Tracking - Justin and Chrissy

I'll start off talking about the paper. Great job - it tells the reader what tracking is, how the tracks are used in schools, and how it affects the students. I especially like how you wrote that teachers are affected by tracking too. Students who are in the lower tracks feel dumb, but the teachers can feel dumb too. They can feel like the school doesn't trust them to teach the higher track students because they're not as good as the other teachers. Bottom point is that tracking affects everyone involved, usually in a negative way. Especially kids who are tracked according to different factors other then their academic level. It was good that you brought up how kids are tracked by other factors, such as race or socioeconomic status. It's horrible and shouldn't be tolerated in schools these days. And as you pointed out in your paper, some schools are trying to eliminate tracking all together so that every student can be successful.

I love how you started your presentation off with a video clip from Freedom Writers. It was a great video because not only does it relate to tracking but it also relates to the book that all of us are reading. Everyone could make a connection to it. One thing that I think could have improved your presentation was the amount of lecturing involved. There were a couple times where I was tired of listening and wanted to do something else. I like that you added charts to your powerpoint, but some of them were confusing to read and I didn't understand the point that you were trying to show. I liked the website you showed though, it had a lot of good stuff about the school who eliminated tracking. I didn't really know what I was supposed to be looking at on the website though, so I needed a little bit more of an explanation. But it was great that you allowed us to explore it on our owns instead of just watching you guys.

After your presentation, I had a lot of questions about what we do as teachers about tracking. What happens if we get hired by a school where there's tracking? What can teachers do to eliminate tracking without stepping on people's toes and making others in the school mad? Is it something that first year teachers should just ignore and wait until they've been there for awhile? And maybe we won't be able to answer these questions until we've been put into a situation like this.