Blog 9

When working with special education teacher what are your challenges? Strengths? What could be done to increase your skills in this area?

My only issue had been that I didn’t know who my sped kids were and that I have just recently received their IEPs 3 months into school. Other than that I think the sped teachers are very helpful, and make things flow smoothly compared to how miserable they could make things. The only major thing that could be done is that I increase communication between us.

Blog #8

When using technology with your students, what are your challenges? Strengths? What could be done to increase your usage of technology in the classroom?

Many of them have no idea how to operate a computer, both times I have attempted to use the laptops it has taken all my classes the entire period just to get everyone logged on and where they need to be. Which means we didn’t even get to do the lesson. I have just incorporated graphing calculators into my Adv Alg II class and they hopped right on them, it has been very beneficial to their learning of logarithms, growth, decay, and interest formulas. Have faster computers, that do not require logins, it eats up so much time that they are not practically and are really just miserable.

Blog #7

How prepared do you feel in effectively teaching your students in reading? Is this one of your strengths? A weakness?

I don’t feel very prepared at all. I hate reading books, I have read two in my lifetime and plan to die that way. I read tons of news articles, sports, and endless information on the internet just not books. So I can read well, I just do not enjoy it at all. So I would have to say this is a weakness, I don’t even know how you would start to teach reading other tell them to read.

Have you started to plan to the Common Core Standards? If you have, how is that going? If you haven’t why not? What support do you need?

I have started planning to the common core. Our district has already changed the curriculum, so my plans have to cater to the common core standards in order to prepare my students for all the district quizzes and tests. It is going ok on the planning side, but it think the leap may be far too much for our kids. I am all about setting the bar high and having them come to it, but I think in many cases we are setting are students up for failure, because they can’t not only jump in grade level ability but also develop analytical skills and perseverance overnight. I think we should implement a more gradual release.