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.