15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy

 I came across a blog that had an entry titled "15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy" and I was instantly intrigued. Here's the list in a nutshell, but I encourage everyone to read the original blog entry (provided in the link below.) It has a bunch of little quotes and whatnot, most of which I thought could definitely apply to teaching and students in general!! For the full entry click here.

1. Give up your need to always be right
2. Give up your need for control
3. Give up on blame
4. Give up your self-defeating self-talk
5. Give up your limiting beliefs
6. Give up complaining
7. Give up the luxury of criticism
8. Give up your need to impress others
9. Give up your resistance to change
10. Give up labels
11. Give up on your fears
12. Give up your excuses
13. Give up the past
14. Give up attachment
15. Give up living your life to other people’s expectations

Seeing/Hearing Myself Teach

is soooooo weird! Granted, I'm only a Sophomore undergrad, but making this video made my career seem that much closer to a reality. I've had a good amount of experience working with kids and instructing them to a degree through various observations and whatnot, but nothing like teaching my own mini-lesson and having to watch it and hear it for myself afterward. There's always a certain degree of discomfort that causes people to ask themselves, "Do I really sound like that?!" Hah. I suppose that's along the same lines of what was going through my mind as I watched myself teach a fabricated lesson, but most of all I was just impressed with how real it felt. It got me more excited about my future career as a teacher, and helped me familiarize with the field a little better.

Video Lesson

For my video lesson, I plan on introducing a lesson about basic grammar and spelling rules. I am learning to become a high school English teacher, and it drives me absolutely insane when people (even adults!!!!) don't know the difference between "your" and "you're", "there" "their" and "they're", or even "then" and "than." To me, these are all very easy concepts to understand, and we learned them in elementary school, so why are people still mixing them up?! Though there are many other things I could include in this lesson, I am only doing an intro so it will only be a few minutes. Still, it should be fun!

Legal Concerns

I don't really feel informed enough about all the legal concerns teachers have to deal with yet, which actually worries me quite a bit! Just hearing all the different presentations of people speaking about the various court cases made me realize that there are so many legal issues out there for the world of teaching, many of which I'm not even aware of. My biggest concern at the moment is dealing with Special Education children, who have many requirements as far as their learning plans. Working with these children can quickly turn into a big legal mess if their parent feels like I am not providing the most appropriate learning environment for their child, or if they feel the school is not following the IEP or other learning plans made for the child. Aside from that, I know there are a lot of issues with tenure, salary, cutbacks and other various duties as a teacher, which worries me at times, but that constant battle for teachers' rights is just something that comes with the job I believe.

Presentation tool: Prezi

Though I am still pretty old-school and will always favor PowerPoint, I have to admit that Prezi has many advantages and I can see why it would be appealing to teachers. I would probably use Prezi a lot in my own class, simply because I will be teaching high school, and I think that age group would be a lot more engaged if I were giving a lesson on Prezi as opposed to the standard PowerPoint. Prezi makes it a bit more fun, and I think that's the main thing kids look for, and teachers should be trying to look for as well in order to keep their students interactive and engaged. I could easily post this up for my students to look at on their own time, and the videos/pictures/map of Prezi seems a lot easier/more interesting to look at on your own than a boring Powerpoint, where the setup is very standard and doesn't allow a whole lot of creative license.

Article

http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/06/28/teachers-report-educational-benefits-of-frequent-technology-use.aspx


This article discusses the benefits of technology within the classroom. The article justifies this by explaining that sometimes the kids can actually learn more from the modern-day technologies because they can identify it more than even the teachers themselves at times. I actually agree with this just because I think it's easy for kids to identify with the technologies that are being utilized during their generation, and helps them integrate their own interests with the lessons within the classroom.

Philosophy on Teaching

My reason for wanting to be a teacher is fairly simple: I want there to be one less bad one in the world. Over the past 15 years of being a student, I have had my fair share of both wonderful and pitiful teachers. Good or bad, I have taken something from each of them that has inspired me to become what I am currently working towards. I have found that one of my greatest passions is to someday have the opportunity to share what I have learned with others who are in need of my knowledge, both academically and not. That passion entails everything the world of education does, and that's how I know I need to be a part of it. I want to be everything my good teachers were, and everything my bad teachers weren't. The most important thing to me is making kids feel like they matter, not only in the classroom, but in the world at large. It's important to acknowledge each and every one of their talents and help them flourish as individuals through those talents. In my eyes, teachers should do so much more than teach a basic curriculum. Because of my personal experiences with teachers in the past, I know that they are capable of so much more. Aside from my parents, it was those few good teachers who have inspired me to become the person I am today. I believe everyone has something different to offer, and I think it's a teacher's job to discover that and help the student utilize it in the best way possible, both in and outside of the school atmosphere. I can only hope that one day I will be able to grant that motivation to my own students. I want to educate them, help them, inspire them, and be a person they know they can trust has their best interest at heart.