School and Community Partnership!

I feel that the community should be playing a large role in the education programs, but I feel that around here in Muncie the community has not taken the role it really should have. I think that the largest goal for the community should be to advocate learning, and I believe thats one thing that Muncie has either lost or never had. I feel that the community need to set up programs that make it where the kids are rewarded for achieving in their educational goals. I have heard about a lot of cities that set up different learning programs for their students, but Muncie hasn't been one of those. I think that the community can partner with the schools in many ways. A few of the things they need to address is fighting for grants, setting up programs for young adult education, and scholarship chances for students after graduation only for students in that community. The only thing that I have ever seen Muncie do that I like was a program where they had a junior Mayors, and it comprised of one student from all the surrounding schools and their job was to present their own ideas on what they though needed fix in their school to the Mayor. I really believe that most communities have taken a back seat when it comes to education and has let it fall on the schools themselves, but they need to realize that these students that are failing and not achieving to their full potential also reflects on them. 

Family Conference

I thought that the family conference was helpful in seeing issues that I might face when I actually become a teacher. One that really stuck out was that the parent thought that when I was only discussing problems that the student had and not strengths, and I was labeling their child as a problem child. I now understood how important it was that the parents really understand that their child has many strengths and that we are not attacking them. I also found that even though I made up the entire situation that a teacher can never really be totally prepared to deal with all the parents, and this is because all parents are going to come in with totally different attitudes.
I especially like the difficult family conference. I thought that this was really helpful, and it also added entire different spin on everything. I had to deal with the parent bringing the other children with them, and I found this very difficult. I found that the parent has a hard time really listening to what you have to say, because they get so distracted by what is going on around them. This might cause them to only pick up on certain things, and they might end up missing out on the most important things that were said during the conference.