My Lesson

I had the rare priveledge of being able to read the students an Arthur book on making promises, being a good sibling, and compromise.  The book involved siblings fighting over the television and coming to a compromise which involved Arthur making a promise to D.W. and having to follow through despite his best efforts of trying to get out of it.  However the ending showed that in keeping the promise there was an even greater reward to be had.  This book had the students attention throughout the entire reading as many knew who Arthur was and the story peaked their interests.  I was very excited to be able to interact with them and to provide them with knowledge that I knew was not only important for school, but for life.

A.J.

Throughout this project I was working with a young man who will be called A.J..  He was very interested in being a dinosaur throughout the entire time we were there.  While it was all fun at times he did get into some trouble on the last day.  He was very interested in science and enjoyed looking at books.  Some of his favorites were the Sesame Street and Arthur books.  He had no idea what he wanted to be saying he would be a monster when he grew up.  However his curiosity in the Science portions of the class left me with little concern as I am certain his knowledge would grow as he continued throughout school.

S-L Project Hours

Throughout this project I have dedicated many hours to helping in the classroom of the pre-schoolers.  It was a privilege to interact with these young students over the past few weeks.  They showed me how every little thing about my appearnce from my 'rockstar' jacket to the "why is there hair on your face" that we are all very unique.  Their eagerness to learn was great inspiration, but like all students I know that by the time those cute kids were teenagers they would undoubtably hate school as much as any other student that I have worked with.  However it will be the basic skills they are taught at the ywca that will be with them forever.

Service Learning

Our class is going on a service learning trip.  To me this seems exciting, but also that my work load just became crazy.  However, I have several hours of free-time on Friday particularly in the morning.  So by being able to assist at the YWCA from 9-1 or so I should be able to accomplish this service learning project in a matter of a couple weeks, if I include the time given to us during class.  I feel knowing that I have time available I should be able to accomplish the task at hand.  I just hope I don't get called about that job I applied for too soon or else several different things will be extremely tangled and unruly in my life.

Something Different

Ok so my last blog ended wierd, that was due to unforseen technical diffeiculty that I will fix asap.  For this blog I am no going to look exactly at the reading instead I am going to talk about something different as stated in the title.  While the reading that we did was greatly informative and gave a deeper insight into teaching and talking while I did not really think the title was that great.  I feel that we as teachers do not realize the true amount of work that we will have to face when entering our fields.  This is brought on mostly from our work on monday.  We saw children who for all sense of what we could see were not cared about, and saw a few shining stars that helped them.  However one thing that I have noticed is that most of us planning to be teachers all want to be that star to help these students in any way possible, so what is to say that these children do not already have teachers trying to help.  What we should realize is that the idea of teaching to change lives is not a new concept that we are not pioneers that will change the field.  The real problem is that when it all boils down we are hired to teach a set of cirriculum and anything after the fact is bonus.  Yes, we will reach students and have profound effects either way simply because we will work so hard for these kids.  However the system itself is what is setting us up to have such high hopes only to crush them with the various standards and obligations to the state.  I'm not trying to be a downer just a realist that we are going to be facing what seems like insurmountable odds when we are trying to not only teach the standards, but also help those students that we see need to be helped.  I am not trying to crush any dreams or make it seem pointless, I am only saying that we are only providing a bandage to the system by enabling it to exist in the state that it is in.  This may be why I am considering administration in my future, but we should not aim to just fix students or classes we should aim to fix the school and how it is run and viewed entirely.  We can make it so every child succeeds and doesn't lose hope from waiting for that angel teacher to save them.

Racial Differences and Language

I am not sure how to go about putting a title on this section, but most of the time the title is irrelevant anyway.  I looked at these thinking this is something exaclty like a field experience that I have already had and that it is something every teacher should be aware of.  Most of us were brought up with very proper english language we did not use forms of slang or a

Iamu

Chapter 14 Adolescent Literacy

The potential of techhnology.  This chapter is one that many english and people who believe in the library do not like.  I say this having heard several of my fellow classmates dis-regard e-readers as they love books.  To that I say I love books too, but they do not need to be bound with paper and leather for me to enjoy the content.  Technology is moving at a pace that no person is able to comprehend as everyday more ideas come out because due to technology something impossible ten years ago is now possible.  The fact that we are moving into an era where things we see on Star Trek look obsolete and that the only thing we really dont have is the flying car shows that we are at the forefront of human achievement.  This has limitless meanings for the type of technology that our students will be using and introduced to.  Already freestanding p.c. towers are being considered a thing of the past as tablets and computers emerge that process five times faster with a fraction of the size.  technology is is changing everything including the classroom as we as teachers have to prepare our students to use that technology.