Educational Metaphor: Final Blog 

Education is a mother. 

I say this because when thinking of something in this world that education resembles I think of a mother. I think this because education ends to all of our needs. We need knowledge, education gives us that, we need to support ourselves, education gives us that. we need to socialize and learn social skills, education gives us that. We need to learn how to problem solve, education gives us that. We need to learn equality and justice, and education can give us that as well. It is like a mother; guiding us through life and teaching us many useful lessons along the way. It will always be there for us to fall back on and it teaches us to support ourselves as human beings. Though education cannot make us chicken soup when we are sick education can teach us how to solve our problem of being sick on our own and help us be independent beings. Education is a mother. 

Three things I learned throughout this course: 

A lot of things come to mind but the first things I think of are...

Teachers are the role model of the class. They set forth the example they want their students to follow. I learned that a teacher has to be on his or her best behavior. Morally, ethically, and just with plain mannerisms The children/students will follow the teachers example, and I will be sure to always remember this while one day teaching my own classroom. 

I do want to become a teacher. So many people go into this profession with out he passion behind it. I learned of a lot of down falls and also positive aspects of becoming a teacher. I took all of these aspects into consideration and concluded I still want to become a teacher. We read about people who should not be teacher and who did not show the right passion for teaching. I put myself in a lot of possible scenarios that could happening in a teaching carer and there was not one scenario that changed my mind. I learned that I am truly passionate about teaching and that this is really what I want to do.

There is a lot of diversity among  the students in a classroom. I learned hat a teacher has to be aware of this and ready to handle any diversity he or she is placed with. I learned that a teacher must treat all of their students equally and with the same treatment, no matter how hard it might be to communicate, teach, or understand a student a teacher must treat all students equally and sometimes even go a few extra steps to understand the diversity in the classroom. 

Through blogging and he other students in this course I learned tat all teachers are going to end up different. We all have different views, backgrounds, and goals to meet. Seeing everybody's blogs every week and creating my own and seeing the major differences helped me to open my eyes to this. i learned that we all have different teaching styles and values. Some people value the thought of Columbus day and others do not want to teach about when thy become teachers. This is just one simple example of how we all differ from one another with our views and beliefs. 

Special Education Funds

For my blog this week I wanted to focus on public policy... more specifically Special Education Funding (or lack thereof) 

Students who require special education will always be a part of public schools system, they  won't one day just not be a part of public schools. 

Therefore Students with special needs are ensured their rights to education by the law passed called "Education for all Handicapped Children Act"

Please see a brief overview of he act below from Wikipedia.com  

"The law was passed to meet four huge goals:

1. To ensure that special education services are available to children who need them
2. To guarantee that decisions about services to disabled students are fair and appropriate
3. To establish specific management and auditing requirements for special education
4. To provide federal funds to help the states educate disabled students"

              Now this is great, that students with disabilities and special needs are entitled to their rights...but the issue still stands: funds for their programs are not where they should be. Did you know it is up to the school or the school districts to find the funding for these programs? The federal government supports the schools, but it is up to the schools to fund these crucial programs to their students. Yet it is legally mandated that the states provide these programs. So the government is saying "you must have these programs" BUT "YOU have to fund them"


Because schools have to find he funding for these programs and fit them into their budget some specific and special areas lag. It is known that autism is much more diagnosed now than it was in history, so that means there are more autistic children attending school. Their needs are not being met though. Many of these students require a speech therapist and schools are at a shortage for them and schools cannot afford private ones. This is just one example I found while researching the shortage of funds toward special education programs. (Understanding Special Education Funding)

While researching I also found this quote to help my argument from examiner.com 

"If you sample a school district's budget, you will find for example [PVPUSD] it receives $5,049M from the state [AB 602] in addition to the federal IDEA grant which is approximately $2M. However, the actual costs for the special education programs in this district total approximately $22M. This district has reported a deficit spending for special education in the sum of $12.5M which is almost double the amount it receives in funding from the federal government and state, combined. This school district has to find and fund $12.5M in excess of the sum provided by the government funding."


States are only ranted 40% for the total cost of special education programs. Which means they have to cut corners with the budget to either come up with the additional 60% in costs of cut corners in the special education program itself. Overall in my research I found the the rights of special education students are accounted for and they o have their rights to education, but are these rights being met? If schools can't fund these programs how do we know if these students re getting an equal opportunity the rest of the students are getting?Is this a violation of rights?