Celebrating Failure in Rm 613

Recently, I made a shocking discovery: I am considered a Millennial. Yes. I'm part of that generation that is the current bane of everyone's existence as shown below: Ok, I definitely laughed at a few of those and even made me think of my sister, who is also a Millennial. But I also kept thinking that I'm not that person. I don't think everyone deserves a medal. I struggle to decode slang. I moved out at 18 years old. And so on.  These thoughts were pushed even further into my mind by my EDTECH 537 course, where we've been reading about generational differences in regards to technology. The articles raised two major questions: whether or not generalizations about different generations are accurate AND whether or not these differences influences the way people approach technology.  For me, I agree with Professor Reeves who stated that, "It is definitely not recommended to make assumptions about any one individual, regardless of gender...

The teacher myth buster, aka Aaron Hogan , continues on in Chapter 2 by busting the myth that the best teachers effortlessly earn compliance from their students . Unlike the "no behavior problem" myth, this was one that I believed as a new teacher, but I no longer believe. Before any teaching experience, I envied teachers that seemed to quickly build strong and positive relationships with students. Eventually, I learned that student rapport is like any other relationship; it takes time and effort to build a positive relationship. Hogan's recommendation to thrive is to hook your students throughout the entire year and I appreciated that his solution wasn't do-this-and-your-classroom-will-be-instantly-awesome . He encourages you to reflect and "take time to identify those core values that will set the right tone for your school year." He also suggests redesigning one aspect of your classroom and reflecting on it every few weeks. At the Model Scho...

For many people, diseases and history are not two topics that go together; diseases are a scientific topic while history is, you know, the study of dead people. But if you examine the human experience throughout the centuries, you see that diseases have affected societies in a variety of ways. Since many of these historical diseases have been eradicated or cured with vaccines, the social effects of have been forgotten. But now we are seeing a reemergence of these diseases for a variety of reasons. Because of this connection, my sophomore students investigated disees and their effects as part of their project based learning of the Industrial Revolution. Unlike prior projects, this knowledge was not kept within the confines of the classroom; the final projects were donated to Valley Children’s Hospital in hopes of spreading awareness about historical diseases. The project was launched in November with a PearDeck where students viewed of several news reports of recent outbreaks: ...

As January 24 quickly approaches, I have been re-watching The X-Files , one of my favorite television shows. While I could go on and on about all of the things I love about the series, one of my favorites is its ability to get the viewer thinking; regardless of how many times I have watched Mulder and Scully race to uncover the truth, I'm left contemplating something new. This time I've realized how I want my students to be like Mulder and Scully. In case you are unfamiliar, Fox Mulder is a strong believer in the supernatural while Dana Scully is a strong believer in the scientific method. With most of their cases, Mulder and Scully are obviously at odds with each other; one advocating for the science-fiction explanation and the other advocating for the science-reality explanation. As the show develops, both Mulder and Scully realize that they rely on each other's strengths to solve their cases: This is further demonstrated when Mulder is abducted and Scully is left ...

Last year I had my Woodlake students complete a DBQ regarding Progressivism, where they had to argue which 20th century issue they would invest their million dollars into. As always, I had students finish significantly earlier than others so I quickly threw together another project where they had to create a poster describing a current issue that they felt needed attention. This was meant to keep the early finishers occupied, but turned into a project that the students became excited about: Ebola by Mikayla Juvera New iPhone Concerns by Ramiro Padilla North Korea by Henry Pfaff Unfortunately, because of pacing and an upcoming benchmark, we couldn't invest much time into the project, but I wished that one day I could do this project on a big scale. Then a year later, my wish was granted when I was offered my dream job at Minarets High School, a school dedicated to project-based learning. I knew immediately that one of my projects would be focused on muckraking curren...

Last week I was at one of my favorite places in the world: Target. As I was checking out, the cashier and I were discussing how crowded it was because of Back to School shopping and how some schools, including her's, were starting next week. Naturally, I mentioned that I was teacher and starting work in two weeks. Then I got the 'look , ' the ' you can't possibly be old enough to be a teacher' look .  After a brief second:"Oh, are you starting your first year?" "On no, I'm going into my third." This conversation, whether fortunately or unfortunately, happens quite frequently because of my young age and my very young appearance. While these conversations are humorous to me, my young age and appearance did affect me in my first two years of teaching, especially with my relationship to my students. Since I could easily go under cover as a high school student, I have always made great efforts to create a clear barrier between the students ...