Life in Education

The idea of a portfolio is twofold for me, and somewhat of a dichotomy.  On one hand, I understand the need to have a place to showcase my work as a teacher, and as a lifelong learner.  Portfolios are a great resource to have to demonstrate what I am capable of, what I have learned over my time as a student, and what I have done as an educator.  On the other hand, while in undergrad, I spend countless hours updating my portfolio, taking pictures of my latest and greatest lessons, constantly updating my core values as a teacher, and writing and re-writing my resume.  When it came time to interview for jobs, I was never once asked to take it out, and ended up simply using it as a place to take notes while interviewing.  That being said, I indeed do find value in the portfolio, so long as it is a WORKING document. As a collection of documentation of what it is I am good at, I can see great value in the idea of a portfolio.  As an educator, I feel that my str...

For my class website, I use Weebly.com.  At the end of last school year, we were encouraged to create a web page that highlights communication with students and parents.  As part of our in service, we created web pages with bare bones minimums (ways to keep in touch, communication with parents, etc.).  Being a technologically-minded person, I created mine rather quickly and was assigned with the task of helping others as they needed it.  Given this information, I have since let my classroom website fall into near disuse.  That is, while it is available for students and parents to check, and several parents have even used it to get in contact with me, it is not used as a daily tool in my classroom.  While I did have grand plans for it, daily life caught up with me, and the website became rather static.  It is my goal in the next week or so to update it (conveniently aligned with the website activity in class) but I will be further revising throughout th...

Classroom tools sounds like an incredibly vague term.  Topically, when I think of classroom tools, I of course think of the things that I use to make my life as a teacher easier.  However, when presented with, more specifically, classroom tool software, my mind is immediately drawn again to PowerPoint and simple concept maps, diagrams, etc.  Essentially, I use these tools as a way to organize my students' thinking.  The bulk of my curriculum is teaching Spanish vocabulary.  For each unit, depending on the grade level, there are anywhere between 10 and 30 new vocabulary words for my students to learn.  I use these tools as a way to organize and make meaningful the various vocab words.  I will very often create webs to illustrate how different words are related, and help to compartmentalize various vocabulary.  For example, one 4th grade unit is Food and Restaurant.  We will create a concept map that starts with foods and restaurants and branch...

I use powerpoint in my classroom on a fairly regular basis.  Most often, I create a presentation as the introduction of a new unit.  Often I will present a new Spanish word with a visual hint as to what it means in English.  This is, I've found, a good way to present words in a fresh, memorable way in order for students to become proficient in the vocabulary I am presenting. In the future, I strive to have students make their own PowerPoint presentations for a "Spanish speaking countries" project, which they currently present simply using poster boards.  I have had kids experiment using Powerpoint on a very topical basis, but never with much of a presentation use, but simply exploring. Another goal I have in using multimedia is using a Mimio.  This is a tool similar to a SmartBoard, turning a regular white board into an interactive board.  While I have the tool in my classroom presently, it still needs to be installed and calibrated, and just as importa...

Spreadsheets are something I feel I under-utilize.  My wife works at Ford Motor Co. in headquarters, and says she is constantly using spreadsheets to collect and analyze data, organize presentations, and use the myriad formulas to quantify her work as a psychologist.  Inside the classroom, I feel that I rarely use spreadsheets.  To me, they seem to be little more than a way to organize data, which is exactly what I use them for: entering grades and calculating averages, growth, etc.  Occasionally, we will use them in our PD as a way to organize which teachers use different techniques, or organizing our units.  While these are all certainly valid uses for spreadsheets, I just feel like such a useful tool could be put to better use, and I certainly do not use them every single day.  Because of my relative lack of experience with them, rather than utilize formulas built in to Excel or Google Sheets, I will simply pull out a calculator to calculate growth and c...

I use databases on a regular basis.  In Royal Oak Schools, we use MiStar, which is a database program that houses each student's attendance, demographic information, report card information.  I can log on from any computer and run a report that easily shows students' pertinent information, as well as any records that I have kept for that student including report card information from previous marking periods, which also includes any notes I have left regarding that student.  While this is a wildly convenient system that allows me to easily track each student, it has not quite caught up to the district.  We are in our first year of standards based grading, which is a very different system than years past.  As a result, MiStar's grade book feature, which formerly would link grade book grades to standards on report cards and had an auto-calculate feature, is currently disabled.  Therefore, I have to keep a separate database through Google Sheets for my grades,...

I use word processing in my classroom nearly every day.  I use it to create worksheets, assessments, and newsletters.  It seems that I am so used to using word processing, that I hardly even notice at this point. The basic format for Word, Google Docs, etc. is so seemingly universal, that I hardly notice the difference in formatting.  That being said, students hardly ever use word processing in my class.  Meeting for only 25 minutes, we hardly have time for students to log onto computers, much less create word processing documents.  I would love to have students create presentations, brochures, etc. that highlight what they have learned in my class about the Spanish language and culture.  However, time is simply not available for my students to complete such tasks.  With nearly every student having technology available at home, there could possibly be some at-home application, so long as I am sensitive to students current workload.  Being a spe...

In teaching elementary Spanish, my life is somewhat hectic.  My classes are 25 minutes long, and on my typical day has 13 or 14 classes of kids ranging from Kindergarten to 5th grade.  I am constantly on the move, and my days fly by!  That being said, it is incredibly important that I use my time wisely.  I try to use technology to engage my students, pique their interest, and try to promote as much at-home practice as possible.   My classrooms are equipped with Apple TV, projectors, desktop computers, and DVD players.  On top of that, each teacher is provided an iPad.  Furthermore, in each school there are two carts of Chromebooks.  I often use the iPad as a tool to project work students are working on via the Apple TV in order to work along with or provide examples for students.  I have used Chromebooks for research projects on Spanish speaking countries, and have had students develop their own vocabulary lists.  Furthermore, vi...

This blog has been on hiatus since apparently 2010.  Quite frankly, I forgot about it.  Life as a teacher has somewhat taken over, and I've let my thoughts slip.  That being said, it's being revived for a graduate class (at LTU through Marygrove) and I thought it would be appropriate to keep my thoughts on education in one space.