encapsulates and incorporates the individual as a functional member. All other factors being hypothetically equal, there is a critical differential affecting cognitive development of children and youth that is a consequence of a multi-factorial complex that is tied to the ethnocultural background and social environment in which a child undergoes primary socialization and enculturation. We may state the following hypothesis as an extension of John and Beatrice Whiting's comparative study of The Children of Six Cultures:

All other factors being equal, there are two general patterns that may occur in the socialization and development of the individual ego--Pattern A and Pattern B:

Pattern B: Children from a rural, peasant or urban lower-working class (proletariat) background, or children from a culture that is traditionally embedded in such a background, will exhibit patterns of socialization and response in relation to the primary institutions of the family and the local community that promote a style of field dependency and relative non-elaboration of pattern in symbolic, cognitive and behavioral patterning of response. These patterns will tend to be discrepant and increasingly at odds with the predominant modalities and patterns reinforced and implicitly sanctioned in the larger framework of state structured secondary institutions.

Pattern A: Children from an industrialized, suburban or middle to upper class background or a culture that has achieved successful modernization and that has a long standing tradition of historical civilization, will exhibit patterns of socialization and response that can be referred to as frame and field independent, relatively articulated, differentiated and socially independent in style, and these patterns will tend to be positively sanctioned and reinforced by the larger framework of state structured secondary institutions.

The tendency will be for the former Pattern B trajectory to be negatively sanctioned by secondary institutions, and for discrepant patterns develop in social relations and to become internalized psychological in the adult ego. Neurotic patterns of adaptation may develop that permit the adult ego of Pattern B to achieve partial and limited success within the secondary institutional framework. Patterns of cultural inversion and symbolic anti-structure (liminality and communitas) may develop or emerge to provide individuals caught in such a pattern an alternative ethnocultural framework of adaptation that is again partial and limited in relation to the larger framework. For such a pattern, deviance becomes "normalized" in a perpetually marginal or "counter-cultural" social reality in which the individual gains a sense of secondary gain at the expense of true adaptive success in the larger social system.

The converse tendency will be for individuals in the Pattern A trajectory to be positively and consistently reinforced (Brown eyes versus Green eyes) and implicitly sanctioned, and to achieve long-term success in adaptation and a sense of overarching normality in relation to the system. Departures from the norm will be tolerated within reasonable limits, and construed as deviancy from the normal modality in the extreme.

There is a basic, graduated, continuous shift from what can be called a globalized undifferentiated style reflecting Durkheimian mechanical solidarity with an emphasis upon aggression and nurturance (i.e., social interdependency) toward a specialized, differentiated, articulated style reflecting Durkhemian organic solidarity with an increased emphasis upon dominance, sociability and independence. These patterns of differentiation may emerge as early as Kindergarten and First Grade within an American context, and become increasingly pronounced with the socialization and development of the child that become ossified in a form of developmental inertias that frustrate and hinder further educational development. I refer to this spectrum as the continuum of symbolic field development.

There are two sets of caveats to this basic theory:

1. First is that there is operating continuously in the background a graduated scale of environmental factors that are linked to relative levels of achieved literacy, normative culture, sense of history and tradition, and average levels of native speaker competency and elaboration within a received linguistic dialect. Those societies exhibiting deeply rooted and long standing traditions of literacy and secondary elaboration of value culture will tend more readily toward a Pattern A style, and this can be expected to be reflected in common stylistic patterns of artistic and other constructive elaboration.

2. Secondly, in complex modern settings, characterized by processes of globalization and modernization, there is a common crises of identity and sense of displacement affecting ego-development. There occurs as well a complex pattern of socio-grid and ethno-class stratification that tends to cross-cut traditional ethnocultural boundaries and embedded role-relationships in a discrepant and frequently destructive manner. Social stratification and specialized differentiation of the modern urbanized landscape reflects the "disappearing skyline" of a global or world culture rooted in global stratification, and tends toward a much more variegated social landscape than found in traditional ethnocultural settings. Consistent patterns of social interaction and relation required for success in modern contexts demands a Type A pattern of response and requires a Pattern A style of development, and hence tends to be structurally and socially sanctioned and reinforced in a positive manner, whereas Type B patterns tend to be discrepant with this overall tendency.

As a general conclusion, patterns of social interaction and socialization in the primary institutional framework have a critical influence and predetermine the outcome of the trajectory of symbolic-cognitive and behavioral development in a statistically predictable manner if we take into account a multi-factorial trait complex correlated with such development patterns. These patterns become internalized characteriologically during the development of individual ego-reality and in turn determine the adaptive pattern of behavioral response and life-trajectory of the person in society. We may look for patterns of secondary gain reinforcing structures based upon internalized discrepant realities. A prediction is that Type B pattern will be less flexible and exhibit greater cognitive-adaptational inertia in modern contexts than Type A pattern, whereas Type B pattern is more basic to a natural mode of human adaptation in undeveloped or underdeveloped contexts.

A Strong Case for Anthropological Relativism in Human Systems

Ethnocultural, Ethno-linguistic and Ethno-logical Differentials affecting Educational Achievement

Though relativistic viewpoints have been heavily criticized in the history of anthropological literature, relativism forms a cornerstone for the science of cross-cultural research and there are strong empirical, rational and normative grounds for accepting a refined version of the general doctrine of anthropological relativism from the standpoint of the anthropology of knowledge and the anthropological construction of human reality. Based upon participant-observation in field settings in educational milieu, I would make a claim from the influence of relativistic differentials of behavioral and adaptive response patterning affecting different groupings and sub-groupings of student, based primarily upon factors of ethno-historic and ethno-class background and socio-grid status. I would first claim that a relativistic perspective only makes sense from a holistic or gestalt-based or organismic perspective of the total reality of the human being within the social context of their everyday worlds. The individual factors are non-isolatable outside of the naturalistic behavioral settings within which they are articulated, and thus we cannot explain the causes for these differentials in a causal, deterministic or analytical manner. When we are able to view behavioral response patterning holistically, we come up with consistent and statistically significant differentials that occur in many different ways.

The example that I put forward, and that I would claim is replicated in many different school contexts, are the comparison of adaptive and behavioral response pattern between Chinese-American and Hispanic-American groups of school children, of the same age and the same vicinity. Consistent differences emerge in terms of the behavioral and cognitive style and approach to learning between these two groups, a style reflecting a number of differences in reasoning, language background, cultural values and orientation, and other aspects of a developing worldview. These basic differentials between these two groups serves to create a system of socially sanctioned secondary gain that functions as a kind of ethno-schismogenesis separating the two groups even further apart than would otherwise occur.

There appear to be some possible strong determinants that may affect the outcome of these differentials between these two groups. For instance, I would expect ethno-class background and identity to be significantly correlated with these differentials. I would expect as well that there is a significant difference in communicative style and social orientation between the two groups which again reflect these kinds of differentials in a number of ways. Rates of achieved literacy and what I would call advanced linguistic competency in knowledge domains would also be expected to be correlated with these differentials. We would expect in a range of symbolic framing tasks a high correlation as well. I see in human development an essential dependency of the human being upon its environment for providing critical shaping factors that determine the differential outcomes of the individual's growth and achievement in terms of adaptive behavioral patterns. Though this dependency may be said to be of evolutionary origins, it is largely subject to the plastic shaping influences of the constructed cultural contexts in which the individual discovers oneself. Native intelligence, for example, has a clear genotypic component, but this component is inseparable from the phenotypic and plastic shaping influences of an on-going stream of environmental stimuli, such that the net consequence of different life-path trajectories through differential anthropological consequences will be considerable variation of intelligence and behavioral response pattern as measured through a variety of instruments.

I have reached the end of my teacher training year, and this year has gone by very quickly for me. I have stayed fairly busy this year, and being back in the classroom at sixth and first grade levels has, I believe, put me in touch with aspects of my own childhood and youth that I had repressed, turned off and forgotten about in my adult years. I see this sense of recovery and rehabilitation as good, as it opens up aspects of my life and world that had been unavailable to me for many years now, and it has been refreshing.

I turn out now to a job-market in teaching that is, at least within the state, very poor and increasingly competitive. I am finding lower education to be as replete with double standards and authoritarian bias as I've previous discovered higher education to be, and I believe the same processes of capitalist based globalization that have influenced higher education (the brain drain, etc.) to be influencing lower education, albeit in modified form. It leaves all of us with an uncertain future as the US population equilibrium is out of balance and out of control, and continuing to increase not only linearly, but logarithmically as well. This, with the rising cost of living, will entail that the money for new teachers and new schools will be short, and will require restructuring of educational systems in basic ways, with increasingly centralized control, under Federal restrictions and funding, on one hand, and increasing privatization, on the other.

The models that I have learned in education this past year, the 7 step lesson plan, standards, scaffolding, center work, etc., are good to the extent that they are basic building blocks of education, but at the same time I have come to the conclusion that alone they are insufficient in dealing with the realistic patterns of learning that children undergo through their cycles of seasons. Standards have tended to become reified, and treated in an inflexible and denotative manner, rather than being adaptively fit to variable and complex circumstances and needs. I believe a more sophisticated model of education that matches the variability of needs, abilities and the realities of a student's learning loop is required, and I see this model as incorporating basic elements of a stadial lesson plan within a scaffolded framework, but as including increased time for practice, hands on application, contextualization, and for continuous assessment of progress, needs and patterns of response. I see such a spiraled curriculum as being better adapted to students emergent needs and capacities, and not being text-book bound by publishers and administers who are trying to smuggle in advanced curriculum and knowledge and foist standards/knowledge frames that are several grades and years ahead of the student's emergent capacities.

I believe a more realistic model based upon a learning feedback loop, and the maintenance of dynamic equilibrium within a student and class framework, would provide teachers and student teachers a more adaptive and successful teaching system. I see the current system that I have been trained within and currently operate within to be too inflexible to meet a broad range of students needs, with the consequence that rates of retention of knowledge and conservation and adaptation of knowledge to real world circumstances, remain relative low. I propose therefore the adoption of a general training model that emphasizes the following spiraled learning loop:

I believe streamlining of this kind of model, over a period of a week or a month in curriculum planning, would lead to more effective implementation of teaching strategies and more successful learning/development by students over the long term. It entails a longer period of implementation of lessons that overlap and cross-sect a wider range of knowledge and skill inventories than is encompassed within standard lesson plan formats. Though it requires greater planning, preparation and front-loading of implementation strategies, I believe such a model would yield greater returns in the long run once it is mastered and streamlined for a give grade level and heterogeneous student body.

I have grown over this past year as a teacher. Each experience I've had has built upon my previous training and repertory of skills and knowledge as both a teacher and a student. I have reached a point that if I am to grow any further as professional educator, then I will have to gain my own class-room context within which I can achieve a measure of self-control and integrative mastery over my lesson planning and implementation. I will continue with formal instruction, but without application, especially independent application within my own teaching context, this development is liable to become increasingly stilted and imbalanced. At the same time, there is a danger that teachers achieve a comfort zone in their own style and sense of organization, especially in self-contained classrooms, that stands in the way of further professional development.