Week 9

I’m sure that you’ve all heard it before, but omg what a week! I am still reeling off of last week’s events and on into my own life where my commitments seem to be piled so high they can touch the jet that just flew overhead. I neglected to respond to a peer on Sunday and furthermore I neglected to post this blog last night! My apologies to my classmates and instructors for missing these deadlines.

I just went for a walk this morning with a new friend and fellow teacher from my school. Initially, I was a little afraid of the whole get to know you conversations, not sure if I might say something wrong. Normally I wouldn’t worry about a thing like that to much except that my last year of teaching at a charter school really took a lot out of me; I was harassed on a daily basis and my two boys that attended the school were equally targeted. As we were walking and talking though I was re-energized and excited at all of the possibilities that surround us as teachers! We touch so many lives and it is often the little things that we do that mean a lot to our kiddos! We also were talking about wiki’s and blogs and she suggested one way to use these tools would be to set up one for our classrooms where parents can retrieve information and communicate with us without the need for extra paper. Hmmmm, there is a spark in my brain now and I think that I would like to set this up for my grade level.

Any thoughts?

Week 8

Okay here is my blog tonight. I have had an emotional day as a variety of events unfolded before me. First, this morning I was told that there had been a shooting related death of a mother of two children who attend school in the San Tan area. Of course not knowing these children personally didn’t matter to my heart! One of the children is in my son’s class and was not present at school today, so my son has not spoken to me about this. I feel so many emotions about this incident; it is so close to home. I am angry, sad, mortified and have anxiety. The anxiety stems from what on Earth I’m going to tell my son when he asks me. Next, I spoke with my friend who shared some troubling news, and then I had to teach of course which was wonderful!!! I felt happy when I saw pictures of my students paying attention to my instruction, furthermore I felt happy when I asked my principal for feedback on a walk through and it was positive. See what I mean? Emotions all over the board!

Now, as for the try it assignments, I must admit that I had a good time with the assignments. It is often fun to play around with technology. I must also admit that I do not have this available to me, nor do I think that I would have the additional time required to play around to make it perfect for my students. I feel that I give a lot to my students with a variety of media and tools and that as busy as I am to try to utilize or acquire the technology to utilize these tools would not be something that I can do as it is extremely time consuming.