What I Learned This Year – Volume 4

The picture above is from this years cross country lock-in…by far the highlight of my school year. Love those kids. few years ago, with the advice of one of my mentors, I decided to write a reflective blog post at the end of the year about what I had learned as a first year teacher.Upon…

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I Hate Lecturing

I have a problem with social studies…it is a subject that is very text and content laden. In the three years that I have taught this subject I have really struggled with what the appropriate way is to disseminate the content to my students in a manner that does not include daily use of PowerPoint presentations. I…

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Message For Teachers

The Daily Show – Crisis in Dairyland – Message for TeachersTags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook Currently in Wisconsin there is a huge debate that is raging over budget cuts in relation to state employee’s benefits…i.e. teachers. This has become a polarizing topic that has caused many protest…

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Paperless Finals

My sixth period students taking their finals using Examview. It’s been well documented that I’m not a fan of paper…and one aspect that I really appreciate about the integration of technology into the classroom setting is that it allows me to do away with many assignments that have been traditional dominated by paper. For the…

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Extending the Classroom

On Wednesday we held our 3 unit test of the school year in my social studies class. As we have progressed throughout the school year my student have learned how to use various forms of technology to prepare themselves for their test. Last night was a very busy night for me as I watched my…

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A Positive Jam

This past Friday was a horrible day for me. From my stand point as a teacher, I felt like there was nothing I did right the entire day. I was very flustered, disorganized, uninspiring, short tempered, and just not a very good teacher. I felt like I spent hours of time prepping a 50 minute…

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Globe Trotting

On Tuesday we continued our talks about maps and map projections by taking a look at some globes…that’s right, today was an old fashioned latitude and longitude scavenger hunt. Students were given a list of coordinates and city names and asked to located them on a map. The cities that students would find during their…

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What I’ve Learned This Year

When I arrived in Noel, Missouri last fall I was entering my first year of being a teacher. Being young and inexperienced, I did not fully know what to expect from being an elementary school teacher. Since last August I have grown and matured as a person and a teacher, and in the process I…

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