Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Things to Think About..

Now that I am attending Illinois State University as a transfer student, the question I ALWAYS get is "do you regret transferring/". While I do feel I did miss out on making friends, and living in the dorm, I absolutely do not regret transferring. I attended Joliet Junior College, which is actually a pretty large and known junior college. When I first started JJC I was extremely nervous but after a week of driving 30 minutes I quickly got into a routine. I would make sure I would leave 10 minutes earlier and go and get a Dunkin Donuts coffee and listen a playlist I made.

This was were I got a chance to go into actual classrooms and do 50+ hours of observations. This is what reassured me in my choice of being a elementary school teacher. It allowed me to go into the classrooms and get to see what teachers really do. This really was beneficial for me to see a true classroom. 

So I honestly do not regret transferring. It was a great way to make sure I made the right choice for my future. 

Friday, October 23, 2015

The Best Thing for Teachers.

I do not know what life would be like with out Pinterest. This is by far the best website ever created, this site has everything from hairstyles to recipes and most importantly lesson plans/ideas for educators. I feel bad for all my teachers who never got to use Pinterest while teaching. I love how this site can help you be creative without thinking of an original idea. I have found some great lesson plans from here and they students love them. In high school I took a child development course where we got to teach preschool and Pinterest saved each and everyone in that class. We found all our idea from here, or we would find and idea and modify it and make it our own.

That's what is so great about Pinterest you can find and idea and just change it to fit your students in the classroom. There are millions of ideas and helpful tips to be discovered. I have on my personal Pinterest account about 10 different boards and also a few secret boards as well, full of different pin I have found over the years.

I will forever continue to use Pinterest and I know for a fact this website will come in handy when I student teach next year.

Thursday, October 15, 2015

Technology, Good or Bad?

Today it seems that technology is literally every where, it is hard to get away from. This means that the classrooms have also seem a fair share of technology being introduced to students. There are SmartBoards, IPads, laptops, and much much more. I know my generation is the start of all this technology but now that technology is so advanced is it smart to have students so engaged in technology?

For me, I answer that question with no I do not think it is safe to have students so engaged with technology. Don't get me wrong, I like technology, I just believe that there is a fine line when it comes to classrooms. I did observations and I noticed how technology was very where. One school had laptops for every student where they did all their assignments, there was very few assignment that they actually wrote out. What I noticed from that was these students had horrible hand writing. These kids that I was observing were in 5th grade and wrote like they were in 2nd grade. To top this off, most schools don't even teach cursive anymore. how will students know how to sign their names?

My Mom recently told me a story of how a women at her work noticed my Mom had nice penmanship and said her signature was beautiful. She then went on to ask my Mom if she could bring in her daughter who was in 4th grade, and have my Mom teach her how to sign her name. When she told me that I honestly could not believe this, I found this to be very sad. This world we live in thinks that technology is the best think since sliced bread. What it really is doing, is making students loose the little things in school, like writing with a pen and paper, and reading from an actual paper book.

I think that technology does have a place in the classroom but not for individual use that I have been seeing. I want for my classroom to have a balance, I want children to know what it feel like to get a hand cramp from writing with a pencil, not cramping due to typing. Balance is a perfect word for what technology in the classroom, I hope I can find my balance in my classroom.

Saturday, October 10, 2015

The Scary Unknown

One thing that absolutely frightens me about education is student teaching. For me, I am half excited half scared to death of what is to come. I know what you are thinking, "If you are this scared, why are you going into education?". Well in my last blog I explained this reason and I still stand by my choice of pursuing education. So why am I so scared? To answer this I have to tell a story about myself and it will all make sense. It all has to do with how I let myself get worked up over little things. For example, I had to get two of my baby teeth pulled when I was 10, I was scared to death. I did not eat that morning because I was so nervous. So half way through I thought "Okay I'm good, almost over. no big deal.", so I thought. I started to feel this tingly feeling all over and I knew I was on the verge of passing out. We had to stop in the middle and wait for me to calm down and feel better. I get myself worked up over things that I get to the point of passing out. This has happened around 5 times, and one time I full on passed out (super embarrassing). So do I think I'm going to pass out student teaching? Of course I don't, I just know how stressed and nervous I will be for the whole year of doing PDS.

Student teaching will probably be the most stressful thing to happen in my life and I am fully set to embrace this stress. I feel like college students today live on stress. Its wake up, get coffee, stress, stress, stress, stress some more, and finally go to sleep at 1am, only to do it all over tomorrow. With this in mind, I have to remember to breath, I will get through this. When I do get through this I will have my own classroom, and my own students to teach. I don't even want to think about the stress of my first year of teaching.. Like I said college students run on stress and it is not something that will hold me back.

Monday, October 5, 2015

The Start.

The Start.

For me I have always wanted to be a teacher when I grew up. I give credit to my kindergarten teacher Mrs. Witty, she is the reason for why I want to be a teacher. She was calm and loved all her students as her own children.

One thing that stuck with me through the years was, at at the end of the year she made a scrap book for every student, full of pictures and our art work for us to save and look back at. At the very end of the scrapbook she put a hand written note that is very special for me. She was the reason why school was such a fun and exciting place, because of her I fell in love with school.

Being an teacher is my dream, and each day I work towards that dream. I may hit some challenges but that will not stop me from becoming what I dream to be. For me to have my own classroom will be WONDERFUL experience, and I cannot wait until I can teach students of my own.