Research Blog

Well, my paper is finally submitted and done. It turned out all right in my opinion. I belive that there's always room for improvement, but it also could have been worse. And what was more, it really was a learning experience for me. I know I said this in a blog entry earlier, but I knew that school funding was an issue, but I had no idea about most of the particulars until I delved into my research a bit more. At my high school, I had an idea that things were not perhaps ideal, but in all honesty it didn't seem that bad to me. I knew that there were problems, and that most teachers and staff did more than one thing, but then I watched that news story on my school about a month ago, and they just made it look absolutely horrible, like it was the worst place to go to school, and I remember thinking, well, I didn't think it was that bad. But it all comes down to what we get used to. I was used to it, so I didn't notice that in many ways, it was bad. I had no idea that my school was one of the first ones to join the lawsuit because it was considered one of the most affected schools by the funding defecit. I always knew that it was a part of it, but I had no idea that it was at the forefront of it. It was really quite a lot of eye opening information for me. Most people don't even realize the problems that these schools face. Sure, most manage to keep their students competing with larger schools, but the small schools definitely need the help and resources that state aid can provide. Another thing that I hadn't realized was how different Minnesota is from South Dakota in the area of teacher certification and salaries and retention. They are worlds ahead of South Dakota. Maybe we need to learn something from them. It seems to be working well for them. I had so much information on this topic, I probably could have written a 10 page paper. That was the hardest part, trying to decide what to use and what not to. At any rate, I'm kind of glad its done now. I'm ready for Christmas.

Research Blog

I finished my paper. Last night, anyway. Today I just have to do the works cited page and submit it. I had so much information, it was difficult to muddle through the stuff that I wanted to add, but I'm fairly happy with the way it turned out. The information that Mr. Leighton gave me was very helpful; it gave me specific examples that I could use and helped explain some terms that were kind of difficult to understand. I learned a lot from writing this paper. I knew that small school funding was an issue, but I had no idea all the specifics of it. I think it makes a great deal of difference to me in my future as a teacher.

Research Blog

Hopefully today I'll be able to make the necessary changes that I need to make to make my paper better,and then I can submit it and be done! Note to self: one of the things I have to do is put my name and page numbers on it, I always forget to do that. I forgot to on my essay 2 revision, so I'm afraid I will on this too. Maybe writing it down will help me remember. I got an email back from Mr.Leighton, so I can also add in that information and a few other things. It actually turned out ok, for the most part. I think the conclusion needs more work, I've never been very good at writing conclusions. I also have to create my bibliography page, but with easybib that shouldn't be too difficult.

Research Blog

Working on writing my draft now. It's a process I guess. I don't feel like I'm making much progress and I just feel like I really rushed the process of it. Maybe that's because in high school the whole thing was rather drawn out and long, so that's what I'm used to. There we had all these deadlines to meet so we weren't doing so much all at the end. I suppose it's just a matter of learning to manage my time better. Trying to organize myself, even with an outline, is proving difficult. Oh well, back to it I suppose.

Research Blog

I realize the need for some kind of organization in my paper. This is going to be just a rough outline, a place to start anyway.



1. Engage the reader-I think I'm going to use a story about my school and how underfunded we are. That would be more personal. Or about the Lemmon school district about how far away from everything that is.

2. Statement: Small public schools in South Dakota are closing due to lack of funding.

3. Thesis: I believe that the small schools in the state should be given funding to keep them open because some districts need to stay open due to location, and studies have shown that small schools provide a better education, as long as they can produce the funds to provide adequate programs for their students.

4. Evidenciary Support:

• Schools all over South Dakota are closing because they don't have enough funding to stay open and provide a quality education to their students.
• One of the problems that these schools are facing is keeping quality teachers, mostly due to the fact that they can't pay competent salaries or because they are too far out in the middle of nowhere.
• State aid is based on local taxes and the number of students enrolled in the school district.
• Small schools probvide only the most basic programs to their students due to lack of funds to provide more in-depth ones.
• Generally, because of this, students from these schools can be unprepared for college and cause problems for both themselves and the professors that teach them.
• Some schools are beginning a system of sharing for things such as equipment and even teachers.

5. Objections/Opposing Viewpoints:

• Most people believe that larger, more populated schools provide a better education for students because those schools can afford to pay higher teacher salaries and have the funding for more advanced programs.

6. Replies to the Objections:

• Studies have proven that students learn better in small school environments.
• Some schools are suing the state due to lack of funding.

7. Conclusion: Small schools in South Dakota are having trouble staying open because they don't have the funds, but some schools are beginning to fight back.

See, the problem is, I don't know where to put the part about the schools that are suing the state. I'm not rally sure where it fits.

Research Blog

So I've done some of my organizing and this is kind of what i've come up with so far. I've kind of got a lot of points for the problems of small schools, but I think that's ok because that's the whole point of my paper. And it's supposed to be persuasive, and to do that I need to state the problems of the small schools. Maybe I need to find some more stuff to go into my other categories.

Categories

• declining school enrollments/school closing
• lack of equipment/sharing resources
• losing quality teachers

• What some schools are doing
• Big isn't always better

This isn't very precise or detailed and its very very rough, but it's a start at least. I'm not quite ready to piece together a rough outline just yet; that'll be coming though. I'm still trying to muddle through the research.

Research Blog

I'm grateful for the information that we covered in class today; I found most of it helpful. I must admit that I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed by all the information that I was finding and wasn't entirely certain how I would begin to organize it, so the orgaizational handout that we got was a huge help. Also, the tip on working on certain aspects and then working on something else and then coming back to the paper will be a big help. All weekend I tried to work on my paper, and after a while, I was just feeling lost. If I try the short intervals approach, I believe I'll be much more successful in getting things accomplished with my paper.



The MLA exercise we did was helpful in the fact that I didn't really know very much about ID tags. I was always taught in high school that absolutely everything must get a parenthetical in text citation. I'm learning a lot about the newer style of MLA; I think our high school teacher graded us more on the way that she learned how to do it than some of the newer ways.