Post 16: What I've Learned This Year

I really enjoyed reading the post "What I've Learned This Year" by Mr.McClung. I often think about what my first year of teaching will be like and to be honest, it is mixed with alot of excitement and a whole lot of intimidation! I hope that I can learn as much as Mr. McClung did in his first year. First off, he starts off by saying an important decision he made this year was to be positive. I agree- negativity will get you nowhere real fast. I like how he noted that we must let our audience drive us in our lessons rather than just doing whatever we want to do thinking that the students should just do it. You want to keep the students interested. We are there for them, to teach them, to try and understand them, and to be there for them. "NO LESSON IS EVER PERFECT. THE LESSON YOU TEACH AND THE ONE YOU PLAN ARE ALWAYS DIFFERENT." It is funny that he wrote this, because I sort of learned this yesterday in my Teaching Composition class. I had my first teaching demonstration that I worked really hard on and had my plan set in stone before we started, then as class began everything changed. My lesson took on a whole new perspective and at first I was disappointed, but then it all worked out for the better.
Communication is important not only in the workplace, but in your personal life as well. As much as I hate confrontation- it is always better to talk face to face rather than by email of note. Emails and notes can take on a different tone rather than expressing what you really meant for the person to read. It's best just to go talk and get it over with. You will feel much better too. Being Reasonable is something that will take me getting used to. I am a very impatient person, but I need to realize that sometimes it will take some students longer than others to get things. Listening to your students is the most important this McClung mentioned in my eyes. I have said before that students need to feel safe with you- they need to feel like they can talk to you about things. You are supposed to be a person they can look up to and look forward to learning from- not a person that is scary to them or in some cases mute to emotions.

Post 8- Other Resources

I really enjoyed looking at this site: http://practicalprincipals.net . I found the resources they offered to be very beneficial. They had alot of good information to offer such as using different tools to add to your podcast/videocasts to make them more interesting. I specifically liked the "Bluebird's Classroom", which is a blog that a middle school teacher writes. They are blunt and quite funny to say the least. I thought the blog written today by the teacher about President Obama boring the students with his speech was interesting. As I watched the news the past few days, I have wondered why teachers and parents did not seem to be concerned with the students watching it, in fact they seemed aggravated. This blog helped me to understand the reasoning.
Also, I really liked the idea of the "Fruit Machine", which is a site that you can visit to play a learning game that helps students learn vocabulary words and their correct definitions. Depending on your age group of students, this could be very beneficial. Overall, it showed me that their are so many things out there, creative things that we can all use at teachers to help educate our students in not so boring ways. There is a whole other world out there that I never knew existed - a teacher's world. I love it.

Post 1- Who is Emily?

Hey guys! As you can see from my description to the right of this screen, I am a 26 year old wife and mother. There are a few other things listed, but to go more into detail for this assignment, I will tell you a few more things about myself. I graduated from Satsuma High School in 2002, then received my Associates degree in Business/Office Administration from Faulkner State Community College in 2005. I worked for an Institutional Review Board and traveled to and from Miami for several months and met alot of interesting people. Among those people, I met my husband Jimmy on www.myspace.com ! Yes.. on myspace! It was love at first comment. ;) We got married in October of 2007.

I worked for that company for 4 years and then received a job at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine. I am the secretary for the Assistant Dean of Student Affairs and Educational Enrichment. Together we help disadvantaged and minority students achieve their goals of becoming doctors one day.

At that same time, I started school at USA pursuing my degree in Secondary Education/English. I work full time, go to school on my lunch breaks, evenings, and online. On Spring Break of last year I had our first child, a little boy named Judson Bailey- my heart, soul, and world. I am so excited about my future as a teacher. I want to show students how creative they can be and how beautiful English really is.. if you just dig deep enough. Plus it does not hurt that I will have summers off with my little man. :)