My topic for this blog is mostly going to focus on the disenfranchised in schools: How we create that, how we can combat it and just who exactly is getting left out in the cold. I think these are huge issues that we face in our schools and they should be given a lot of attention, so thats what i intend to do with this blog. These are my sociological tendencies coming through, but as teachers I believe we are social workers to some extent. In order to properly do this part of our job we need to understand what needs to be done, and what types of situations are students are living and working in.
So, with that out of the way I’ll move on to tell you about my feeds and such. Much of this is in my 311 blog as well. I have an RSS feed through my google reader account where I get articles from the NY Times, Chicago Tribune, BBC World Service and NPR News. I chose these sources mainly because they are well-respected and cater to a wide range of readers/listeners. I feel that most of these sources also give unbiased (or as unbiased as possible) opinions on current issues, which is especially important in dealing with education. I also have a link to a blog entitled Edspresso which is composed by a practicing teacher and deals with issues that teachers face today. I felt this was important to include because it gives me a perspective from someone in the field and will hopefully do the same for anyone reading my blog. Also, I have a link to everyone else in the classes blog and prof. Rozema’s blog. All of these resources will hopefully help me in my blogging process and broaden my understanding of what it means to be a teacher.
I think that Tom serves as an example of what all teachers (or would be teachers)fear they will become. I think perhaps you have stumbled onto a topic for your blog. What about studying ways to prevent burnout or becoming bogged down with the curriculum/standardized tests and finding ways to incorporate realistic school expectations within a creative classroom? I mean, you could look to see what other teachers have done to try to make everyone happy – the school administrators, the students, the teachers. How do we find a balance? I’m also very interested in this, as a soon-to-be teacher. Do we have to “teach to the test”? If students become active, engaged readers and writers in the classroom, how do they perform on assessments? I agree that it is vital to our job that we strive to outfit our students with a love and excitement for the language arts – but how exactly do we go about it? I would be very interested to see what you end up addressing in your blog, and the answers to any of these questions!
Hannah,
I’ll address both your 310 and 311 RSS notebooks in this comment.
First, you have all of the required elements, except you need to include complete class blogrolls for both 310 and 311.
In terms of your 310 topic, the idea of focusing on young teachers might yield interesting articles. About half of all new teachers quit before their fifth year. What sort of articles and resources could you discover about this problem? I imagine this question could be pursued from a number of possible angles.
A related topic (for 311) might be teacher qualification–what does it take to be a “qualified” teacher according to the state? How is this hurting or helping our schools?
Lastly, be sure to identify the feeds you’ll use to inform this blog.
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