Importance of Educational Blogging

    What is educational blogging and why is it important? In all of my 20 years of life, I had never heard of this technological method to reach out to students or parents or for students to interact with their teachers and the real world. Educational blogging, often referred to as edublog, is an upcoming technology resource for students, teachers and parents to use for educational purposes. The use of technology inside of the classroom is often times being used for teachers to get students to interact and connect with their peers and the teacher because the world is becoming so involved with technology. 

    While reviewing many of my peers own blogs I found lots of information starting from supporting English language learners all the way to why there is a need for classroom routine. In many of my classmates blogs I did notice that a lot of the blogs and blog posts were aimed for an older audience, such as parents or other teachers. I think this is one of the best tools and one of the most common way that educators use their educational blogs, to reach out to an older audience and get support or ideas from them or to talk about their own ideas and values on certain topics. In one particular blog, I noticed in a blog the information about teacher salaries and classroom management in two different blog posts, I take this as a sign the blog is aimed for someone older, but there are also blogs such as Cassidy’s Classroom that seems to be aimed for parents but students are also able to interact with the blog through
h the pictures of them doing class activities. Through reading peers blog posts and seeing what they have learned throughout their time blogging you begin to see the great interest and amount of impact that future teachers want to make for their future students. 

Clipart picture of a teacher at the front of the classroom and the students engaged. 

    Last but not least my experience with blogging talk to others about experiences that I have gone through and do research on topics that truly interest me. On the other hand, because I am aiming to teach a younger age group in the future, I do not believe that I will be using this technique in the future to interact with my students or parents. I will continue to use a homepage for parents to log into and check on their students and the events or activities that are happening in the classroom. In conclusion, educational blogging was a wonderful learning experience that I was able to grow and learn more about ways to integrate technology into the classroom.

Raising Teacher's Salaries

 One of the most controversial topics in education is teacher salary, why? When you look at the Standard of Living in most states and you compare them to teacher’s salaries it makes more sense. Most of teachers salaries are at least a couple thousand dollars below the standard of living, this makes it so that many teachers are going to have to work two jobs to compromise with the deficit of salary. Many teachers go to college or universities to gain a proper education in the field to be qualified to actually have the profession but with the amount of college loans and debt, teachers struggle to pay back their debt for many years. This is seems to be one of the biggest reason to why people choose not to go into teaching, they would not make back enough money to get out of college and immediately start paying off the debt.Teaching around the world is shown to be one of the most respected professions but to the United States the respect for those in the teaching profession drops significantly. Without teachers there would be no one to grow and be successful to be the next president or to create a cure for cancer, teachers are the foundation to people knowing and creating new things every day. 

Students in a classroom sit and listen to their teacher
 as she reads aloud a book. 

I remember I was in high school, in the car with my dad and we were talking about what I really wanted to do in life and where I was looking at colleges and why I was looking at those specific colleges. He asked me, “are you sure you want to be a teacher? You know they don’t always make the most money and I just want to make sure you are happy and successful in the career path you choose.” I looked at him and said, “it’s not about the money for me dad, this is what is going to make me happy.” When you ask many education majors about why they want to go into the field, most of the time they have a true love and want to be in the profession, I honestly don’t think I can say that about many other people on other career paths, most of the time the response is, “it’s cool,” or “yeah I guess it’s interesting.” I think teachers should get a higher salary and although my opinion might be biased, I do think it’s unfair that children’s education has to suffer due to lack of teachers in the world or lack of interest from teachers because they are burnt out from having to work all the time to survive. 

Why Parent Involvement is Important

Who was the first person to read to you? It was probably your parents. They read you your first book, teach you your first words, help you learn how to walk and run. These are all key parts to getting students into school, without this then you can't walk into school on your first day of Kindergarten, you can't talk to new kids and make friends, your parents are the backbone to setting their child up for school. In an article about parent involvement, it states that no matter the parents race or economic class, having a positive parental involvement can increase students grades and test scores. For a positive parent involvement it can even be the little things, reading their child a book at night, having vocabulary set up around the house, teaching them new words. I know this all seems to be very simple but many teachers in younger education classes are having to alter or make sure that thier lesson plans teach all students the same thing, so if there is a student who has never had a book read to him, the teacher has to teach how to separate the words and pictures or the front of the book from the back. The more parents that get involved with their students education can benefit their student and the teacher so everyone in the classroom can be on the same page for learning other basic ideas.

Father and daughter smile together while working on homework together. 

As a student myself, I know it can be hard to feel like your parents are breathing down your back about school. It can get annoying sometimes, especially when you hit high school, you feel like you are old enough to handle it all on your own. I would like to say that throughout my primary education years I did it all on my own, but that would be lying to you. My mom herself was a teacher, she also didn't have the parent involvement that she gave me, she was all on her own: studying on her own, submitting college applications and scholarships on her own, she did it all without any help from her parents. So I can't say it is impossible to do on your own because my mom defeats that argument, but having a parent by your side to help you and relieve some stress is always helpful. Ever since I can remember, my parents were by my side at nights helping my studying vocabulary, math words, spelling, they were always making flashcards and teaching me in ways that my teachers weren't able to. That is why parent involvemnet in education is important, for kids who learn differently or take longer to learn, parents know their child better than anyone else and they can come up with inventive ideas to help their  students learn and understand the material better..

The Purposefulness of Special Education

What is Special Education? What do Special Education teachers do? Why do we have Special Education in schools? Have you ever asked yourself any of these questions before, I know I have and I still don't have all the answers to it. According to Understood Organization, Special Education is " a range of services that can be provided in different ways and in different settings. There's no 'one size fits all' approach to special education. It's tailored to meet the needs of students with disabilities." Unlike general education classes that some students take, special education requires teachers to almost teach one on one because no disability is alike and not everyone in special education can learn the same as another student in special education. The reason we have this service to students is to make sure that every student can learn to their own skills, in general education classes it isn't one on one teaching, most students are expected to be able to listen to the teacher and follow along. Special Education teachers are almost like superheroes, you can just never see their capes. They have the tools and abilities to assess children who might have an unfounded disability and they are in meetings with parents and other teachers making sure the student will be well equipped and have a successful learning career. 

Student with special education needs raises his hand
with his teacher smiling behind him.

Special Education holds a special place in my heart, every since I was a little girl I knew that I wanted to be a teacher when I entered high school I wanted to be an audiologist for a couple of months but then I realized I could work with students who have a deficiency and I could help them. In 4th grade I was diagnosed with being legally deaf in my right ear, I had several incidents earlier in the year with hits to the head and during my annual check up I couldn't pass my hearing test. After going in and out of doctors offices for months and meeting with my teachers and getting accommodations and always kind of feeling like the odd ball for it, I realized I never want students to feel like an odd ball at school and that's what really sparked my interest in becoming a special education teacher. The most exciting thing about it for me is knowing that as a teacher to some of those students I could have such an impact on their education career. That is part of the reason why I want to work with younger kids too, if they have a good experience getting into school then they can truly love it through the later parts of their careers. 

Caption to image, NONCOPYRIGHT image 

1 link 

1 Title 

3 Labels and Tags