The Holiday Itch

Between Thanksgiving Break and Winter Break is one of the more challenging times for teachers. Over the past few weeks I have felt as if my students might explode, but the same goes for me. This Friday is our halfway celebration for Teach For America and I can't quite believe that much time has gone by. I am, admittedly, quite ready for a break!

My roommate and I threw a holiday party for all of our friends this weekend. Our apartment is completely decorated including my first self-purchased live tree! Since Charlotte is a completely new city for me far away from where most of my college and high school friends live all of my friends here are teachers. When we get together we swap a lot of amusing stories! As I said over Thanksgiving break my goal again will be to tell mostly the good stories (even though the bad ones are sometimes the most amusing). So whether you see me during break or we talk on the phone, remember to ask for the success stories, because as I am itching to have more time to sleep, think, and breathe I am also itching to share about the growth that my students are already making.

Teaching with Technology

Thank you to my sister for sharing another wonderful TED talk with me:

Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education | Video on TED.com

Every Sunday I sit down to plan for the week ahead with a bevy of challenges in front of me. I start my plans guided by the upcoming assessment and standards from the North Carolina course of study that we are studying that week, and then from there I have a few big decisions to make: what part of the novel will we cover? How will we read this week; reading groups, read-aloud, color reading, etc.? How will I incorporate lessons on grammar? How will I incorporate writing, speaking, and listening as well as reading? How will I use data to drive my instruction for individual students? How will I differentiate for all of my different levels of learners? How will I use SIOP strategies, to make the information comprehensible to my English Language Learners? And finally, How will I use technology?

On our teacher evaluations, one of the standards we are evaluated on is preparing our students for the 21st century. I think about this a lot when I consider the state of America's schools, and I think that Mr. Mitra's talk is particularly interesting. I wonder if I could group my students in front of a computer and then allow them to take ownership of their learning. Although my students have access to a lot more technology then the students in this video, I do not think that this has made them any better prepared for the 21st century. My students can use google earth, wiki sites, email, etc. but whenever allowed time on a computer on their own they use it for social networking. I tried to channel this towards education through a great wiki site called www.edmodo.com, and it somewhat worked but they still are writing messages to each other on it in incomplete sentences that resemble text messages that I send when I am in a rush (and these are far from academic). I would like to find away to channel all of those challenges that I face every Sunday under the umbrella of technology so that my students are truly engaged with technology and learning at exactly the level they need to be taught at, but I wonder how to do this. Maybe I should ask for 30 Ipads for christmas...this may get the job done.