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/

What do you call a group of unorganized cats? A cat-astrophe!

This week in Social Studies Methods we are learning about writing our learning plans. This was originally called a lesson plan, but we are going to start calling them learning plans, because it is about the students learning, and not centered wholly around the teacher. The learning plan has some of the same aspects as a six point lesson plan does, except it is a little more detailed and you have to mention the level of DOK you are using. You also have to list your generalizations, factual content and skills. This learning plan template looks like a lot of work, but I know it will end up being super helpful for when I actually present my lesson. At the end of the template, it is asking you for steps on how you plan on transitioning and class room management skills you intend on using. This will help you to already have an idea of how you will run the lesson when you get there.

Since Social Studies Methods is a big user of technology, I found a wonderful article on neaToday titled, "Using Technology to Lift Up Students' Voices Online". In this article the teacher, Sharon Davidson, mentions many great websites that she uses in her classroom such as Doodle Buddy on their iPads to create their own avatars, Kidblogs and Twitter. The teacher in the article stresses how important it is for the students to be taught to be safe and cautious when they are working with stuff on the internet. Sharon says that twitter is a wonderful way for her kindergarteners to get their voices out in the world. How crazy is it to think that we have kindergarteners on Twitter, and they know how to use it?! Sharon also mentioned the Kidblogs, and how wonderful that was for her students to write about what they think on subjects and then to explore what other people have blogged about in kid friendly manners. Sharon loves that her students have such great ideas all the time, and that they can share these wonderful ideas with the whole world at the click of a button. Before this article, I would have never thought of using Twitter with a class of kindergartners, but this teacher seems to believe that it really helps, so maybe I will try it in the future.

I can tie this article into the North Carolina Teaching Standard number 4, because the teacher is facilitating learning to her students in different ways that can make them better problem-solvers and thinkers. Also, integrating technology is a big part of this teaching standard.

http://neatoday.org/2016/01/05/34067/

I'd tell you a chemistry joke, but I know I wouldn't get a reaction.

This week in Social studies Methods we are working on the learning experiences for our units. Basically, a learning experience is breaking down your performance task. Therefore, you build up to what the performance task at the end of the unit will be, so what skills should the students have at this point? Another great thing that happened this week was the Keep Learning Alive! conference this past Saturday. This was such an amazing experience, and I honestly learned a lot from the short time that I was there. If you have not heard about the amazing Wells Fargo 2015 Principal of the Year, Steve Lassiter, you are missing out and need to research all the great things he has done for his school and his teachers.

This week I found an article, that may be my favorite that I have found so far, and it is titled "When Grading Harms Student Learning" from Edutopia. So I want to start out by asking, is grading the focus, or is learning the focus for our students? Not saying that grading is the worst idea ever, because as teachers we need that assessment, but should that really be the focus of our classrooms? In this generation, grades are what every one looks at. This article mentions that coaches, colleges and parents look into grades so much that it defines the students. Being the horrible test taker that I am, I hate when grades influence me so much. Is there not a better way to test me for understanding, could you not see that I am trying my hardest? This article talks about how giving out zeros and points off for late work, puts students in the mindset that they will fail. Having other alternatives and not stressing students out with a grading scale, gives students hope. I think what we are learning in class about performance tasks and learning experiences are wonderful ways to assess students that will not make them stress out over not knowing whether or not A or B is the correct answer.

I can relate this article to North Carolina Teaching Standard number 4, because it states that teacher's facilitate learning for their students. This ties in with this article well, because as teachers we need to know how to facilitate learning to our students in a way that does not stress them out, but gives them hope that they can be successful.

Here is the link to the article.
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/when-grading-harms-student-learning-andrew-miller

Week 5 - Social Studies Methods :)

I love that every time I leave class, I leave with so much more knowledge than when I went in with. This week in social studies methods we have learned about a lot of important aspects in writing our unit. The focus of this week is dealing with performance tasks in our units. We have learned that performance tasks are types of assessments that we want our students to create for summative assessments. Giving a performance task to your students will help the students dive deeper into their knowledge, because they will not all have the same answers. There are different options on how to complete performance tasks. Therefore, each student will not be limited in that area. This gives the student more room to tell you what they know and what skills they have developed from the unit. Another really cool thing we learned about today was what DOK is, and that stands for, Depth of Knowledge. This is kind of like the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy, and shows different levels of thinking, but is very helpful when planning your performance tasks. On this website, it gives you a little more about DOK, and I think that this website is on BlackBoard also under course materials. http://blog.performancetask.com/how-can-educators-design-authentic-performance-tasks/.

For my research for the week, I read an article from neaToday, titled, "How High-Performing Nations Treat Educators as Professionals". This article grabbed my attention, because the title is so intriguing. This article talks about teachers from different countries, and how they are treated and the different professional development that is required of them. As teacher in the United States, we are required to go to some meetings, but not as many as people in other countries. At one point in the article it talks says that since their math and reading test scores are so high, the teachers actually have required time during the day to go to a professional development meeting. The teacher's will leave their classrooms and meet with the other teachers and talk about ways to improve their teaching. Every. Single. Day. That is a crazy amount of time being spent with your fellow educators and talking about how to make students better. However...this is obviously working very well for them! Teachers are much more respected in other countries, and seen as some of the greatest mentors. They also have the highest test scores among students. I think that we should have more professional development opportunities as teachers, because they will better us and our students in the long run. After we graduate, we should not just stop learning more, we need to have a hunger to keep on learning for the sake of our students. If you get a chance, read the rest of this awesome article, an tell me some of your thoughts on it!
http://neatoday.org/2016/01/20/high-performing-nations-professional-development/

This article ties in with the North Carolina teaching standard 3 and 5. Standard 3, is talking about the teacher knowing their content, and by going to these professional development meetings, you are gaining more content knowledge in different areas. Also, this article ties deeply into standard 5, which is that teachers reflect on their practice. One part of the standard says that teachers link professional growth with professional goals, and that could not be more true for this article.

Let's Move!

For this week of class, we have continued working on parts of our unit, and learning so much as usual. We are learning about guiding questions and I find this very interesting, because for one, I did not realize that there are three different types of questions to ask your students. First you have factual questions which are questions that are specific and timely. Next you have contextual questions, which are questions that are not timely or specific. Finally you have provocative questions, which are questions that are meant to stir up debate in your classroom. Now for provocative questions you as the teacher cannot voice your own opinion, that is very crucial to your job. Also, this week we had our Professional Development Plan meetings with Dr. Parker, and seeing all the work that is going to go into those is a little overwhelming, but it most definitely can be accomplished and will help me so much in the future.

For this blog post, I decided to do read an article from the Edutopia research highlights from 2015. The article that was most fascinating to me was then article about students with ADHD, and how to help them wiggle around and concentrate in class, with little to no distraction from the other students. This article really stuck with me, because for me, I suffer from from struggling to focus in class, and always moving around. I always got in trouble in my younger years for wanting to get up out of my seat, or playing with other kids stuff while the teacher was talking. I'm pretty sure I suffer from a little bit of ADHD, but it is not bad enough to anything about. I always have this rock that I keep with me, and whenever I feel like getting up and moving around, I will take that rock and fidget with it. This actually helps me a lot! So, I will talk about some things that I read about in the article that may help children in your class that are like me, not to be a distraction.

In the article they talked about squeeze balls, and how playing with them under their desks can help them to fidget a little and not be a distraction. Another cool fidget tool that was mentioned was silly putty or play dough. I think that this would definitely help me out, and I wish I would have thought of this sooner. My top favorite helper for students with ADHD is using exercise balls as chairs, instead of actual chairs. This not only helps with students with ADHD, but it also just helps the whole class to pay attention. I hope to use this strategy in my classroom someday, but I will have to test and see if it really will not distract other students, even if everyone has one.  Some other cool ways to help students with ADHD are with, velcro, gum, doodling, background noise, swivel chairs and standing desks. I am not to sure how well the doodling works, especially during a lesson, because I know that when I doodle in class, I am not paying attention at all. Therefore, this theory will need to be tested a little bit more. I also really like the idea of swivel chairs.  I have loved my college experience so far, because in most of my education classes we have swivel chairs, and that is so great for me!

I can tie this article on ADHD to the North Carolina Teaching Standard number two that states "Teachers Establish a Respectful Environment For a Diverse Population of Students", because ADHD is a diverse population in relation to students with learning disorders. Teachers need to establish a respected environment for these students, and help them to push through their learning disorder with the help of the teacher. The teacher should use some of the ideas listed above to help the students with ADHD, because as teachers, we want our students to be the best that we can be!

SMART Goals, Generalizations and Conceptual Lens

This week in Social Studies Methods we have learned a lot of different things, that I have never even heard about before this week. First, we learned about the SMART goals and how they help us as teachers to form goals for our PDP's. This week we had to submit a rough draft of our PDP's to Dr. Parker, and going off of the SMART goals, they made this process a lot easier to understand. Without the SMART goals, I feel as if my goals would be very broad and not achievable. Next, we learned about what a Conceptual Lens is, and how that effects our lessons. I learned that the conceptual lens the compelling question in your unit. Also, the conceptual lens should support the title of your unit. The lens should be seen as a way to get from factual knowledge to conceptual knowledge without having to tell the students exactly. The conceptual lens causing for a deeper understanding, and that is a main goal for students. Lastly, I learned what generalizations are, and how they are important to your unit. Going into today's class, I was very confused from the generalization video, only because it was so new to me. However, talking among classmates and participating in a generalization project, helped to clear up my confusion. A generalization is meant to tie two concepts together, and that will be the focus of your unit. The goal for generalizations is for the students to understand and spot the generalizations without the teacher having to tell them.

Whew, okay that was a lot to learn for one week, but thank goodness I know what all that means now.

Onto this weeks research. Once again, I decided to use an article that I got in an email today from NeaToday. The article is titled "Is Kindergarten the New First Grade? Without a Doubt, Say Researchers" The title in itself really stuck out to me, because I was very confused what they were trying to say. I know that education is advancing at a fast rate, but how could it be a whole grade level? Well, this is what I found out upon reading the article.

The article was conducted by comparing research from 1998 to 2010. However, Common Core was not around in this time, therefore some of this information is up to change. The article was talking about different statistics from teachers in 1998 to teachers in 2010. Some of the statistics were staggering. One section of the article was talking about how music and art declined significantly between 1998 to 2010. In 1998, the percentage for teacher who implemented music and art into their classrooms everyday was 34%, and in 2010, that number dropped by half to 16%! I do not know about you guys, but I do not think I would have made it through school without art and music in my life. I seen those specials as an outlet for the day, and they were a way to express ourselves in a way that is different than just math and reading. Also, testing was not even thought of in kindergarten in 1998, they have no statistics for this, but in 2010 44% of teachers reported using standardized testing 1 to 2 times a year, and 23% once or twice a month! We test our babies a little too much, in my opinion.

I agree that we need to a few tests to see how the students are improving or how they are possibly falling behind, but the amount of testing that we inflict on our students is crazy, but it is state standard. I think that we are being dictated by test scores, rather than how well our students are doing in our class, and how they are picking up on essential skills that they need in their lives, and important social skills. In closing, I want to say how important it is to integrate in every lesson that you teach. That way, despite all of the testing, we can make sure our kids have fun and get the skills they need to succeed in life.

I could tie this article to NC Teaching Standard number five which is, Teacher Reflects on Their Practice, because the teacher is responsible for analyzing students learning, and by testing, yes that is one way, but we have other ways to know. We can analyze students by facial features, their actions or maybe even by the questions they ask.

Article Link: http://neatoday.org/2016/01/19/is-kindergarten-the-new-first-grade/

Learning LOTS

This week has been super hard core. I have learned sooo much, that I have never even seen or heard of before. Social studies method has really helped me understand what my teachers have been talking about. I have heard before about content, topics and differentiation, but this week all of those words come to life for me. I learned that content was was not the same thing as a topic. Content is the big idea of a lesson. The content cannot be bound to time, it is universal, transferable, timeless and abstract. A topic is more specific than the content, and is not just straight facts. As for differentiation, I have gotten to watch a few videos on it that make the word differentiation into a verb. Differentiation is catering to every child's individual needs, and helping the student to learn the way they want too, no matter the learning disability or physical disability. Also, Dr. Parker showed us this amazing app called Plicker. Plicker was by far one of the coolest assessment techniques I have ever seen. Plicker is an app, where you go to the app, and put in your students names and it assigns them to a number, and you print out these pieces of paper with strange shapes on them. On the four sides of the paper, there is an A, B, C and D. There is a multiple choice question on the board and you raise your paper up with the paper tilted showing the answer you want. As the paper is held up, the teacher uses their phone to scan around the room to get the answers of the class, and it tells the teacher who got it right, and emails the teachers the results. IT WAS AWESOME! I highly suggest you check it out if you have not yet.

So for this weeks research, I am going to talk about student safety because I feel that that is super important. Especially in todays day and age. I get emails from NEA, and this was an article that I was emailed, and I found it to be super interesting. The article is titled "Education Support Professionals Going Above and Beyond for Student Safety", and the article mentions a lot of ways that school professionals are trying to make schools feel safe and nurturing to its students. However, three instances stood out to me the most. The first was a school security officer named, Victor Marquez, who talked about what it means to be protecting a school full of children. Watching the video of his interview, really puts what he does to protect students into perspective, and how any kind of little thing, like a playground scuffle, could turn into something detrimental. The next was a bus driver, who taught other bus driver's how to be safe, and what to do in case of an emergency. Her name was, Karen Barnes, and she cared so deeply about the safety of her students. She taught things such as, how to properly fasten a car seat, or how to strap in a wheelchair. Barnes had recently designed and built a special needs wheelchair training center, so that she could train more people at one time, and i was so popular that she built another one in another terminal. The last big section that stuck out to me, was a teacher named, Jean Fay, who talked about the Sandy Hook shooting. Fay was saying that instead of arming the teachers with guns for these kinds of situation we should arm the teachers with the resources needed to continue to provide the best possible education four our students. In the article Fay states that, "The children are our nation, and are the most valuable resource we possess. We need to provide a school environment where the children feel safe. Arm our teachers, guidance counselors, and staff support with the resources they need to reach students, every day" (neaToday). I  think that there is so much power behind that statement, and it gives me chills to think that you have so many little children's life's in your hands every day. It is our job to protect them.

I think that this article could tie into standard one of the teaching standards, because the teacher is demonstrating leadership. Every day when we walk into our classrooms, we are making the decision to protect our students, and do whatever it takes to ensure that safety. We are the leaders of that class, we need to nurture our students and keep them safe, in every way possible.

Here is the link to the article I researched!
http://neatoday.org/2016/01/13/esps-student-safety/

Here We Go!

This semester is going to be a busy one, and I know that there will be times, when I feel like I am not going to make it. However, despite the fact that I have a 20 hour semester load and competition cheerleading season is in full swing, along with basketball games, I know that I will persevere. I have faith in God, that I am in the right place in my life to fulfill my purpose. Therefore, God will get me through any struggle. The first look at the social studies methods Black Board page, made me want to cry, because of all the new stuff and all the big things that were due. However, in class today we participated in an extremely fun scavenger hunt, and I knew that I would have fun in this course, no matter how much work is required. There may be times where I am super stressed, but I know that it will all be worth it in the end.

A little bit about me, my name is Amber Townsend and I am 20 years old, a junior here at Gardner-Webb, and also a cheerleader. I live in Spruce Pine, NC, way up in the mountains where it is always cold. I have a loving mom and dad and younger sister, and I am truly blessed to have them all. I found Gardner-Webb through a cheer camp at my high school, and prayed about if I should go here or not, because this place is ridiculously expensive. I did not think that I would be able to pay for, but I kept praying about it, and decided to apply and tryout for cheerleading.  I made the team which gave me a scholarship, and I also received tons of scholarships. I was so amazed at God's amazing power! Coming to Gardner-Webb was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life, and I know it will lead me to greatness.

Teaching is my passion, and there is nothing in this entire world, that I would rather do. When I was younger I would always play "school" with my younger sister, and I would teach her random stuff that I learned at school that day. All of my teachers all throughout my school career were pretty amazing and influential. My favorite teacher in the entire world, was my elementary school teacher, who happened to be moved up to high school music when I was in high school. My music teacher had so much on his plate, all the time. At one point he was the vice principal of my high school, the drama teacher, the music teacher and the band teacher. However, my music teacher always kept a smile on my face and his. The way the children and students looked up to him, made me want to be a teacher like him some day. He would stay after for hours upon hours to help a student with whatever task they asked him. My music teacher genuinely cared for each student he had, and that is the great example I want to follow. I love children so much, and I would love to help them in every way possible.  I am so excited to be a teacher one day soon!

Now onto the research, I was looking at different articles pertaining to some problems in the North Carolina education system, and naturally a ton of articles came up. However, I read one article from the Charlotte Observer that was talking about a lawsuit that was against North Carolina schools in 2014, because the students were not receiving adequate teaching. Most of the problems were coming from the low-income schools, and some schools had received record low test scores. The court has filed that as many as 483,000 students were not proficient in reading and math and therefore, they were not getting their basic education. Now this is based completely on test scores, but that number is staggering, and is expected to keep climbing, unless the generation of new teachers step up and help out.  I know that test scores do mean that the student does not completely understand, because I am also a terrible test taker myself, and I hate when my final grade is based on test at the end when I have performed well the whole semester.

 However, I do hope that us as the new generation of teachers will be able to decrease this number of students who are not proficient in reading and math. I know that with the help of our teachers, we can be the best we can be. I will make sure that when I am a teacher I will have structured plans and fun things to do to engage the students in math and reading, because those are very important aspects of education. I will do whatever I can to see my students achieve.

If you would like to read the full article, the link is http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/education/article9120011.html

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/education/article9120011.html#storylink=cpy