Stephanie Trinidad

            “No Child Left Behind Act of 2001” signed into law by President George W. Bush on January of 2002. The law is to assure that no school aged child would fall behind in their schooling. The passage states “Today, nearly 70 percent of inner city fourth graders are unable to red at a basic level on national reading test. Our high school seniors trail students in Cyprus and South Africa on international math test. And nearly a third of our college freshmen find they must take a remedial course before they are able to even begin regular college level courses.”(p. 181). The policies of the law include things such as accountability for a student’s performance, focusing on what works in the system, reducing bureaucracy and increasing flexibility, and empowering parents. While all of these sound like they would help the United States educational system, it would actually hurt the students more. The law is basically a way ...

            The American Civil War during the 19 th century was one of the first wars to be documented in picture. Photographers faced many major constraints when they were photographing the war. Before the digital cameras or film photography was available civil war photographers had to deal with the long exposure times between each shot. This also depended on how much sun was available in order to properly expose each shot. The amount of times between each possible photo was two to five seconds which was required “to properly expose a large-format collodion on glass negative” that was typically used on the battlefield. Photographer Matthew Brady and his team of photographers though ready to photograph the first land battle of the Civil War because of the constraints of their cameras and the movements of the battle, were unable to return from the battle at Bull Run, Virginia with a single photograph.

            The Role of teachers in the American school system is best described by William Ayers who wrote in his memoir, “The challenge of teaching is to decide who you want to be as a teacher, what you care about and what you value, and how you will conduct yourself in classroom with students. It is to name yourself as a teacher, knowing that institutional realities will only enable that goal in part (if at all) and that the rest is up to you. It is to move beyond the world as we find it with its conventional patterns and its received wisdom in pursuit of a world and a reality that could be, but is not yet.” (p.65). Ayers speaks about the role a teacher must take when they enter the role of an educator is to ‘embrace’ their students as human beings much like themselves. When an educator was in school learning to be a teacher they had their own set of struggles to face and overcome. Like their teacher’s taught them they h...