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This segment was rich for me in that I realize, yet again, just how lax society is (and is willing to become), even in Education.  As we read the handout Mrs. Resnick shared with us, I noticed the first reader did not start at the beginning and no one redirected them to do so.  I believe there is learning in the details.  When we don't teach our students to respect the details by paying attention to them, I believe their success is not as successful as it has the potential to be.  For example, this could easily be the difference between earning a 3.8 and a 4.0, and in terms of quality points, cause one to miss the Deans' List by one point...how sad.  Where, had they paid attention to the details this might not have been the case.  Now is making the Deans' List the most important aspect of a person's university experience...probably not; at least not for this conversation.  However, it is not a negative experience/aspiration.  I believe it is more important to start at the start and move forward...being as prepared as possible...gives a person more of an advantage than the person who just starts somewhere and goes anywhere.  In saying that, I believe there are those journeys with merit in just getting going and seeing where you go.  I agree that doing something is better than doing nothing; realizing that nothing is something.

My grandmother taught me how to set a table, my mother taught me which to use for what, and both of them taught me table manners...not putting my elbows on the table, not singing/dancing/ or whistling at the table, eat with on hand keeping the other in my lap across my napkin, not being late to the table, and washing my hands before coming to the table (even to the point of using finger bowls after eating finger food while at the table).  Once taught these social skills, I sat at the table with everyone else and used this knowledge set, as I watched and demonstrated what was modeled before me.  Had I not be taught these globally accepted rules, I would have been totally unprepared, and less accepted, in family and foreign settings.  My point is that there is more to life than just letting everyone go for themselves and wherever they end up is fine, because it's their experience or story.  Many things in life must be taught, as well as modeled.  There is an essential component of learning that is imparted in the conversation of teaching that simply modeling will not and can not relay.  These are all aspects that have made us socially adept and without them we would be socially inept and unacceptable in personal and profession settings.

As a career educator I have sat through many superintendents and their 'vision'.  Every time there is a regime change, the baby often gets thrown out with the bath water.  That is to say that programs that are working get scraped and we start something new, yet again.  This provides instability for the teacher and the students, the parents and the community as well.  One the of entities that benefits the most is the book publishers.  They bank on decision maker turn over, because they know this profits them.  Often it is proven that the decision makers are getting kickbacks for this.  How sad.  I am all for making a profit; although I am not interested in these types of kickbacks.  These benefits comes at the detriment of effective programs where teaching and learning is taking place.  School districts spend fortunes on professional development and training, only to have to 're-tool' and spend again with the next new idea and/or changing of the guard.   ...and we wonder why itinerant and after school programs are always getting cut, thus leaving students at a disadvantage for extra-curricular learning, activities, and exploring.