C4T #1

For my C4T assignments I was asked to read and comment on teachernz's blog posts. Her first blog post was titled "PaCT with the Devil" posted on September 16, 2012. She mentions in her post that it was originally a comment on a blog post submitted by Tara on her blog Thinks. In Tara's blog she discussed a new program called PaCT, which was developed to provide consistency in teacher judgement in the New Zealand school system. Teachernz claimed in her post that teachers should no longer stand by and allow systems, such as PaCT, be put into place in school systems. After reading her post, I introduced myself and explained that I am currently enrolled in a project based learning course that focuses in "no burp-back-education". I then explained what burp-back education is. I explained that we face some of the same situations in our school systems with the "no child left behind" program. I expressed that it is impossible to stick students with different learning abilities into a classroom and expect the all to learn at the same rate. I thanked her for her post and left a link to my blog.



There has been no further post by teachernz since my last comment was made, so I went back further to their post made on June 1, 2012. This post was entitled "Tears", and she quickly makes it clear as to why this is the title. She states that she had a student who had spent time planting trees and she was unable to speak with the student about his experience. She then talks about a tweet between her and the student, where he offered to seen her a "doc". She explains that this brought her to tears because the student was only 9 years old and a motivated, independent learner. The post was a short but encouraging post, in that it helped me to get excited about the learning capabilities of young people. I commented on the accomplishments of both her and her student, and expressed that it is impressive what these students are learning to do at such a young age.