Skip to main content

Posts

Happy to Be Back

A lot has changed since my last blog post: location, career, and family. Location Last time I posted, I was living in San Jose, California and now today I am living in Orange County, California.  I loved my time in San Jose, while I was able to meet great educators and make life-long friendships, but nothing beats living in your hometown with your family. Career You will notice that my previous blog posts were centered around my role as a classroom teacher, and these were some of the best experiences of my life.  Today, I am an administrator at the district office where I get to spend each day doing something different to make education better for kids. Family One of the biggest changes in the past two years is that my husband and I are now parents to an almost two year old little boy.  He is our everything, and I thought life was great without him...but I was wrong: life with him is better than I could ever imagine. Now that things have settled down in my world, I look for
Post a Comment
Read more
Recent posts

Students Utilizing Google Sites as Digital Portfolios

As a Google Apps For Education district our students have the ability to create Google Sites with limited sharing permissions. This is great news for teachers who want to have their students build a website, but don’t want their students’ work to be public on the web. Over the past few weeks in 7th grade English/Language Arts classes at my school site, students have created digital reflective portfolios via Google Sites.  For some students, and teachers, Google Sites can be a complicated and daunting task, so I decided to put together a series of instructional videos for my students to watch as they build their Google Sites.  I housed all videos on my YouTube account, so my students would always have access to them.   Please feel free to use my videos in your classroom or to help you make your own Google Site. You can access all fifteen video here . Note: Sometimes when watching the YouTube videos at school, some of the videos would be blocked due to safety mode. This varie
Post a Comment
Read more

Learning in a 100 Words or a Little More

Photo Credit: Alan Levine One of my requirements for my students is that they bring their enthusiasm to learn each day.  I realize that I can't expect them to be enthusiastic about memorizing information and reiterating it later down the line. I think that meaningful learning occurs when students are engaged and immersed in an experience.  For example, when I teach  A Christmas Carol: Scrooge and Marley  my students create an original character to portray at a Victorian-inspired event where they share their research and learning as they portray their original Victorian character.  I still get letters from past students explaining how much fun they had and how much they learned during that unit. I know that it is essential for our students to know particular things and have certain skills, but I also know that I can help my students learn these things through collaborative experiences with some fun purposefully incorporated.  My goal is for my students to leave me with enthusi
Post a Comment
Read more

Works for Miracles

Photo Credit: Author (First Year as a Teacher, 2010) Teacher. Lately, I have been pondering the idea of what my favorite thing is that I  do  as a teacher for part of the # YourEDUstory 2015 blog challenge . This has been challenging for me because I love my job and role as an educator, so it is hard to pick just one! As I was pondering this topic, I stumbled along Taylor Mali's poem " Miracle Workers ." In his poem, Mali explores what teachers do and concludes we are workers of miracles. One of my favorite lines from his poem is "I just gave you what I knew you needed before you had to ask for it." This is my favorite thing I do: provide my students with the support, attention, and care that they need. I try to give it my all every day because I want to provide my students with the best possible education.  I, like Mali, believe that "Education is the miracle. I am just the worker." So I will continue to work for miracles....it is my favorite
Post a Comment
Read more

Teachers Who Challenge

Photo Source: Author  Challenged as a Student When I think of my favorite teacher, I think of Professor Jones (named changed for confidentiality) from California State University of Long Beach.  I have to ask myself, why is he my favorite teacher?  Why does he stand out in my mind from all of the rest?  As I go over all of the reasons why I valued my time in his class, there is one reason that sticks out among the rest: he challenged me day in and day out. I was lucky to take both a literature course and a composition course from him as I was completing my bachelor's in English Education.  I remember turning in my first draft of a writing assignment for his Applied Composition for Teachers course thinking, I totally aced that first draft.  Several days later I  received his page of direct feedback notating that the draft I submitted would receive a below average mark if turned in as is for the final paper. I remember feeling shocked and stunned as I stared at his comments
Post a Comment
Read more

Intelligent Choices

"The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education." -Martin Luther King, Jr.  Photo Credit (no changes made): InSapphoWeTrust Tomorrow in my classroom I will start teaching a new unit that I have never taught before: Chew on This! You may have guessed that our major text will be the book Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food , the middle school version of Fast Food Nation , by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson. The essential questions for the unit focus on how to make intelligent choices by recognizing how inside and outside forces influence our decisions. In addition to reading the book, students will watch and analyze film clips, TED Talks, advertisements, and more. Throughout the unit my students will start to develop their point of view on the topic in preparation of sharing their claim with others. At this point I am still
Post a Comment
Read more

Growth

My one word intention for 2015 is growth.  As an educator it is essential that I provide the best instruction and experiences for my students.  In order to achieve this, I know that I need to continually grow both professionally and personally.  Keeping my focus on the word “growth” will help me improve my lessons, progress on the SAMR model, and continue to meaningfully connect with my students on daily basis. When I reflect back on writing my teaching philosophy as a new teacher several years ago, I remember pondering growth and stagnation.  I knew that I never wanted to become complacent with my teaching style, curriculum, or role as an educator.  I made a promise to myself to always focus on moving forward and becoming a better educator throughout my journey.  I want to keep up that goal by consciously focusing on growth each day in my classroom as a teacher and outside of my classroom as a I prepare and create for my students.
4 comments
Read more