Time To Say Goodbye

I can't believe another semester is over at Salem State. I've finally reached my senior year in college and I don't know if I'm ready to venture out into the real world.

I really got a lot out of this course. This is my second time taking the course. The first time, I got an incomplete that turned into an F because of an illness. This time I got to complete all my observations and I really enjoy being in a classroom.

I enjoyed doing blogs. I didn't really find them to be a pain at all. It was fun researching on topics such as social justice, Montessori schooling, and homework. I really enjoyed writing my blog on "how much homework is to much homework?" It was crazy how much homework some schools actually assign their students. I would never be able to finish all of that work.

I liked writing about the different types of schooling because it made me research something I had no idea about. I also liked writing about Vocational Schooling because so many of my friends had gone to one and I was always curious about what they entailed.

My favorite part of this entire course was the time I spent in my classroom. I really loved my students. They were all so hardworking and all they wanted to do was learn. Luckily, I still am able to see all of my children in my after school program. They always brag to all the other children, "Miss Cristina was our teacher and not yours!" It makes me really happy knowing that the students loved me that much. On my last day of observing they asked me when I would be teaching my own classroom and I told them probably not for another two years. They all frowned because by that time they would be sixth graders in middle school.

In concluding my blog, I really got a lot out of this class and I really hope it helps me in my own classroom some day!

Climbing a Rope in Gym Class

When the students shimmy up to the top of the rope they fully understand what is being taught of them.

When students begin something new in school all they have is their prior knowledge to help them in understanding the new concept. If they don't have much background knowledge of the subject they are being taught, then they probably won't succeed much in the new concept at hand.

A rope climb in gym class is a lot like an educational lesson. You first access the situation at hand; how to begin the lesson and how to physically get yourself on the rope. Once you figure out how to begin the lesson you must do it at a manner in which all of your students will understand what you are trying to say. Once you get on the rope, you must figure out how to hold on long enough to reach the top or you'll fall down to the bottom and have to start over again. Once you're halfway through the lesson, you may loose students as they may not understand the concept quite so well and they might want to give up. When you're climbing the rope you may reach a height in which you think is good enough because you're scared to go up any further. You may decide to give up but you realize you need to keep going. Once the lesson is over, you're going to have many students who feel confident in themselves and the way they handled the lesson. When a child reaches the top of the rope, all of their fears are gone and they realize that they in fact can handle gym class.

I chose a rope because I was always afraid of rope climb in gym because my little hands were never sturdy enough to let me hold on all the way to the top. While learning you need to be able to handle information all the way until the end of the lesson or you truely won't get anything out of it.

: )

Interact Club

For my second blog on social justice, I chose to talk about a club that we had in my High School. It was called the Interact Club. In the Interact Club, students from different ethnic backgrounds would all meet in the library once a week to discuss political issues within the school. We would talk about bullying, academics, and most importantly prejudism. Some of the non-American students would tell us stories about how their teachers seem to pay less attention to them when they try to answer questions in class. We were all astonished by this.

I was actually in class with a bunch of these kids and I noticed that a couple of our teachers would simply ignore that their hands were even up when they would answer a question. They would say, "Oh, nobody knows the answer to this question?" and they would just move on. It was crazy. These kids eventually went to administration and for a couple of days the principle ended up sitting in on some of our classes. The non-American kids finally got a chance to speak their voices in the classes and man were they happy about it!

Also in the Interact Club we got to do a job shadowing day. I always did something fun like be the mayor for a day, shadow a teacher, or one time I got to shadow a person from the State House. It was really cool and I learned a lot about politics. All the multi-cultured students got equal opportunites to go to all the same places that the white students got to go.

The Interact Club was really good in showing equality for everyone. It made all the students feel at home and everyone had different experiences depending on what exactly the topic of that day was.

Vocational Schooling

A vocational school (technical education) offers training in careers that require pre-excersise before college, if college is even needed after four years in a vocational school. Some careers include carpentry, electricity, auto-mechanic, esthetics, and hairdressing.

There is actually a vocational school in Wakefield, about fifteen minutes from Revere (where I live.) It is called Northeast Metropolitan Regional Vocational High School. At this particular school students perform one week in academics and then one week in their profession. This rotation continues for the entire school year. This vocational school also gets out two weeks earlier than any other high school in the district.

In the USA, vocational schools are secondary schools and classes can be offered within the school, in community colleges, or sometimes online. Also, many vocational schools are private and in some cities vocational schools are the only form of high school.

A couple of my friends attended this school. One of them was a girl and she decided to take up hairdressing. She did four years at the Northeast Metropolitican Regional Vocational High School and finished with a high school diploma and a license in hairdressing. She is a full-time hairdresser and didn't need to attend hair school after high school to further her profession.

Another friend of mine is a boy and he just recently graduated in 2008. He did four years of carpentry. He decided to do carepentry because he thought it would get him a high income job someday. He graduated the Voke with a high school diploma but he decided to further his education by going to Wentworth Institute of Technology. From there, he hopes to have a degree in carpentry by 2012.

Marie Montessori

Maria Montessori was a woman who was born in Italy. She was also the first female in Italy that the people considered a physician. Marie had a liking for childrens diseases as well as people who were hard to educate. These people were also known as "ineducable."

She then developed a teaching program that helped students who were confused with reading and writing to read and write. Her methods were different than a usual school. Instead of making children read and write constantly she made excersises for the students to perform.

I really agree with Maria Montessori's method of teaching. She was big on independence for children. She let them judge their own progress and she let them teach themselves how to do certain things. Her excersises really made children realize that if they keep at something that eventually they will succeed in understanding it.

She realized that before teaching a child, you must first understand how a child works. A child better understands something that is hands on. If you give children reading or writing excersises that are run, chances are your children will learn and have fun at the same time. They probably won't even realize that they're learning. Many of Montessori's students chose to work over play because they were playing while they were working.

I really agree with Montessori's way of teaching. As you already know, I work with children almost everyday and my kids need to see something to really understand it. They're doing MCAS right about now and we do many hands on activities with mathematics for the fourth graders. We use posters, pictures, figures and pretty much anything that can be hands on instead of repeatedly doing the skill over and over again. Sometimes, activity can really help in making a child succeed.

http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/montessori2.html

Social Justice

Social justice is having the guts to teach your students the way that you feel is correct according to how you think your students will learn the best. You generally don't have any guidelines nor do you listen to other teachers views on how to teach.

Sometimes, it is good to go to others when you're first starting to teach. This can give you some idea on how you will teach your very own classroom. For example, I'm an afterschool teacher but if I hadn't observed within any classrooms, I wouldn't really know how to manage my children in my classroom.

After reading this article, I'm curious to know why some teachers are so nurturing and others are so care free with their students? I think maybe it really depends on the personality to begin with. If you start with a teacher who loves everyone and lives a very happy, loving life; you're going to get a nurturing teacher. If you start with someone mean or haggish, most likely you'll have a very unhappy year with this teacher.

To bring outside sources in, I'm actually going to talk about a show I watch on television that has social justice in it. There is a woman and she is a teacher in a high school. While in the classroom, the teacher assigns a writing contest to her class. Surprisingly, the rebel in the class wins the contest. The teacher knows that the principal really doesn't this student but she decides to publish the rebels piece in the newspaper. The principal says that if she publishes this piece then she will be fired. The teacher thinks this is crazy and just quits instead to show how she doesn't believe in the way the principal is acting.

I think social justice is very important because it can change an entire classroom depending on the way you feel about a certain situation.

How Much Homework Is To Much Homework?

Families play a large role in the education of the children of America. Everyday a mother, a father, a sister, a brother will help their kin with their homework; therefore homework can be a concern for the entire family.

Parents ask their children everyday, "Why is your brother getting more homework then you are?" "Why are you getting more homework then your sister?" This can sometimes stereotype a family into making a parent think one of their children is smarter than the other one.

There are many reasons for teachers assigning homework. Three main reasons are: 1) to review and practice what you've learned 2) to get ready for the next day's class 3) to learn to use resources such as libraries, reference materials, and encyclopedia's.

Parents wonder if their children are actually being educated when they're doing their homework. Infact, students are being refreshed with the knowledge that they have learned previous that day so that they can be sharp with their learning.

You ask how much homework is to much homework? For an average elementary student, 40 minutes should be the maximum for them. For an average middle school student, they could suffer with up to 2 hours of homework.

Some helpful ways you can get your child to focus are as follows. If you set a regular time to do your homework, then most likely, the child will know exactly when it is time to do homework and that will be the first thing on the childs mind. You should pick a place where you can do your homework in the same spot everynight because routine is key. Removing all distractions can cause efficiency in doing your homework and maybe it can even reduce time.

There are also many special education students within my program. We usually allow them to take more then one night to do their homework. Just like a regular student, you need to follow the same steps with a special education student. These children should be watched carefully because they can easily mix up something that is so basic yet it can be so difficult for them. This is why sometimes even a parent may want to be able to be good at inclusion when raising a special education student. The boy that we have in our program is in fact very very smart but he just learns a bit slower then the other children. He tends to pay attention to detail and is very careful when working on his homework. He doesn't like to move onto something else unless he completely understands the task he has just completed. We like to give him special attention because he has advanced so much and we really are so proud of him for all of the effort he has put into understanding his classroom work and the hardwork he puts in on his homework!

As a child, I always did my homework on time and I always did it right when I got home from school because I always had soccer practice or some kind of extra curricular activity. I would always get 100% on all my homework because I always did it in the same spot and I had no distractions because I knew if I turned the television on before I was finished then my mother would be very mad at me.

I know that as a parent, I'll be able to efficiently help my child be successful with his homework.

http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content/homework.html

Some School Rules Are Just Dumb!

Okay! Most high school students understand that they're not allowed to smoke, bring guns, or make out in school, but some high school rules are just plain silly.

Students from Tennessee aren't allowed to wear plain white t-shirts, have no tardies, and absolutely no gum chewing. They get in-school suspension (in-house as known to us in Revere, MA), detention for any skin showing, and threatened by the principal for a quick kiss.

Most school administrators have made these dress code rules to promote fairness and to set the law down for students who like to over expose themselves.

One student explains that the dress code was made for safety reasons only. After Columbine, schools realized how easy it was to hide a weapon under an oversized coat. Also, you express how you're feeling through what you wear. If you're feeling a little risky that day, you may show up to school wearing something inappropriate and a dress code is there to make sure this doesn't happen.

Teachers are also so picky about food in class. You're in high school now and we all know mommy doesn't wake us up early and we sit at the table and eat. It's called the roll and leave at that age. What's the big deal if you have a small snack around 10-11 o'clock? You're stomache hasn't had food since dinner last night; that's if you even got to eat dinner with all the homework your teachers had given you.

Tardiness is also a stupid thing. Sometimes you get stuck in the hallway behind some kid who decides to bring all his books to class with him and he's walking so slow he could be walking backwards. Even if you tell your teacher this after you've arrived late, they don't believe you and still make you come back after class and wash their dirty overheads or wash the pen off the desks as punishment for being late as if you already hadn't had enough punishment standing behind the kid with the 50 pound backpack hogging the hallway.

When I was in high school, I think I was the only one who didn't get a detention. I don't know how I did it, I think I just ran because I used to play sports and tardiness meant running extra laps.

Thankfully, most of my teachers let us eat in class but we could only drink water but I always seemed to sneak in my iced coffee that I just had to have. One morning, my friend and I had made it through the door with our coffees and when we hit the stairs she dropped the entire cup! The hallway smelled like french vanilla for the next week!

I do was kicked by the dress code. Luckily, I have short arms and my shorts and skirts could be very short. Most girls envied that I was small and could wear small clothes!

Reading these students stories makes me laugh because I got away with mostly everything! :)

http://legacy.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/teenpage/050906/rules.shtml

Why are children so cliquy?

Cliques are usually a bunch of people who are friends, but the thing is not all friendship groups are cliquy. Cliques are groups of friends that tend to leave other children out on purpose. Usually in every clique, there is a leader and that leader gets to decide who is in the clique and who isn't. Children usually act much different when they're in a clique then when they're not in a clique.

Sometimes, everyone can feel left out by their friends once in a great while. Sometimes even cliques fight but sometimes you can be kicked out of a clique for fighting with the wrong person within your clique. Kids within a clique are mean to the kids who aren't in their clique and usually people outside the clique can't hang out with the people inside the clique.

Children usually form cliques in elementary school and sometimes in middle school but usually by middle school, cliques are already made. Cliques are made of kids who share an interest in something or they can like an activity like sports or games.

When I was in elementary school, there were many cliques. There were the popular girls that liked to play with Barbie's or there were the unpopular girls who wore the sneakers with the lights at the bottom. When you were 7, 8, or 9 you weren't really that mean to other people outside your clique.

Toward middle school when you were 12, 13, or 14 cliques became stronger and instead of cliquing due to what toys you played with, you cliqued because of what kinds of clothes you wore or what kind of purse your mom bought for you at the mall. Things got to be more extreme and cliques became stronger.

By the time you were in high school you had your set friends that you hung out with every weekend and if and outsider tried to come into your group, you would definitely put them in their place.

Now in college everyone just can relax. There are no more cliques and everyone is friends because in college nobody cares where you came from they just care where you are going!

I feel that by any means possible cliques should be abolished. Yes, I was part of a clique but now I know that everyone is the same and there is no reason to oust someone just because they don't like the same toy, the same boy, or they don't wear the same clothes. Just be happy being friends with everyone. It'll help you in the long run! :)

http://kidshealth.org/kid/feeling/friend/clique.html

Why are intelligent children bullied in school?

People constantly wonder as to why smart children always seem to get picked on in school. Why do the prettier, more sheek children become popular in the end? This issue has always puzzled me. Luckily, as a child I was both intelligent and popular so I had the best of both worlds. I never made fun of one of my classmates for being smart. I thought it was good to be smart. Why would you make fun of someone for being smart? The kid making fun of the smarter one was usually not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree.

If you're bullied, usually you just don't fit into the norm. For example, lets say everyone in your school is overweight or obese and you are the only thin one. You could possibly be bullied for being to thin. It could also be the exact opposite. You could be the only overweight person in your school and you could be bullied for that.

It's a good thing for nerds that when you're an adult and get a real job and go to college, no one really knows your past except for the ten people you go to college with from high school. By that time everyone is usually mature and is looking to forget the past.

Also, sometimes when you're bullied this may mean people admire you. Remember in first grade when you picked on the girl/boy you liked, well sometimes people bully people they envy. A bully is usually the weakest of them all. If you tell a bully off once, they'll usually back off.

I agree with the person writing this article. I watched one of my best friends get bullied for having a weird haircut. One day she decided she was going to speak up to the girl bullying her and I remember the exact words the girl said to my friend, "Yo, it's really chill that you're standing up to me like thi. I respect that." My friend was never bothered again.

http://www.problogs.com/Post4097.htm