The Buzz of Teaching

Takeaways I feel like I resonated with his ideas about relationships. It's easy to get sidetracked by curriculum, standards, and teacher drama, but it's important to remember who you're working for: the students. Yes we all have a passion for our content areas, but teaching K-12 is about finding ways to encourage our students to care about our content. In some classes or with some material, the substance is engaging enough for some students, but in more polarizing environments, it takes more effort. Poem Sometimes I do feel like a molder of dreams because one of my favorite parts of my job is helping students identify their passions and coming up with ways for them to act on them. Teacher Impact Mz. Dennis and Ms. Valesano had the biggest impact on me in middle and high school, respectively. They encouraged me to follow my passions, found new ways to bring me into the conversation and activities, and were knowledgeable in their content areas. Coincidentally, they wer...

Honestly, not to sound arrogant, but what I took away from my Spring Conference this year was my self-confidence. I was prepared, planned a full and engaging lesson, didn't pontificate to the room, and left enough room for questions at the end. I received many compliments about my Action Research; specifically, that they enjoyed reading my paper because it flowed very well, was clear and concise, and they enjoyed my out-of-the-box methods of data collection. They also told me they found my session activities applicable to a large variety of situations in their own classrooms, and that's what I was hoping for. We were also able to be flexible and customize the lesson based on what kinds of discussions the attendees wanted to have. At the end of the session, my facilitator said it was clear I knew what I was doing and he stated that my session was the fastest-paced afternoon session he'd ever been in. I believe that is because I approached the situation like I approac...

I attended a session on personalized learning, and I was intimated by just how scheduled and organized her school was that she could offer several different sessions at different levels all in one three hour block. My school is not structured that way, plus I didn't even know where to begin that mess, so I just took some of the basic ideas and implemented them in one lesson. In LA 9 we're reading Animal Farm  by George Orwell and I always do a lesson on the Russian Revolution since it's the whole point of the book. In the past, I've played a video and given all students the same questions, without any scaffolding. I always have some students who succeed and some who give up/don't start because they have such little background knowledge that it's too much for them to handle. This year I'm taking a more personalized learning approach. Students will choose their pathway to success - a Youtube Video or an Informational Text. Youtube Video This pathway c...