September 17th

September 17th

Five Things I've learned in my life:

1. Everyone has the potential to learn, though not everyone learns in the same way.
         When I was in first grade I had to be taken out for extra help in reading and writing.  I left my traditional classroom once a day to go for one on one help. I remember finding it easier to concentrate and read without other students waiting on me to hurry up and finish.  I was calmer and it was fun in that little classroom.  I did this every day until I took my placement test at the end of the year.  When I received my scores everyone was astonished, I went from below proficient at the beginning of the year to advanced proficient at the end.  Now I am a literature and education major.  From this I learned that it wasn't that I was stupid (which is how I felt) but that I did not learn the way that I was being taught.  You cannot expect one style of teaching to fit each and every student.  As a teacher learn to teach in more than just one way, learn to ask for others to show you their teaching styles.  As a student learn to realize you are not dumb for not understanding you simply learn in a different way than others.

2. Learning doesn't end nor begin at the classroom door (you can learn from just about anything, anywhere)
          Growing up my mom always wanted us to learn, to think.  If we wanted something she would ask why do we want it and do we think we deserve it.  If we were going somewhere knew would research it before hand (something I still do).  She encouraged us to always ask questions especially when we were confused and not to take things at face value.  We would go to all different historical places or nature parks, learning as much as we could and imagining life there.  These things made me more well rounded and helped me to understand the world better.  In my opinion, what's the point of knowledge if the outside world remains dark and incomprehensible?  Knowing your reading, writing, and arithmetic is all fine and dandy but your whole life is not defined by one school room and the test that in it.  As a teacher I will always bring outside things into my lessons, be it new forms of creativity or simply outside the classroom knowledge.  As a student I always wanted to connect all my different knowledge together and form connections to things that seemed at odds with each other.  Maybe that's why my favorite thing to study and research is comparative literature, where I get to make my own comparisons.

3. Everyone has their own version of reality
           Growing up it took me a while to understand why things that upset me didn't upset everyone and why things that didn't upset me upset others.  It was hard to empathize with people when I thought that everyone's home lives were the same as mine.  Even my sister and I see the world very differently from one another.  A person's reality is created by their past and the theories that they have created to survive their own life.  To a person who has always moved around a lot people are disposable and replaceable to them, that is their reality.  To a child that has been abused, a hit is what is to be expected after a verbal disagreement.  To them in their reality that is just a fact.  These different realities will transfer over into the classroom, especially an English class where I will be asking for opinions or personal connections for the readings.  As a teacher I must be understand of everyone's personal realities and how they translate over into the classroom.  It's part of my job to help broaden their realities and make them see others.  Reality is subjective to the eyes that behold it, hopefully I will help others see that as well.

4. There is nothing that a good laugh, a good cry, or good food cannot fix.
             This one is simple.  Sometimes all people need in life is a little break from it all, to be able to climb back into bed and begin the day again.  Though we are not all so lucky as to have a midday nap there are other ways to restart and recharge.  Personally when I am truly upset about something and do not want to talk about it, I call my friend who can make me laugh even when all I want to do is cry.  After talking to him I am always ready to start again.  When my sister is upset I always bake for her, well make the dough anyway.  We sit and eat my uncooked dough and watch the Office, sometimes she tells me what's up, other times we just laugh at the characters.  Being able to take a break from it all and just decompress is something that needs to be remembered as a teacher, who is going to learn anything if they are trapped in their own mind?

5. If you think you've hit bottom smile, you can only go up from there.  
           People seem to fear starting over.  They see it as a failure and want nothing more than to give up.  To me it is a fresh start with a better starting point.  You have just learned one way that something does not work.  Take that knowledge, learn from it (why didn't it work?), and try again.

September 10th

           Walking into class today I was much better prepared for what lay ahead.  I knew from the first class that it was going to be intense and that we were going to learn a lot.  Thank goodness everything is also written down somewhere so if I forget something I can go back over it at my leisure.  I have used Google docs in the past but never to this extent and I am excited to be able to use try it out for my own personal use.  This way I can get in the habit of using it and will be easily able to teach it to my students and incorporate it into my lessons.
            Also I tend to be an unorganized mess so I make myself extremely organized to combat it.  This being said I believe that incorporating google docs and everything else will greatly help me with my endeavor. This way if I forget something somewhere or am not sure I know I can access docs every where (and don't have to worry about my computer crashing).  Speaking of computers mind has decided it is too old to keep up with the times.  I was terrified that I would lose everything (I had had it for five years now) but thankfully I was able to save everything to my google drive (and organize it based on the new things that we recently learned in class).  Now when I finally get a new one I can put those files right back on it if I so which (and if anyone has advice for a new laptop I am all ears).
            I love how I keep imagining how to use these new techniques in my own classroom.  For instance, if I wanted my students to do a group power point or slide show I could set it up so that each group would have one, can see who did how much, and they can upload or share it right to a class folder.  This way I now everyone did their part and when it is time to present it is right there, no more messing with emails or flash drives.  This way I could also look over everything while it is being done so if there are questions I can comment right on their projects.  I can make a mini test that is based on all of the slides for the students to take after the last presentation as well. This way it is still fresh in their heads and they can see their grades sooner.  I can also see if I need to go over specifics or move on, thus keeping the right pace for my class.
           If I can plan this much already I am excited to learn more.  Though this is a very long class I'm eager to move forward and become better adapted to our technological age.

Until next time,
Nikki

September 3rd

September 3rd

        Today was my first day of classes and thus my first day of Instructional Tech, it was a long day.  My day started at 6 am and I have been going nonstop since than, so needless to say I was tired walking it.  Though I have had other 6 to 10 classes before, each one is different and I wondered how long we would really be staying.  Learning that it was until 9:45 was a little exhausting, but hey it is what I signed up for.  However, when walking in I was pleasantly surprised to see some friends in the class when we started.  It is always nice to see some familiar faces.

      I am proud that I was able to understand and create my webpage and blog.  It was comically frustrating when it took over 20 minutes to log in to my computer though.  However I always joke that technology hates me and I am technologically challenged, so it was just my luck (Irish or not). Thank goodness for Tom, our handy and amazing tech guy!  He was able to help everyone in the class to reboot and log into their computers so we could start our class.
      Once we got the ball rolling we were able to go over quite a bit of information as well as overview the entire course and what is expected of us.  Besides being a full 4 hour class I am excited to learn new things and to see if i can overcome some of technological incompetence and enhance my potential teaching abilities.  I am probably most excited to learn about Gamification, however everything will be exciting a new to me.

 Until next time!

~Nikki