First off, thank you all for the comments on my blog postings! You all are extremely supportive and I am lucky to have the opportunity to work with you all. Your support and kind words really mean the world to me.
This week we have continued to talk about concepts and during our zoom meeting, I was able to share my thoughts with you all on planning my unit around the concept of oppression. That seemed to go over well so that encouraged me to move forward with that concept and what I did not know is that it is actually recommended that we use two concepts for our unit. I was actually so glad to hear this because that is going to expand our realm of possibilities for our unit so much. So, I am thinking of doing Oppression and Freedom. I am thinking of doing a 2nd grade unit because it is a grade I have not worked in but it is a grade that I think I would like to teach! So, I have been looking at the unpacking documents for the Social Studies standards for 2nd grade and I feel good about all of the possibilities and the connections that I can make.
I have to admit I am not a big fan of generalizations at the moment. I am constantly brainstorming and my problem is cutting the sentence down to just a few words. I knew I was in trouble when someone said "So, it is like a tweet?" in our meeting. Literally, a red flag went off in my mind. I have a twitter but I do not tweet because of the word limit. I end up having to re-word my tweets a million times and then get frustrated. I am a long and detailed sentence type of writer so this has been interesting for me. I will get it though and I will be so proud when I do! I like the fact that this has challenged me and who knows? Maybe generalizations will inspire me to become a master "tweeter."
I am also working on my PDP and my biggest thing is picking the two areas that I want to work on most because there is so much I want to work on. My biggest thing is deciding what is going to be most beneficial for me to improve upon this semester. I want to be very thorough and specific in my goals so that is a work in progress.
Also, I had my first wisdom from experience interview with Jerrye Ficklin, a first grade teacher at Harris Elementary. She is one of the BEST teachers I know and I look up to her so it was exciting to get to interview her. I used many of the questions that we talked about in the meeting and I loved hearing her responses and I cannot wait to share it with all of you.
I hope you all have a great and productive week!
Skylar,
ReplyDeleteYour blog posts are always great because they give me a good look into what it is you are actually feeling for the week. I love the fact that you're completely honest when you post as well. I also am a little worried about generalizations myself. I think that's because we have been taught to write long and beautiful sentences that we have not had much practice with shorter and concise sentences. Hopefully we will both get there.
I look forward to reading about your interviews. Mine couldn't be scheduled until next Friday so I won't have much time to put them together but it will work out! Best of luck with the generalizations and everything else this week!
Samantha Grubb
Hey, Skylar! Your posts are always so encouraging! Thank you for sharing from your heart; I love hearing about the things that excite you and the things you are a little nervous about! When Dr. Parker was explaining generalizations, I jokingly (read: worryingly) said, "Like a tweet?" I'm so sorry if I stressed you out by saying so! The truth is, I'm a little nervous, too. I'm struggling to find a second concept that works with "redemption." We can do this, especially if we keep supporting each other!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the encouragement about the PDP. Reading your post made me want to go work on it. I learn so much from you. You are going to make an awesome teacher!
Sounds like you really enjoyed your first interview! I'm glad that it went so well for you! I'm excited to interview a couple of teachers myself and I have emailed my questions to one of them that is not close to where I live.
ReplyDeleteI am glad that we could encourage you and that you are feeling better about where you are now! Remember the video that we had to watch for one of our other classes. We can not lose our hope as a teacher. It is so important that we keep that close and never let go because losing that can break you as a teacher.
I had some trouble with my PDP also. I wanted to be too serious with it I think. I met with Dr. Parker and he suggested one that sounded even fun! So after that meeting and changing my PDP around I am so excited to accomplish my goals that I have set for myself and I hope that I can accomplish them while gaining a whole lot of knowledge at the same time!
Oppression and Freedom are great concepts to focus on! I decided to focus on bravery and expansion. It hit me this morning that expansion can stand for so many things. The first thing that I think about is expansion of land or property. I then sat awhile and just thought on it and realized that freedoms can be expanded as well and it was like a whole new world opening to me. I'm really excited to explore these concepts throughout the rest of the semester!
I enjoy reading all that you have learned during the week because it inspires me to look into similar things you are discovering and I don't feel so overwhelmed because your posts give me a direction to start searching. I especially appreciated what you said about generalizations. I am concerned that I will follow too many "rabbit trails" with the whole generalization idea. I'm not so great at staying on a direct path and I feel that until I learn more about generalizations and how to use them successfully, I will attempt to go too many different directions while preparing my unit.
ReplyDeleteSkylar, thanks for sharing your experiences with the development of your unit. Make sure you are continually describing how the experiences in the class are helping you (hopefully) to be more successful in your own future classroom.
ReplyDelete-JP