Teacher Blogs

I have come across a ton of good teacher blogs when searching for art ideas, creative lessons, and how to use technology in the classroom. One website that I refer to often is the teachingblogaddict.com. I like this website because it has so much information for teachers and families as well. Teaching blog addict is more of an online community but it has links to teacher blogs for all grade levels. You can view teacher blogs from pre-k teachers, all grade levels, and even multi-age teachers, and homeschool parents. The thing I like best about teachers blogs is viewing the creative lesson plans they use in their classroom. I get a lot of ideas from others and can change or switch them according to my students' levels and capabilities. I think blogs are useful for sharing ideas and learning new techniques. You will often come across an idea that maybe you have not thought of before. Teaching blog addict also has an option to link your own blog so that others who visit the website can view your blog too.  

Education vs. Schooling

On the first night of class we all discussed what education meant to us in our small groups and there were so many different interpretations from each individual. We talked about how education is the transfer of knowledge from one person to another, it is learning, it is experiences, it happens all the time, it is a process that grows upon itself. We said that education is knowledge of the basics like reading, writing, and arithmetic. We also said that education is the process of becoming an educated person. It is clear that education can mean a variety of things to different individuals but I would agree with any and all of those statements. I believe that education is the process of using experiences to develop a skill set in which an individual always has access to an optimal state of mind in any situation. Education does not only apply to school settings and book-smarts, but also growing as an individual and common sense. Therefore, schooling is almost like guidelines that are applied to educational goals. Schooling incorporates specific curriculum, standards, benchmarks, and boundaries to set goals for the direction in which learning is happening. It is specific training, classes, and exposure to areas that an individual wishes to become educated in. I think education can happen without the directional guiding of schooling, but the purpose of schooling is education, and so cannot happen without education.  

The process of living...

"I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living"... number 8, taken from John Dewey's Pedagogic Creed. This really struck something inside me when I read this particular statement. Yes! education is a process that occurs from the day you are born until the day that you die. I had this very conversation with some fellow colleagues at staff development who gave me blank stares when I mentioned that I thought education and learning are the things you take away from real life experiences. I believe this is true for not only life experiences but experiences we will have as teachers as well. I feel like I have learned more from trial and error in the classroom setting than having someone tell me how it will work. For me education happens on a daily basis just in my day-to-day life, and I am constantly learning new things from people around me, my experiences, and especially my students:)

Grading

I agree with the points that Alfie Kohn made about grading in his article. Three years ago the school I work at moved to a standards based report card system. It is still a work in process because often times parents, students, and even teachers are only familiar with the more traditional A-F grading system. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the standards based grading system, it uses a number scale from 1-4 to rank students' achievement in specific areas which they are supposed to know by the end of the year, depending on what grade they are in. There are still  a few "bugs" to work out but overall I feel like it is a better assessment of actual student achievement without labeling or sorting students based on letter grades like Kohn had mentioned.   Using this type of grading method can even help motivate students to do better or more thorough work because they do not feel pressured to get an "A." I also think it is important to always include teacher comments on any type of grade report, but obviously with this type of assessment parents will have a lot of questions, especially if they have never seen it before. 

Week 1

Hello all! I am looking forward to starting the ATL program with all of you. I have been in the classroom for the past 7 years as an EA and I can not wait to finally have the opportunity to teach in my own classroom. I have my BS in management but as you can see my real experience is working with kiddos. I have already seen and heard some great ideas in just the first week of starting the program. I can not wait to see what I will come away with from this first semester.