Blog 2

I have been working along side a teacher that has been teaching for 29 years. She is wonderful and has great ideas to teach children the curriculum. Our curriculum has changed this year and has made a huge stress on teachers that have taught for many years. This teacher also is on the schools intervention team to help students struggling. This is a school wide team with a teacher from every grade level trying to think of ways to improve teaching students and school procedures if needed. She leads the teacher grade level meetings every week and she is in charge of literacy and other teachers are in charge of other areas. In this meeting the teachers discuss how they are teaching different subjects and talk about how to help children struggling. It is a great way for the teachers to find other ways to help their children that may be struggling also. The teacher sends home messages to families in the daily agenda. She types up a weekly newsletter informing parents of the curriculum the children are learning and ways to help at home, also informing of upcoming events they may attend. Parents are always free to call or email her throughout the day if they need to.

Application 1

In my interview I talked to Mrs. Hines and Mrs. Quinton. Mrs. Hines is a teacher that has taught for 29 years. Mrs. Quinton is our parent coordinator and has been going on her 2nd year. After talking with Mrs. Hines and Mrs. Quinton I chose as the area of interest to support and encourage parental support in elementary school. It has been shown that children do better when they have parental support in school. Mrs. Hines related the importance of working with parents and having them active in their child's education. Mrs. Hines has seen the benefits for children in the parents who are actively involved in their child's education. We have many events scheduled in our school monthly as well as information sent home also. One of the areas I selected within this area is school nutrition. In order for a child to be successful in school they have to have healthy food to think and process information. I also chose supporting literacy early on. A child needs reading in order to achieve in the other academic areas. Reading is the foundation to succeeding in school. A child has to be able to read to write, do social studies, math, and science. They need the academics but they also need to learn life skills to succeed in life after school.This is my third area of interest. This is important because a child needs to be able to take the information they learned in school to be able to perform tasks in the "real world" after school. This would be jobs, relationships, and everyday living. They have to have skills to have critical and creative thinking, problem solving, and know how to get along with others to be successful in life. With a parents support and giving children a healthy foundation of reading and life skills a child will be prepared for the future. My reasons for selecting these areas are because of the impact they have on children. Children need all the support they can get early on to be a success later in life. As a teacher that is our goal to help them be successful not only in the present, but also have the skills to be successful in their futures.

I have decided to interview two of the Kindergarten teachers at the school I work with. I have worked with both teachers and greatly admire their opinions. One teacher has been teacher 27 years and one for 29 years. I know over the years that they have had many things they have had to be advocates for. They have always put the children first in the day. Both teachers are very dedicated and work well beyond the school day. It is not unusual to see the two of them at school until 7:00 or 8:00 in the evening.

I hope this blog goes through to everyone. I am excited about learning more about blogging. This is a new experience for me as for many of you. We will all learn together through this course.