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/