Steady As She Goes

Ah, another week of my level two experience has come and gone, but it was hardly uneventful. In my coordinating teacher's language arts section the students complete a daily editing paragraph with the goal being that they become aware of grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and a list of other potential writing errors. The task seems simple enough: students sit down when the bell rings and immediately begin their tedious corrections. Roughly after five minutes of editing the teacher prompts them to switch papers and puts the answers on the board for them to correct and revise the other student's previous revisions, while the teacher explains the answers. I decided to take over that small section of the class period each day after talking with my coordinating teacher because I wanted to have more face time instruction with the students so that they would be more comfortable with me and my authority. The task, on both sides, is rather easy but from my lens both the students and I are getting much more out of the ten minute activity than editing skills.

Tuesday, September 11th our class did a small unit about the World Trade Center attacks, which in and of itself was very deep for the students, who were less than 3 years old, to have empathy for those who lost their lives in the attacks. I believe from what I've learned in my education psychology classes empathy is a phenomenon that occurs right around 8th and 9th grade. There was a division in the classroom, while some were fully engaged in the material and others did not want to be there let alone learn about something that happened along time ago (of course I am paraphrasing what I saw and the impression that I got from some of the students. The 9/11 attacks were really not that long ago as I can still remember that day very vividly).

At the very same time during the 9/11 videos and discussion I had my very first run in with technology that wasn't working properly. I think it is just my generation, but I felt like I swept in and saved the day, at least in the eyes of my teacher because the result of a few clicks here and there we were back up and running. That one seemingly small event reminded me of how technologically literate a teacher must be in order to use technology in his or her classroom. Staying a leg up on the competition is going to require all of us to constantly use and integrate technology into our lessons and classroom.