I'm genuinely torn on this subject. For the most part, I love my co-op's teaching style: she's great with bringing relevance into the classroom (we watched Pixar shorts for a lesson on theme) and she always has time written into the lesson for students to work in groups to better grapple with the material. With all that being said, there are some areas that I take issue with.

Probably my biggest problem is the amount of time given for each assignment. For instance, the kids are given two full class periods and two nights to finish a simple outline. Now as these are all done on google docs, I could understand the extra time if students didn't have access to technology at home; however, when polled, almost all of the students had computers they could easily access. So, I don't really see the necessity of all the time given to students. If anything, I think it hurts the students-they do not learn good time management skills, nor do they gain an understanding of working on a deadline. In addition, for some reason I have not yet discovered, almost 3/4 of these kids cannot get a single finished assignment in on time, so giving them more time for work is only giving them more time to forget about the assignment.

Another thing I have an issue with is the idea of "dumbing" things down. My co-op is not too guilty of this, though I have noticed it happening on occasion, but countrywide, I feel as though this is the most common thought. And even though, we as the new generation of teachers are expected to step up and reform the field, I found that this idea of "dumbing" down is prevalent even in among us. In my Issues in Secondary Education class, we were discussing what we would do if students complained that they had too many tests in one day. I was honestly shocked when most of the class responded that they would attempt to set up a staggered schedule so students would have less in one day. Now, the tests in question were AP tests, which I can sympathize with a bit more, but I felt like an absolute monster for my opinion that the best solution was to teach students better time management and critical thinking skills. As more and more classmates agreed that we needed to make life easier for our students, I started to doubt myself and my ability to be a good teacher. I even found myself doubting my unit plan because I was expecting far more of my students than my co-op ever would.

I finally realized, however, that it was not wrong of me to have high expectations of my students. If we go into class with low expectations, our students will never excel or experience any personal or lasting connections. If we have high expectations, perhaps we can teach our students to have high expectations of themselves and their teachers.  And though it sounds harsh, we cannot make life too easy for our students or we are failing to properly prepare them for real life, where no one cares if they have multiple things due in a day. I agree that certain situations are too much and can be modified to help the students, but I feel that if we did this every time students had more than one thing due that we are doing them a great disservice. Along with the idea of better time management, we should also work on our students' critical thinking. Before they sign up for 4 AP classes a semester, they should really sit down and think through whether or not they can handle the work.