Blog Post #14

Blog Post #14 What is it really like to be an elementary school teacher?
Read What It's Really Like to be an Elementary School Teacher and/or Confessions of an Elementary School Teacher. Summarize the challenges they faced/are facing as an elementary school teacher and put what challenges you think you will face as a teacher. Also, include what you think will be most rewarding.

Blog Post Example:

In What It's Really Like to be an Elementary School Teacher, some of the challenges include the money, the kids, the paperwork, the parents, and the workload. Many people don't teach for the money because this isn't the type of job to do so. They teacher because they have a passion for it. In this article, it states that one teacher "stopped teaching for several years but missed the interactions with students." She stopped teaching to take a job with better pay. You don't make a lot of money and you dedicate a lot of your time for teaching, but most teachers wouldn't trade it for anything. The biggest challenge for many is the paperwork/workload. Teachers spend hours upon hours writing student assessments, creating independent education plans, and filling out mandated forms.
I think, as a teacher, some challenges I will face will most certainly be the money and the workload. I know that most elementary teachers don't get paid that much, but that's not why I want to be a teacher. I want to teach so I can educate children and watch them grow by my teachings. I want to watch my students make discoveries and, as it stated in What It's Really Like to be an Elementary School Teacher, watch "the light bulbs come on in kids’ eyes when they get it." I definitely think that will be the most rewarding part of being an elementary school teacher.

"A teacher takes a hand, opens a mind, and touches a heart."

Project #2 PLN Final Report

I have added quite a few different resources to my PLN over the semester. My PLN has been a lot more helpful than I thought it was going to be. I added a few blogs that I came across, including my own blog and the EDM class blog. It's been very easy to access any website that I am trying to go to because I added the majority of websites I use on a daily basis to my PLN. Some of the websites that I use are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, AL.com, Pinterest and Blogger. I've filled up over half of my tiles and I plan to add more as time goes on!

C4T #4, posts 1 and 2

All the Pieces Fit

In Elvira Deyamport's blog post, All the Pieces Fit, she talks about how they are in their All About Me Unit. This year, she decided to have them "either complete a puzzle piece or their own puzzle to show how all the pieces fit for them." For 2nd and 3rd grade, the puzzle pieces included preferred multiple intelligence, interests, and goals for the class. For 4th-6th grade, it included preferred multiple intelligence, preferred expression style, interests, goals for the class and career goals. She posted samples on her students puzzle pieces.
My Response
In my response, I told her that I really liked her puzzle piece activity and that I thought it was a great idea! I think it's great that they get to write out their own goals and, for the older ones, their career ideas.
Animal Research Poems

In Elvira Deyamport's Animal Research Poems, she talked about what they had been up to in her classroom. She explained that they had been focusing on endangered animals, but she felt that they needed a creative way to show what they learned. She chose to have them do poems and provided them with templates to get them started. She said that the poems "challenged my students to be flexible and figure out ways to incorporate different information about their animals in new and interesting ways." She told us that some of her students struggled with poems at first. She had them use Pages to display their poems.
My Response In my response, I told her that I really liked how she used poems to bring out her students creative side and that it was such a great idea. I told her that I looked at some of her students poems that she posted and that I really enjoyed them!

C4K Summary for November

My first C4K in November was for Sunny in Ms. Horst's 7th grade class. Sunny starts off by talking about Melody in the book "Out of My Mind". She then explains three different life lessons that you could learn from reading that book. In my comment, I told her that I really enjoyed her blog post and that she did a great job explaining the different scenarios and life lessons in "Out of My Mind".

My second C4K was for Jasmine in Mrs. Lagitupu's class. Jasmine talks all about One Direction in her blog post. She tells us the 5 different boys and how they got started. They started out by auditioning on the UK X-Factor separately, but then Simon Cowell put then together as a boy band. In my comment I told her that she did a great job and that I enjoy One Direction as well. I said that I have been keeping up with them ever since they were on the X-Factor.

In my third and final C4K I had Mata and Tyrese. This blog post was called Twin Towers, and in it they posted a picture of them two holding their towers. In my comment I told them that they did a great job with their towers and that they were very colorful! I asked them if they had fun and if it was hard.

Project #12 Part B

Blog Post #13

A Girl Who Demanded School - Calah Reynolds

In the video A Girl Who Demanded School, Kakenya Ntaiya shows us the troubles she went through to get to where she is now. When she finished middle school, she had the chance to go to high school, but she had to get her father's permission first. She made a deal with her dad, saying that she would go through the traditional Maasai rite of passage of female circumcision if he would let her go to high school. While she was in high school she met a young man from her village who had been to the University of Oregon, and she wanted to go to where he had been. She applied and was accepted into Randolph-Macon Woman’s College with a scholarship, but before she could go she had to get the support of her village so she could raise money to fly to the United States. After she finished college, she came back to her village and, with the help of her village elders, built a school for young girls in her community.
We can learn a lot from Kakenya Ntaiya. At her school in her village, she is making a difference in so many young girls lives. She is teaching them that they don’t have to go through the traditional Maasai rite of passage of female circumcision, they don’t have to get married when they are 12 years old and they can all create and achieve their own dreams. She is opening up so many doors for these girls that they wouldn’t have had otherwise. From Kakenya we can learn that you have the opportunity to make something of yourself and that you can achieve a lot in your lifetime if you put your mind to it and do it.

To This Day..For the Bullied and Beautiful - Elizabeth Johnson In the video, To This Day..For the Bullied and Beautiful, Shane Koyczan takes us through his struggling life journey. He was ridiculed and bullied as a child. He was told that his life ambitions would never come to pass. But from these struggles and pains, he became a writer. He wrote an incredible spoken-word poem called “To This Day”. In this spoken-word poem, he does a beautiful job talking about the bullied and hurting children and how they tend to go unnoticed in classrooms.
There is so much that we can learn from this video! As a future educator, I want to make it my mission to love and encourage all of my students. I hope to facilitate a classroom where all are equal and discipline those who bully others. I really enjoyed this video. It definitely opened my eyes to the issue of bullying and the lasting effects of it.

Teaching One Child at a Time - Rachel Hinton
In the video Shukla Bose: Teaching one child at a time Shukla Bose talks about the different schools she has created to enable children to learn. The schools allow children from slums and orphanages to learn things that they would never have the opportunity to without her help. This talk shows us how important it is to give every child an opportunity and not only the children but their parents as well. Bose makes a very good point when she talks about the parents and how many times it is thought that just because they are from the slums they do not care. This is far from true. She says that most of the time at conferences they have 80-100% attendance. This is pretty amazing. Maybe if our parents were as concerned about their children they would be more eager and receptive to what is being taught because they would be proud to show their parents what they are learning. There are many encouraging things that can be taken from this video. In my opinion if children can go into a school that is taught in a language that is foreign to them, learn things and come out wanting to be neurosurgeons then anything is possible in a country where we have resources to use at our fingertips. We should take this as a lesson that if we push our students then anything is possible. Never expect less of your students because you never know what they are capable of.

Project #15

Project #15

For my project #15, I did a google site with the BIE forms. I created a one week lesson plan for third grade. Here is a link to my Google Site called Name That Animal.

Blog Post #12

How Schools Kill Creativity - Calah Reynolds
I watched Sir Ken Robinson’s How Schools Kill Creativity, and I thought it was very interesting! I love his humorous attitude. He is entertaining to watch and I think we can all learn a lot from him. Robinson makes a very good point when he says, “We don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it.” If you think about it, that is true. When you look at a child they have such creativity and wonder, but as you watch them grow into adults most of them lose that spark. Schools nowadays are so focused on the math and sciences rather than the arts and music, and many people look down on the idea of someone wanting to grow up to be an artist or a singer. That is one thing that is wrong with this world. We should be embracing the idea of our children wanting to use their creativity and think outside of the box. We need to educate our children on “their whole being so they can face this future”, not just one side of the brain. Children grow up learning that it isn’t okay to be wrong, but as Robinson said it, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” He’s right, you shouldn’t live your life trying to please others. You should live your life by taking chances.

“We might not see the future, but they will. Our Job is to help them make something of it.”

Changing Education Paradigms - Rachel Hinton

In Ken Robinson's video he begins by talking about the reasons the school have began to change. First of all schools want to teach children how to be apart of the changing economy and secondly they want them to have a sense of cultural identity and globalization. Robinson points out that this is being done in the wrong ways. Schools are trying to teach students with old methods of teaching, ways that are non effective and boring. He states that we are alienating students and they have no desire to want to be in school. They are now saying what is the point because they see so many people, even with college degrees, not succeeding why would they want to sit through something so boring if it will not further then in the future? This current type of education is not for this age. They need something new and exciting, something to engage their interested. We found it very interesting the point Mr. Robinson makes about ADHD. We had never really realized how many people had been diagnosed with this. If you really think about his argument against it it makes so much sense. In today's world students are thought to be unruly and uncooperative if they don't want to sit still and listen to a lecture for an hour and thirty minutes. If we gave them something more interesting it is a good possibility they would not be this way. This is something that should be considered by teachers and parents alike. Divergent thinking is something Robinson points out that we find very important. Divergent thinking is not the same as creativity. This is when you take a question and are able to interpret it and answer it in many different ways. If we teach children how to not only be creative but also become divergent thinkers their though process would develop so much more than we could even imagine. We are killing this type of thinking by educating the students. It's like when they are " educated" they forget how to learn on their own. Mr. Robinson tells us if we can begin to think differently about human capacity, understand that collaboration is key and understand the habits and habitats of instruction that is when we will have effective teaching.

How to Escape Education's Death Valley - Elizabeth Johnson

There are many things that we can learn from Ken Robinson’s video How to Escape Education’s Death Valley. He begins by saying that he was told that Americans did not get irony. However, he discovered that Americans do understand irony when he heard about No Child Left Behind, because children do, in fact, get “left behind”. According to Ken Robinson, scary numbers of students drop out of school in America. It’s not that money isn’t spent on education in America, it is that the money is going in the wrong directions. He describes three principles to allow children’s minds to flourish. First, human beings are naturally different and diverse. In NCLB, diversity is ignored and conformity is encouraged. I learned from Mr. Robinson that children must learn from a wide and broad curriculum instead of a narrow-based spectrum. The second principle that is crucial for children to flourish according to Mr. Robinson is curiosity. Children are natural learners. They just need to interested and spark their curiosity. He says that great teachers not only pass on information to students, but they also mentor, stimulate, provoke, and engage. I want to be this kind of teacher! I want to be more than just a “passer of knowledge”. I want to facilitate learning in my classroom. The third principle is that human life is inherently creative. We create our lives as we go through them. He goes on to talk about standardized testing and the educational school system in Finland. So, what are some things I learned through this video? I learned the importance of valuing students through teaching. It’s so important to individualize, be creative, and spark curiosity when teaching. No two children are the same, and the way they learn is different. Also, I need the support of others while teaching. It’s so important to continue to learn and be trained throughout my career. I really enjoyed this video! I learned so many things from Mr. Ken Robinson.

C4T #3, post 1 and 2

"Infographic: Modern Slavery"

In Larry Ferlazzo's Infographic: Modern Slavery, he posted a photo that was about modern slavery all over the world. It stated that there was 29.8 million people living in modern slavery today. It said modern slavery consists of slavery(the condition of treating another person as if they were property), forced labor(work taken without consent, by threats or coercion) and human trafficking(people are brought through deception, threats or coercion, through slavery, forced labor, or other forms of severe exploitation). The photo then tells us the percentages throughout the world of slavery.
My Response In my response, I stated how I think it’s crazy how many people don’t realize slavery still exists in the world. I became aware of human trafficking going on in the United States 3 or 4 years back and I was shocked. It’s unbelievable how much stuff that is going on in our country that we aren’t aware of.

"This Year’s Shipment Of Stress Balls For Students Has Arrived!" On Larry Ferlazzo's blog post This Year's Shipment Of Stress Balls For Students Has Arrived, he explains how every year he orders stress balls for students who have a lot of energy and self-control issues. He said that research shows that the clenching of muscles could be helpful for self control, so he gives them stress balls. He gives them to students after asking them to commit to not throwing the ball or giving it to another student. Usually, half of his students use it consistently and it is helpful. But, the other half break the rules which result in them having to turn it in.

My Response In my response, I told Larry Ferlazzo that I think stress balls would be a great thing for students to have. That way, they can contain their energy and self-control. I told him that I thought it was cool that he thought of that because it's a very different approach.

Blog Post #11

I really enjoyed Kathy Cassidy's approach to technology. She is always trying to incorporate technology in her classroom because she has noticed that kids love using it. She thinks that technology and kids come hand and hand. Each individual student in her class has their own blog and they blog frequently. Even though it is only one sentence, the kids enjoy getting their thoughts out there. They love to blog because they get to see different people from different places comment on their blog post and they also get to see how their writing improves throughout the year. She has the blog set up to where the kids can see where from the world people are who view their blog. I think that having kids blog is an great tool and I would like to use that in my own classroom. It's awesome that the students get so engaged in blogging and that they can see themselves improving. There are many benefits for using technology in the classroom for young students. It is great to start them out at a young age, because then they would grow up using it and learn how to use these tools early in life. I really enjoyed listening to Kathy Cassidy's view on technology and I plan to use some of her ideas in the future.

C4K Summary for October

My first C4K in October was for Saffron in Mrs. Ripps class. Saffron starts off by explaining that his teacher told them to do a brain teaser with a partner. They were told to not talk to their partner at all and that the only thing that they could right down that the answer to the brain teaser. He said that he wanted to talk to his partner so bad and that they ended up not being able to make it very far. I told Saffron I thought it would be hard to not be able to speak to your partner for a long time, especially doing a brain teaser. I told him he did a good job and thanked him for sharing!

My second C4K was for a girl named Emma. In her blog post she explained a part that happened in a story they were reading in class called "Out of my Mind". She said how the main characters dog helped her when she fell out of her chair. Emma asked what other jobs do service dogs have and what are some things you can do to help when you see a service dog. I told Emma that the dog sounded like such a sweet dog and that I love seeing service dog helping people out. I also told her that service dogs can do all kinds of things from protecting people to helping them walk. I think that if you ever see a service dog guiding someone you should help them by opening up the door.

My third C4K was for Connor in Mrs. Schroeder's class. He talked what happened that week in school. He said they had two specials, which were art and music and he had a states test that week.In my response I told Connor that art and music are my favorites! I said that I love music and that I play the piano and sing. I asked him how his test went and that he did a great job on his post!

My last C4K was for Chrisopher in Mrs. Sommerville's class. In his post he posted a tension bar graph for the story "Maui Me Te Ra".I told his that I thought it was impressive that he already knew how to do a bar graph on the computer and that he knew how to measure tension. I told him he did a great job!

Project #12 Part A

Project #10

Interview Video