Reflection on Last Class

Well, today was our last class session of 504 for the summer term. (And the last day of classes of the summer term) Woo! This is what may have made it a little harder than normal to focus today, but regardless, it was a very good class session. I liked the mix of hearing the MAC graduates and the more detailed discussion that we had as a class that followed.

We started out the class with the privileged of getting to hear several MAC graduates talk about their life and career now and where they are at. It was so cool to hear MAC graduates of several ages talk about their very very different current jobs. All of them had very different backgrounds, just like our MAC class does now, and are all have current jobs at several very different schools. We got to hear experience about being at a public school, a charter school, a middle college, a private school, a low-income school. It was very awesome. I especially loved hearing the lady (Valerie?) talk about how she was first in law school before deciding to be a teacher. She also shared that she worked in Rwanda for several months before getting a job at the middle college at EMU, and I would have loved to hear more about her experience teaching abroad and how she was led into doing that. Teaching in a country like South America or Africa is something I want to get a chance to do in my life. And if I don't teach there I at least want to travel there and help out with a community project in education. I would love to talk to her more about her experiences.

They also touched on their opinion of technology in the classroom and how they are or are not implementing several aspects into their classroom. I learned a very interesting stance on technology in the classroom from these MAC graduates that I actually hadn't heard much before. What they said overall about the technology was that while it may be great and very enhancing to the classroom, sometimes you don't always even have access to the wonderful benefits of it due to the funding of your school system, age of building, or resources available in the school you're working in. One of the graduates specifically talked about the fact that while her school was equipped with several simpler forms of technology, it was always a toss-up whether or not things like the over-head projector was even going to work that day. I loved hearing the consensus from the graduates, that yes, while technology is very amazing and helpful and wonderful in the classroom, teaching takes passion, compassion, and patience which cannot be enhanced much with technology. I felt that the graduates were genuine and honest with sharing their experiences with us, and I was so gracious that they were kind about letting us potentially visit their classroom. Their advice to visit as many classrooms as possible while we are learning to teach was amazing, and something I have never heard before. Why not see as many different types of classrooms/ideas as possible?!!? This is something I will definitely be doing.

Response to Edublogger!

This wasn't a blog that I originally posted my observations on, but was another one that I found super informative. I loved this teacher's logic and style. This post about the implications of Lexile scores and readability was really fascinating for me, especially as a future English teacher. My comment to her post can be found at this link:

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/book_whisperer/2012/07/guess_my_lexile.html#comments

As a side note, I highly recommend that everyone read her post about Lexile scores. It directly reflects a lot of content that we've been learning about in terms of struggling readers and motivation.