The extra mile...

I have learned a lot this year about many different things in education. The one thing that I believe makes one teacher different from another is how much she or he cares for their individual students. I have witnessed many teachers who wait the whole day for that final bell to ring and they can finally go home. The very few teachers who I look up to are the ones who come early to school and stay after to provide one student with the extra help they need. The difference between a good teacher and an ok teacher is the amount of effort that is put into their job. Being a teacher is not just a job, it is the way to the future for many of that teacher's students. A teacher can either make a good impression, or a bad one, and hopefully I am going to one of the few teachers that wants and desires to go the extra mile.

How do you deal with problem children?

What are teachers supposed to do with problem children? I have had much experience at an afterschool program where I have definitely seem the quintessential problem child. What my boss decided to do with one of the worst of them, was ask the parent of that child to discontinue enrollment at the end of the month. My boss said it was better for the group as a whole if that child was not there. I do not know if I completely agree with that but even so I do not know what to think about it. At an elementary school, a teacher can not just as a child to leave the school! After talking to a teacher about the subject, she suggested to put that child in charge of special activities. For instance, if the teacher was going out of the room, the “problem child” would be in charge of writing down names of the children who disobeyed the rules. I have also heard of the problem child being in charge of many jobs in the classroom. The particular teacher said she recalled an incident when one of the other children came up to her and asked, “Why did ****** get to have a job this week when he already had one last week and the week before that?” She had given him many jobs because he concentrated more on the jobs than making trouble in the classroom. Also I have seen teachers who when there children get in trouble in the classroom, they have to go sit in another teacher’s classroom. By doing this, it creates a lot of embarrassment for the child but also keeps him away from valuable instructional time. There has to be a better way of reaching those children who are just a little bit harder to deal with. Do you have any suggestions?

Is Elearning the way of the future?

I have had the opportunity of taking Elearning classes in the past during the summers in between Spring and Fall classes at Auburn. It was definitely a good experience because I did not have to go to class, I could choose my own study times, I had flexibility on when I completed my assignments, I could balance working and taking a class, and transferring credits was extremely easy. When I saw the word e-learning, I only thought about college classes. Now, I understand that even students in elementary and middle school can take Elearning classes. Somehow that baffles me because I can foresee troubles with students not having enough discipline to complete assignments on their own time and keeping up with homework. It was even hard for me to keep it all straight. I had to train myself to schedule time to complete all of my assignments for class. It was hard for me to do all of the work without having someone to remind me to do it. For students, teachers can remind their students five times about an assignment and sometimes it still does not get completed. Do not get me wrong, I love that Elearning is being offered to students below the college level. For some students who need advanced classes and they are not offered at their school, I believe it is wonderful! I am so glad someone came up with the idea that students can have a way to challenge themselves even if it is not at their particular school. Without having the hassle of changing schools, these students are offered a way to better themselves with disturbance. I believe these classes are teaching students discipline and I think more should be offered. What do you think about Elearning? Is it going to take the place of schools some day?

Tinkerplots!

After working with a marvelous math program for the past week, I would definitely like to use it in my classroom. For the past four days I have spent 10 hours playing with this particular math program called Tinkerplots. It is absolutely amazing! There are different groups of data that can be displayed in different plots with the program. There is a plot where students can analyze all of the different multiplication facts and look at the similarities between them. For instance, the similarities between 5’s and 10’s on the times table. It is a very good way to make math investigative and fascinating. I also looked at data collected for the different weights of backpacks compared the the weights of children who carried them. My thinking was the higher the grade, the more the backpack weighed. I was correct for the most part, but the interesting thing I learned was that a child’s backpack is not supposed to weight more than 15% of their body weight. I changed the graph and looked at weight of the backpack compared to the appropriate backpack weight for each child. This is a great program to make children interested in math. I spend hours on the program learning things just through investigation, without being told. There is a button on the program that can instantly give the mean of any group of numbers. Students can also sort the data by gender or any category available. Some of the other data I looked at compared men and women and their times in the 100 meter dash in every year the Olympics had been recorded. From the different graphs I studied, I could see that the men have stayed about a second faster than women ever since the Olympics began. There are so many different things to look at with the program and most of the data sets than students can look at are already programed in. Students can also record data themselves and enter it into the program. This program is a wonderful piece of technology that every teacher should have the chance to have in their classroom. If you ever have the chance to explore Tinkerplots, please do because it was an amazing experience and I truly hope I can acquire it for my classroom!