Impossible to Escape

It is impossible to completely do away with biases and perspectives. Everyone who writes, creates, records, etc, comes from a specific point of view with all the baggage of presuppositions and bias. This is why I desire to create a classroom that is aimed towards thinking critically. I want my students to KNOW that biases exist and I want them to be able to think for themselves and make their own decisions and come up with their own opinions. If I am forced to use a text book that only comes from a white man's perspective, I'll use it as a guide for discussion. I can use it to ask questions such as "Where is this point of view coming from?" "Whose story are you not hearing about?" "Can you think of any other perspectives?" It is impossible to have the perfect text book that pleases every student, every parent, every principal. This is why you guide your students in engaging with the text critically; teaching them to have their own minds and opinions. Thankfully, there is an abundance of resources for children to use online. The text book is not their only source of information.

In regards to students with disabilities and ESL students, they can be an aid to the classroom in discussing points of views and biases. Ask them for their point of view on topics. Ask an ESL student to share how an American text book makes them feel, as someone who is not native to America. Students with disabilities are capable of also engaging with the text critically and offering their own unique perspective to a situation. Text books will never be the only source in my classroom for information, so even students who have disabilities in reading can still learn through other resources, such as recordings/videos. By including ALL students in the classroom, it teaches  the class the importance of diversity and recognizing that there are multiple points of view on all topics. It also creates a classroom that represents diversity and tolerance, because the classroom is actually diverse and must learn to be tolerant and accepting of one another.

Integrated Curriculum

My biggest fear with integrated curriculum is TIME. It is as simple as that. I am afraid I will not have enough time to do it. However, I know how necessary it is. I do not want to create a classroom that throws important, yet somehow peripheral subjects, by the wayside because of the high demands on math, reading, and science. I find social studies to be very important and I want to make time to implement social studies into my curriculum often. There is so much rich material to teach; there is no way it can be done in a few 30 minute lessons every other week.

I think that integrated curriculum is not used because teachers are so concerned with these high stakes testing and they think that by integrating the curriculum the content for subjects like math and reading is being compromised. Even though research says otherwise. Integrating curriculum takes time and practice, and teachers probably feel they do not have time to learn and properly implement an integrated curriculum that does not compromise the value of tasks and lessons.

Even though there will be the pressure of testing on my back, I will not allow this to deter me from integrating my curriculum. I really believe, if done correctly, an integrated curriculum will strengthen my lessons in a way for my students to be even more successful academically.

P L A N

Upon reflecting on what the attributes are for a "thoughtful, well planned, social studies lesson", I started thinking through ANY lesson plan for that matter. While there are many attributes I think a lesson plan should contain, I'd like to spend this time highlighting the most important.

Considerate

A lesson plan should be considerate of ALL students and their individual needs. When a lesson plan is considerate, it not only takes into account the needs of the students, but it also implements practices and strategies to address each individual need. For social studies specifically, when teaching about culture, history, economics, etc., it is of upmost importance to take into consideration the cultures of ones students as well as their socio-economic background.  

Engaging 

A social studies lesson should not be something that is mundane and unrelated to students. No longer should a lesson plan simply be reading a social studies text book and answering the questions in the back. This is a sure fire way to make a child hate social studies and not care for his or her learning in this subject.  A lesson plan should build upon a students background, and implement ways and strategies in which to engage a student in the material. 

Effective

A lesson plan that is engaging is not enough however. There needs to be actual learning taking place. The lesson needs to be effective. Clear goals need to be set in place that necessitate higher order learning and after establishing those goals, the content of the lesson should support those goals in order to ensure that learning is taking place. 

Assessable 

In order to gage a lesson plan's effectiveness, it needs to be assessable. A teacher should have activities in place that not only support the learning goals, but can also be assessed. This means that the activities will have meaning behind them in which students will be expected to use their skills to create, analyze, discuss, experiment, etc. All of these verbs are assessable with the right lesson plan and a willing teacher. 

Integrative

Last but most certainly not least, social studies lesson should be integrative. There is so much to social studies that spans across content areas. English language arts, math, science, and art (as well as other subjects) can all be integrated into a social studies lesson. Or a social studies lesson can be integrated into one of these subject areas. As George Maxim(2010)  puts it, "Social studies is integrative by nature; by definition, it is the school subject that synthesizes the social sciences." (Pg. 25). 

While I find all these attributes to be important for any content in the classroom, I find them to be especially fitting for social studies.  I believe with these attributes, a teacher will have a lesson that sustains learning.

New Topic, Same Blog

Although it has only been less than a week since I last posted, my blog has changed. I am now venturing into the world of teaching social studies and the arts. Expect posts soon about this topic, one in which I am looking forward to writing about!

Meta Reflection

After reading through all my previous blogs and reflection on this entire course at Meredith, I am left with one word: progress. I have made progress and I have a lot more progress to endure, and the progress will never end. Teaching will never be a stagnant career that one "figures out". It is something that continually needs to be reassessed and re-evaluated. This is largely due to our ever changing world that is inundated with technology. I began my journey in this class with the ideas of Curt Bonk. Overall, I thought that Bonk was this over zealous lover of all things technology. However, he opened my eyes to the overwhelming reality of the advantages and openness for education today because of technology.

Having my eyes opened to this reality also makes me realize how important it is to be discerning. Teachers are not responsible for only themselves. They have their students as their top priority. We must have discernment for which technologies are actually beneficial for the classroom and the students. There are many available tools for teachers, but not all tools are actually a  help to the classroom and the students. This is a daunting task and there are room for mistakes as long as there is openness to always reassessing and changing.

I am thankful for this course at Meredith because it gave me time to explore new technologies and decipher/discern which ones will be beneficial for myself and my classroom. This class taught me how to review new technologies and critically think through which ones will be an aid to the classroom.

So far I have learned the rich benefits of SMART technologies, educational apps, organization tools, blogging, and video editing. I have learned overall how to make my class smarter, not harder. I have also learned how to ORGANIZE all the information overload for teachers through RSS feeds. I started a feedly account and now have my blogs and news sources organized on my laptop.

I am hopeful that this class has made me a better teacher.

Evernote, my life saver

This week in class I reviewed the app/website called Evernote. This is a web 2.0 tool designed to help people like me, the unorganized. I have been using it for a week now, and I can honestly say that I will probably use it for many years to come. It helps me to organize the notes I take in class and reminders that I usually jot down on a piece of paper that I will never find again. The tool is used by creating different notebooks. In those notebooks you can take a snap shot of a document that you need to look back on, type up a note for a particular subject, upload a file that you need, etc. So far I have created notebooks for "life", "Meredith", "Peru Trip", "Student Teaching" and "Work". These are all the different directions my life is in, and Evernote is helping me to have a better grasp and organization on these particular areas of my life. You can also download a widget for your google chrome browser. Using this widget, every time you comes across a website that needs to be remembered, you just simply drag the website to the widget and it will keep the link in a specified folder of your choice.

Evernote is an easy to use tool that really enables people for organization. I am really happy I discovered it. There are many add on tools that you can also use to supplement Evernote in different ways. For instance, there is a food organization app as well as a study guide app. I hope to use some of these tools as well in the future.

Ultimately, I hope a more organized me will enable me to focus on my students more than I thought possible.

To go to the website and check out the tool more, click here.



Image taken from: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.evernote

Flipping the Classroom

I think one of the most valuable pieces I will take from this class is the idea of flipping a classroom. I will admit, when I first started researching about this topic, I was VERY pessimistic. It seemed to virtualize the classroom even more than what I was already comfortable with. I am already very weary of technology in education and am slow to embrace the newest technology out there. Only 3 months ago, I still had a flip phone (and am considering going back). Despite my reservations with technology, I was pleasantly surprised by all that flipping the classroom had to offer. The benefits far outweighed the negatives. The positives are as follows:
- Class time spent more effectively
-Students are more engaged with the "lecture" at home
-The issue of students not doing their homework is almost completely diminished
-Classroom management is improved
-Teachers can spend more one-on-one time with students
-Large class size stress is greatly reduced
-Room for more collaboration

There are pretty strong positives in my mind, and they are hard to ignore. Very hard. I am seriously considering doing this for my future classroom. Now I have the fun task of thinking through how to do this in an elementary setting in the best possible way. I envision a lot of station work revolving around one unit lesson video, with videos of the instruction for each station set up, while I circulate throughout the room and enable my students for success as best as I can. This is an exciting picture in my mind. I desire to create learners that take ownership of their learning and pursue their unique interests. I believe a flipped classroom would enable this vision even further.