Teaching in a Failing Middle School

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Teaching in a Failing Middle School, Analysis In the article, Voices Inside Schools—Newjack: Teaching in a Failing Middle School, Sipe (2004) compared his experience as a middle school teacher to that of a corrections officer. Sipe (2004) asserted that the prison-like structure and institutional feel of the school played a role in the behavior of the students and teachers. Connover (as cited in Sipe, 2004), described the importance of control, for a corrections officer, in assuming authority and respect in a correctional facility. Also, Cononover (as cited in Sipe, 2004) observed that the prison was divided into two adversarial sides of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Although initially disturbed that the student-teacher relationship mirrored that of corrections officers and prisoners, Sipe (2004) seemed to accept this type of interaction as necessary to maintain authority. Sipe (2004) also compared the physical and emotional impact of stress, which he and the other teachers at his schools faced, to the impact of stress as described by Connover (as cited in Sipe, 2004) for corrections officers. In addition, Sipe (2004) compared changing the culture of his school to that of a corrections officer and changing a prison’s culture from the corrections officer’s post. Sipe (2004) stated that in the face of such a task, he would prefer leaving. The primary learning perspective portrayed in the article is the Behavioral theory of learning or Behaviorism. In Behaviorism, learning is defined as an observable behavior change due to an experience with environmental stimuli. An assumption of Behaviorism is that people’s behaviors result from their experiences with their environment. Another assumption of Behaviorism is that learning happens when the stimuli and responses are associated and occur close together. An additional assumption of Behaviorism is that learning is observable,

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