6163 - Positive Research

First off I am so thankful for everyone’s positive responses – it really made me feel good. Thank you all.

However I am sad to say I am not going to pursue the issue of teacher pay and all the issues that come with it. It made too stressed out and I would get all panicky trying to figure it out. It was just awful. So I decided to opt for sanity and I decided to do my lit review with the focus of teacher education.  Hopefully the coming weeks will be less intense.

Ok SO Positive examples of research…..well there is the “Back is Best” movement. There are always new things coming out about babies. And one of the more recent items is for children to sleep on their backs. Since parents have started putting babies on their backs the SIDS rate has been cut in half. I am so sorry I cannot remember where I learned that. 

Another example would be all the research done on the benefits of breastfeeding.  Or smoking. For years smoking was everywhere. It was like shoes – something that is so  apart of life you don’t even think about it. However through research and LOTS of social change – smoking is now considered deviant. It is known to be bad for health and people no longer smoke the way they used to. It is banned in many places like outside hospitals and in restaurants.  

Oooo! seatbelt laws! Research must have been done to show how important seat belts and car seats are to the lives of children. [and adults too] and now in many states, maybe all of them, seat belts and car seats are mandatory and if people are caught without them – they can go to jail.

I am sure that research will always have a positive impact on our lives because through research we learn new things and our lives can become better.

How will my research of education levels and teachers affect people? I don’t know. I know it came from a 

place of experience. I used to work in a center with so much variation in education it was difficult to find any commonality between teachers. There was disagreement about how to run a classroom, theories about discipline, there was resentment – frankly it was a mess. I had a  co teacher who had an associate’s degree and the little things like my vocabulary would get in the way of us communicating because she hadn’t heard certain words before. While that may sound simple – the repercussions are real. If teachers don’t communicate well with one another then it creates a separation within the classroom. The children are affected, the families are too. Again it was a bit of a mess.

My hope is that with improved education, classroom environments and relationships with families and children will improve.