What does a nosey pepper do? Get jalapeño business.

Today in Social Studies Methods. we had a guest speaker via Zoom. Her name was Susan Waddell, and she is currently a 9th grade teacher at Rainbow Elementary School in Asheville, NC. Susan went through a Prezi talking about strategies that we can use to aid students in our future classrooms. Susan taught a lot of new material that I had never heard of before, such as the see-think-wonder strategy, the Remix strategy, etc. (Those two were my favorite). With Susan's presentation you could see a direct correlation to how you could use these methods in the classroom, and she gave really great examples. 

For my blog this week, I read an article from Education. com, titled, 4-Day School Weeks: Headed to Your District?. The title is very catchy in itself. I mean who would not want a 4 day school week! However, being a future teacher, I could not imagine losing a day of contact with my students, this could not be good for test scores and learning. Although, I could see this being a great idea when I was in grade school. This idea all came about from a small town in Georgia, and the county had lost $900,000 in budget cuts that year. The school had to find a way to recover from that devastating blow to the budget. Therefore, they dropped the days of school from 5 to 4, this will decrease the energy bill that the school will have to pay, along with a ton of more benefits. Such as, transportations costs are down 35% in that period, utility costs are down by 8%, student attendance is fractionally lower, and student discipline incidents are down nearly 40%. The 4-day school week, does have its benefits, but what are the downfalls of only going to school four days of the week? Once Peach County in Georgia gets their test results back at the end of the year, we will see how this 4-day school week has effected the students learning and testing average. 

What do you think? Do you like the idea of a 4-day school week? Why or why not?

This blog ties into the North Carolina Teaching Standard number one, because teacher are facilitating leadership, and taking charge of this massive budget cut in their county. Meetings are being planned were teachers can talk about the best ways to support their students during this budget cut, and that shows a great deal of leadership, to stand up for your students. 

http://www.education.com/magazine/article/4-day-school-week/

Why do noses run, but feet smell?

This week in Social Studies Methods, our virtual museums are due, and that was a very fun project to complete! I choose to do my virtual museum at the McElroy House back in my hometown. I had always drove pass this place, but never knew what it was. I Googled places near me, and the McElroy House popped up. I thought that this would be a cool field trip, because not only is this house packed with history that ties to the Civil War, but it is also my hometown, which students get interested in knowing where I come from. I emailed the owner of the McElroy House and museum, and they gave me my own private tour, and it was amazing! I never knew so much history happened in my hometown like that. Needless to say, I was pretty much like a kid in a candy shop while taking this tour and completing this project!

The article I read this week was from "Education Next", and it is titled, The Educational Value of Field Trips. I thought that this would be a very fitting article to blog about, because we just got done with our virtual museums. Even though we may not always be able to take our students to these places physically, we can bring the experience to them in the classroom virtually. This article talks about how important it is for students to get the experience of field trips. Not only are they having fun, but they are super engaged and learning about the place they are at. I have always loved field trips so much, even in college. I love being able to escape the realm of school, and go somewhere new and learn new things. Field trips are very crucial to student learning, but when we get our own classrooms, we may not have the privilege to take our class to an actual physical place. This is why I think that the virtual museum project was so awesome and fun. We need this experience to help better us in the future.

This article ties into the North Carolina Teacher Standard number four, of teachers facilitate learning, because as teachers we are to use field trips to help our students learn, and if we cannot go to a physical place we need to use technology to take our students there virtually.

I find it ironic that the colors red, white, and blue stand for freedom until they are flashing behind you.

This week in Social Studies Methods, we have continued to present our lessons, and we are finally finished! Seeing all the different lessons, was really an awesome experience. Every one had such creative ideas, and sparked some ideas for me to go off of as a future teacher. The traditional lesson plan, was so different from the flipped lesson plan, in that you have to squeeze time to actually teach the content into 20 minutes. The flipped lesson was much easier in my opinion, because I had the whole 20 minutes to elaborate on what was taught in the video, and do a longer learning experience, which are my favorite. All in all, this was a wonderful experience to have.

For my research this week, I found an article from Edutopia, titled, Myths That Undermine Parent Involvement. This article caught my attention, because I think that parent involvement is very important in the classroom. Of course there will be obstacles to that, such as, a student not having parents or having terrible parents, but we need to find ways to cope with those issues, and get more parents and guardians involved in their students school life. This article talks about the myths behind what parents think are parent involvement, and they are spot on. I know that when I was in grade school, being in the PTA as a parent what you had to do to be a good parent. Every parent that could would join the PTA. However, this article hits on how that is not very effective in being involved in their students school life. Yes, the PTA is an amazing thing for the school systems, but what the students really need are learning activities at home with their parents. Or having the parents actually in the classroom for a day to show the rest of the students something cool to learn. This article hits on those big myths of parent involvement, and is a very interesting read, because I could see them all connecting to my time in grade school, and my parents.

This article connects to the North Carolina Teaching Standard number one, because as teacher we need to demonstrate leadership in our classroom, and that means that we find different ways to get the parents involved in the classroom and in their students home life. We must show the parents different ways that they can help their child learn at home, and then the parents will be more prone to do so.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/myths-that-undermine-parent-involvement-mark-phillips

There are three kinds of people: Those who can count and those who can't.

This week in social studies methods we have been presenting our traditional lesson plans, and we have combined with another class. The combining of the classes have been really neat, because we have a lot of different kinds of education majors in our class. This gave the class a lot of diversity while we were teaching lessons, because we all come from different backgrounds.

The article that I found this week is from Science of Us, and is titled How Schools Are Failing Their Quietest Students. This article stuck out to me, because we all know that one student or friend, we have had in class, and they will sit their and literally say nothing the whole time. As a teacher how do we help that student? How do we help these students to develop these crucial social skills, that they will, without a doubt, need in the real world? We need to be able to talk to these students and see where they are in their learning. In this article it talks about a conference that teachers are having now, where they sit down and make a plan for introverted students. Introverted students are not weird or different in any way, but sometimes we do not know what these students are thinking, and getting them to participate can be hard. During these meetings, the teachers talk about different strategies they can use in the classroom to get their introverted students involved and engaged.

This article relates to the North Carolina Teaching Standard number 1, teacher leadership. The teacher needs to take the leadership role in the classroom, and figure out different strategies to help their students.

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/03/how-schools-are-failing-their-quietest-students.html

My friend recently got crushed by a pile of books, but he’s only got his shelf to blame.

Welcome back from spring break, everyone! This week in Social Studies methods, we have already hit the ground running, with the teaching of our flipped lessons this week, and teacher education interviews this Thursday! Such a stressful, but mostly exciting week.

The article I found for this week, comes from neaToday and it is titled, "Survey: Number of Future Teachers Reaches All-time Low." This is a topic that is very dear to my heart, because I personally believe that teaching is one of the most important jobs that we have. However, why are students not wanting to become teacher anymore? the percentage of students enrolled in teacher education in 2005 was 9.9%, and in 2015, it dropped down to 4.2%. That is a staggering drop in enrollment. This article tells us, that students are asking the question, who can afford to become a teacher with all this student debt? Now, I must confess, I haven also asked myself that question plenty of times, and been asked by others, but teaching is my purpose. Teaching is what I want to do for the rest of my life, but I do worry if I will be able to afford it once I am out of college. Going to Gardner-Webb, I have a ton of student debt accumulated and I worry how I will pay this off, with only my teaching salary. Still, the fact that I know that teaching is the profession for me gets me through those thoughts. The article talks about how to get more students in the teacher education programs, and it mentions paying teachers more, and lowering the cost of college. This would for sure raise the percentage of students enrolling in teacher education, but is that feasible? As much as I would love for that to happen, I am not sure if anyone will budge on that motion, since we have been asking for that for what seems like forever. So for now, we need to try to get as many people as we can involved in teaching, because our students deserve a caring, committed and qualified educator.

This article ties into the North Carolina Teaching Standard number one of teachers demonstrating leadership. Being a teacher leader, we can persuade and talk to others about what it means to be a teacher and give them examples through our lives. Being paid a not so good salary will be hard at times, but we have to be the example or leader to show others that we can push through that, and do what we love.

http://neatoday.org/2016/03/15/future-teachers-at-all-time-low/

I Tried to Take a Picture of Some Fog....I Mist.

This week in Social Studies Methods, we have been working on a plethora of different things. We have been hitting the unit hard and our PDP's, which we had meetings about today. Next, our flipped lesson plans are due this coming Thursday, and it is amazing to see those fall into place. Working on the unit, has helped me throughout the lesson planning process. I know what my thought process should be and how to effectively use that, or so I think.

For my blog this week, I found an article titles, "How Has Google Affected the Way Students Learn?". This article stuck out to me, because I am an avid Googler. (Is that a even a word?) Every time that I have a question about something, I turn to Google to answer all of my questions. A quote from the article says, "Take a loos at this question: How do modern novels represent the characteristics of humanity? If you were tasked with answering it, what would your first step be? Would you scribble down your thoughts - or would you Google it?" (KQED) If I was asked that question, I would definitely run straight to Google, possibly crying. But with so much information easily available, is it making us smarter? This article talks a little about how a researcher says that with this technology readily available to us, it does make us smarter, and we have more time to engage in different creative activities, unlike humans in the past. I found that this really ties into to learning experiences and performance tasks, because as teachers, we do need time for our students to have tasks like this, so that they get a deeper understanding of the topic, rather than just the facts we find on Google. Google is great for finding the facts about something, but as a teacher we must go deeper than that.

This article ties to the North Carolina Teaching Standard number four. Which is, Teachers Facilitate Learning for Their Students, because teachers know when and how to use technology to maximize student learning. Teachers help students use technology to learn content, think critically, solve problems, discern reliability, use information, communicate, innovate, and collaborate. Knowing when to use certain technology tools, can help the teacher be the best they can be

Here is the link to the article, "How Has Google Affected the Way Students Learn?"
http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/02/08/how-has-google-affected-the-way-students-learn/

What Do You Call An Alligator In A Vest?....An In-vest-igator!

This week in Social Studies Methods, we have learned a plethora of things. First, we learned about the acronym TPACK. TPACK stands for Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. This sounds big and complicated, but what it really is, is what your mindset should be to balance technology in your classroom. TPACK is broken down into different areas, and when the different areas are combined that is what you call the sweet spot, and where the quality of teaching really comes to life. Teachers should be well versed in their technological knowledge, content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. Quality teaching requires an understanding of the complex relationships between these three fields of knowledge and using this understanding to develop the best lessons we can. The other acronym that we have learned this week is, SAMR. SAMR stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition. The substitution stage of the SAMR is the lowest level and the redefinition stage is the highest. It is our goal to get our students to the highest level, but that does not always happen in every single lesson.

"Teacher Leadership needs to be so embedded in the profession that it's an expectation...I am supposed to lead," said NEA President Lily Eskelsen García. "It's not separate from your routine as teachers."

This week, I read the article on neaToday titled, Embedding Leadership in the Teaching Profession. This article was amazing for many reasons, but my favorite quote was the one listed above. Leadership should be expected of us as teachers. We are to lead our class in whatever we are teaching or doing. Educators and leaders should go hand in hand, because we are the experts in our fields. Being a leader does not mean that you have to go out and be an administrator, you can still be a teacher leader. If a strategy in your classroom is working well for you, then let other teachers come observe what you are doing or blog about the idea so that other teachers can be helped from your experience. Being a teacher leader, is so much more than we think.

This article obviously ties into the North Carolina Teaching Standard number one, which states that teachers leadership. This article is such a great and inspiring read! The link is below!

http://neatoday.org/2016/02/10/teacher-leadership-summit/