Reading Reflection 1- Rethinking High School

Something that resonated with me from the chapter was the portion that mentioned how the national curriculum standards recurrently call for classrooms that are: student-centered, experiential, holistic, authentic, expressive, reflective, social, collaborative, democratic, cognitive, developmental, constructivist, and challenging. I have never seen a list so comprehensive of the qualities I hope to one day develop in my classroom. I know all of these qualities will not exist in my classroom during my first year of teaching, but these are all qualities I will hope to develop of my classroom environment by my fifth year of teaching if not sooner.

The authors suggest, “Young people who are yearning for connection are silenced and marched through compulsory exercises, programmed into endless, disconnected days of involuntary activities, and overseen by adults who cannot know them and do not have the opportunity to care.” It seems as though the foundation by which BPHS is building their school seems to be centered on this belief. It seems as though they are striving to develop a school that is somewhat idealistic. I am an idealistic person myself, so I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt they will be able to accomplish such a setting for students to learn. I would like to further investigate how they go about doing so in the remainder of the chapters.