I thought that class yesterday was one of the better ones for me because I was able to relate everything that we talked about to my own personal life. The thoughts of parent involvenment has always been something that I have been aware of in a variety of situations. For most of my close friends and I we have always had our parents close and extremley active in what we were doing but not to a point where it hurt us. Then in watching some of my dads wrestlers who have very little support its always hard to see them participating with no one watching where I always knew that at least some one from my family was going to be in the stands for me. Also the idea of teachers having different curriculums for different areas I find to be very interesting. I think that this is a good idea because those people who are living in an area may not be interested in the same things. for example, those living in an amish community are not going to have the same goals and beliefs as those who are in the middle of chicago in a very rich part. This is all based off of experience. But it also goes with my thoughts of how standarized tests are not a good way to be assessing how students are doing because they may not all be learnign the same things at the same pace which would make it hard to test them on the same things as others of the same age who havent learned those concepts becuase they dont apply to them as much. This would show that there should be another way to see what children do know, but it should be based on them and their area, not a nation which is very different from place to place. Even though I did not participate much (because of having a bad day...sorry) I was very interested in what I was hearing. It also gave me some more insight to what others from the class have been through and in some cases gave me the thoughts that they are more like me than what I had thought before because I was able to learn about them. This is one thing that I have enjoyed about having a smaller class is that people are more willing to share and we can get to know each other on a more personal basis instead of a lecture class where very few will say much. I am looking forward to more disscussions in the future where I can feel more connected to my classmates