What is my manifesto?

Recently, our class has been asked to make an education manifesto and as I am attempting to get my thoughts settled to figure out what teacher I want to be, I thought I'd share! Teachers are something unique and an instrument who shapes the future of the mind of young children. In some cases, we will be the majority adult face that they see all day. Five days a week, roughly eight hours a day, adding up to 40 hours a week with these young impresiable minds. I can't help but to think of my past teachers and what allowed me to accell and what kept me stagnet throughout my learning process. Throughout this semester, we have learned lesson planning tactics, strategies to keep engagement in the classroom, history, technology advantages, and many thing more. It is still hard to just pick ten things that I will take personally to heart to pursue throughout year.
  This brings up a fear I guess or hope we all have. Will I be the Impactful or Affective Teacher, that changes lives. I found a couple videos that helped me shape my manifesto!

One of my favorite quotes is

"If education is your only way out, make it a good one"

                                -Claire Boostra

TEDxTalks, C. (2012). Claire boostra- on the shift to value[Theater]. Available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEDM3zzYN_I

What is Conscious Discipline?

December 8, 2013

What is Conscious Discipline?

Conscious Discipline is a comprehensive self-regulation program that integrates social-emotional learning 
and discipline.

Every educator knows or will one day know what it feels like to have a child that may need some extra attention or some extra help calming down and getting back on track. Throughout out college career, we will find methods that work, other that don't, and many more than definitely do not work at all. With Conscious Discipline, we were able to learn methods to treat every situation into a learning situation. By following steps for help, always consult a teaching partner to learn with. 

Resources: Classroom Management: Creating a Successful K-12 Learning Community
http://consciousdiscipline.com/about/conscious_discipline.asp

Core Curriculum

December 8, 2013

Re-post from November 27, 2013

Common Core State Standards

The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.

As discussed in our BEFB 474 course at Texas A&M University, there are ups and downs to the education push for Common Core State Standards. Although, I stand against the change, as do many other educators, what is keeping the United States government from moving forward with changes to help the United States of America build state born geniuses? 

-Dina Valdez

APA Style: Mission Statement: http://www.corestandards.org/

Link: Video to learn about the positives of what is to come for education in the United States: http://vimeo.com/51933492

Utah High School Football Coach Suspends Team for Cyberbullying

Repost from September 29, 2013:

December 8, 2013

"Utah High School Football Coach Suspends Entire Team Amid Reports Of Cyberbullying"

As a parent, hearing that my child was suspended off the football team would make me really upset. However, having learned why, I would become more understanding and eager to stand behind the coaching staff.

Students athletes of Union High School in Roosevelt, Utah had been caught discriminating on many harmless members of their school and taking part of activities that were off-limits to them as teenagers and as members of the Union High Varsity Football team. The coaching staff lead by Coach Labrum, said "It just felt like everything was going in a direction that we didn't want our young men going,"..."we felt like we needed to make a stand."

This topic is widely covered in almost every education course, cyber-bulling is when some one (male or female) looks to cause harm to someone else online through social media, text and picture messaging, phone calls, and a growing amount of ways of communicating. This is a topic covered in our Texas A&M University course BEFB 472, a subject that all educators and administrators must teach their students/children about in order to keep them safe. When getting to know your students, building a trust relationship is the first key to saving them from harm, because they know they can come and ask for help at any time.

This coaching staff wrote a letter to their players stating that there were to participate in community service activities, take character-education classes and attended extra study hall sessions in order to earn their right to play again in future games. The letter read on, "The lack of character we are showing off the field is outshining what we are achieving on the field. We want student-athletes that are humble to learn and grow through adversity and success on and off the field."

Please share this with any administrator or educator you feel may need a little extra push on knowing they hold the key to their students' success!

-Dina Valdez

Learn about Rules & Consequences: Classroom Management: Creating a Successful K-12 Learning Community

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/26/utah-school-football-suspends_n_3991469.html

Effective Teacher

As I am finalizing some of my projects for the semester I came upon something I created at the beginning of the semester. I would like to share my effective teacher assessment tool. Look at it and let me know what else would you add that is necessary for an effective teacher.

~Maria

 Effective teacher

Circle the boxes that apply under each category. Write the score in the box provided for each category. Add all the score from both pages. Effective Teacher Score_______/30.

Borich, G. D. (2013). The Effective Teacher. Effective teaching methods: research-based practice (Eigth ed., pp. 2-35). United States of America: Pearson.

Learning Styles

At the beginning of the semester we had a chapter on understanding your students and in that chapter it talked a lot about the importance of learning styles. This semester I also took a statistics class and my professor brought to my attention that there is an article that we should check out because it talks about there not being any statistical data to support the notion of learning styles. I just wanted to share this with everyone, whenever you have sometime you should check this article out and based on your findings and personal experiences I would like to hear your thoughts.

~Maria


http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/PSPI_9_3.pdf

Borich, G. D. (2013). Understanding Your Students. Effective teaching methods: research-based practice (Eigth ed., pp. 36-67). United States of America: Pearson.

Paper vs. Screens

Paper is starting to become obsolete in the world of reading. Students are encouraged to purchase books online, as well as read all of the material for class online. Kindles, iPads, etc. make it more accessible to read a couple of pages of your favorite book on the go. Surveys have been made that show people tend to remember more a certain part of a text when it is read in a physical layout of the book rather than the page of the pdf file. 

Having the actual book makes it easier for the reader to go back and forth from the pages as well as taking notes on the side, or even highlighting details. Some studies were made that compared whether the medium of the book affected comprehension, and the results revealed the half of the class that had the physical book did better than the other half that hade an e-reader. In my opinion I prefer to read things that I can touch. I have a harder time focusing on things that I have to read on pdf files or on my iPad; it makes it harder to keep track of pages I find important. Paper books make the reading experience more meaningful. Most of the article is based on surveys performed on adults, but what about the younger generation? Kids are growing up with iPads and know how to manipulate them. It would be interesting to see a survey performed on kids and see what results it would turn out.

Here's the link to the article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=reading-paper-screens&page=2

- Anna de la Garza 

Jabr, F. (2013, April 11). The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens. 

       Retrieved from: 

       http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=reading-paper-screens&page=2