The things I wish I knew before. . .

Last night we had our "New Teacher Panel" at our Monday night class. There were three teachers from the area who had all attended Luther and were there to share their experiences from the first years of teaching. I have to say that I think it is very important to remember that these three teachers all grew up in Decorah and still live in or near Decorah today. Coming from a rather big town, with very large schools, myself, I am wondering how teachers from Decorah fare in bigger communities. But nonetheless, here are my observations.

I noticed that these three teachers really liked the fact that they were able to get to know their students. This is an important aspect of small schools in a smaller community. These teachers seemed to think that Luther prepared them well for their lesson planning and observation time. I am very glad to hear that. It makes sense that being prepared will make you a better teacher. One thing in particular that they mentioned was to keep up with portfolio's, especially the on-line one. This is something I myself need to look into more. I currently do not understand the Chalk-and-Wire system we have here. It seems like it will be a good resource to have down the road so I will begin to look at that soon.

One major challenge all three teachers shared was being able to find a balance between home and work, and within the working environment itself. This is something I am dealing with now. I have more classes this semester than ever before in addition to work and choirs. I completely understand the need to find a good balance of activities. I will definitely take that advice and try to keep myself in a good place.

The most interesting conversation for me was about the technology use in schools. One teacher said that in his school all of the students had their own personal laptops provided by the school. I was amazed that each individual student had one! This seems absurd to me, but as they said, teaching will age you. I think I will need to search for and learn ways to incorporate technology in the classroom but also make sure that it isn't inhibiting the learning environment. I feel that too much technology will make social skills almost non-existent. I really hope that students will still love to read and play. I think technology can also be a crutch so that is something to keep in mind when I have my own classroom.

Overall, I think talking to these teachers was a good experience. It was reassuring for me to learn that life does go on after Luther and people are successful. Right now everything I'm involved in seems just to get through college, but I have to remember that it is in fact to set myself up for a successful future. I hope I can use what these teachers have said to improve who I will become as a teacher.

Just a little more green.

Majora Carter is a wonderful advocate for creating a 'green' world. I attended her lecture, "Greening our Cities", on February 2nd at the CFL at Luther College. Growing up in the Bronx in New York, she has had many life experiences I have never even imagined. The first thing I noticed about Majora Carter is how comfortable she was in front of this group. She seemed in charge and excited to share her message. This fact made me very excited to learn what she had to tell.

She opened her speech by shouting "Majora is in Decorah!" I thought that was absolutely amazing. This helped her audience feel comfortable because they were able to laugh with her. After this Majora told a few stories about her life which transitioned perfectly into her work in making the Bronx a cleaner place for the cities inhabitants.

In order to help her explain her story, she had a slide show which consisted of pictures, diagrams, videos, and information. She emphazised how we needed to do something about this 'dirty energy economy' where we pollute the earth endlessly. She included facts about how this energy pollution has affected us. Some statistics she stated were: one of four children have asthma, there is a great obesity epidemic, and fossil feul emmissions cause learning disabilities. All of these are very detrimental to our way of life. I think that we, the people of the world, should be wanting to preserve the earth for future generations, not trying to destroy it.

After describing the effects of this pollution, Majora explained some of her solutions to this problem. The best part about her ideas were that in addition to making cities more green, they also provide jobs for people who do not have any. It starts with simply cleaning up a dump, and eventually progresses through making parks and to creating a 'Greenway'. This Greenway is in the process of being built right now in the Bronx. It will provide bike paths, trees and bushes to the people of the Bronx.

Majora Carter has recently created her own organization called the Majora Carter Group. I really encourage everyone to look at her website and see if you can help make a difference in your own community. Doing 'green' things will not hurt the environment, so why not try it? Her lecture really inspired me. Her personal stories and experience made me see the truth in her story. As a speaker she was wonderful. I was very glad to have heard her and I am trying to make my own life too, just a little more green.

Click HERE to visit Majora Carter's Website.

PaPeR cLiPs -The Movie

The movie "Paper Clips" detailed a very touching story for me. For anyone who may not know what "Paper Clips" is about, it is the story of students from Whitwall Tennessee who start learning about the Holocaust. These students eventually decide to collect 6 million paper clips to illustrate the 6 million Jewish people who suffered and died in the Holocaust.

I thought this movie was a great representation of a way teachers can have an impact in the students' learning. Because the teachers were interested in learning about diversity and what happened to these people, the students became interested as well. As our class textbook describes, this is a constructivist approach to learning. The teachers are not simply directing the students what to learn nor are they telling the students information so they can pass a test. The teachers were learning along with the students, this was an amazing example for me. I think as a teacher I hope to be able to implement something like this into my classroom. I think that having the students involved in the learning experience helps them to receive more from education.

Should some form of assessment be used to determine if these students actually learned anything? I don't think a test is necessary for these children. Personally I think I would fight with E.L. Thorndike for insisting that assessment and measurement were necessary tools for education. Today there are so many tests students have to take, that they aren't even being taught for self improvement anymore. There are countless numbers of hoops to jump through just to pass high school or college. I do not think these tests actually help make someone a good or better person. These are not skills they will need in the real world. So in the case of the students of Whitwall, I think the best way to see if this project was successful would be to have them partake in an ethnographic study. This type of study would place them within a group of diversity. Within this group of diversity did the students who learned about prejudice act differently towards people of different cultures? I think this study would be very interesting to see the results. I hope that the students would treat everyone in that group equally.

Overall, "Paper Clips" was a great movie to show how one small group of teachers can make a difference and encourage learning. I think it is important for all teachers to try new things and new ways of keeping students interested so that they want to learn.

If you want to see the movie "Paper Clips" you can view it at http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/paper_clips/