Why I'm Majoring in Education

I chose this article, mostly because I've stumbled upon it multiple times and I also wanted to bring back The Odyssey from my first paper on the digital age. 

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/why-im-majoring-in-education

I also figured a light, enjoyable read would be a nice touch to end the semester with. A reminder of why we are going into this field.

It may not be the highest paying salary and it may be tough being "stuck in school", however the rewards from working with the students is amazing. This article especially speaks to you elementary majors working with the young kids, but this can also apply to the secondary ed teachers. I mean, I'm in college and I still love arts and crafts- so high school students definitely will too!

Working in a school also gives your the opportunity for endless learning. As we get older, I see it more and more as technology advances, the older generations begin to fall behind. Being in schools, the students you teach will always be up to date. You will always be able to learn from them. They will teach you whats new, they will point out a different interpretation of the book you're teaching in class, or they will share the most recent gossip that is going around the school. Whatever it is, you will always be learning.

The feeling of helping a student find their passion, reach a goal or just helping a student get through a break up. It's the little things that happen daily in a school that is truly rewarding. You may also say that you get dealt a hand that you may not be sure about. Well, the students that are always appreciative and well behaved make up for the few that may give you a hard time.

The summers, the holidays, the weekends.. they make up for all of the hard work you put into your lessons every day. Although you may be continuing to work on those lessons those days, at least you can do that from the couch or your beach chair.

This also leads to an article my friend wrote, that I could've easily written about a few of my teachers in the past, too.

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/thank-you-to-the-best-teachers-ever-had

The students that recognize your hard work, the students that are impacted by a simple "how are you?" in the hallway, and the students that look up to you as a role model are the students that make your job worth it. The students you build bonds with over tears or over a disagreement because they skipped your class. You build relationships with students, sometime closer than anyone else. You push them to be their greatest, to reach their full potential. These are the students that make teaching the best job in the world.These are the good things that make the low salary, the long days and the hard work put into lessons worth it all. 

My First Education Conference #justteach

Front row for Linda Christensen (Left to Right: Frankie, Sarah, Kelli, Jessica, Caitlin) (PC: Dr. Johnson)

Hey everyone! I am so excited to share my experience from the RI Writing Project conference, especially for those who weren't able to make it. We missed you!!

The day started off with breakfast and the keynote speaker, Linda Christensen. As you can, expect those were both enjoyable to me! Christensen played a video:
https://youtu.be/qtOXiNx4jgQ
In this video, Denice speaks in her own accent mixing both Spanish and English to discuss her mother's accent. She says, "My momma hold her accent like a shotgun, with two good hands". Her mother uses English and Spanish together, to work with each other to keep her heritage alive as well as be able to communicate and embrace the life she has with two languages. I love the final line also, "her accent is a stubborn compass always pointing towards home". We discussed at the conference in our group the different accents in America. A question arose that really stuck with me... Why are some accents thought of being attractive and intelligent, while others are discouraged?

Another activity that I found amazing was called a Tea Party! I love this idea or a classroom activity also! We were all assigned a role and we were to share our stories with the other people. While listening to these stories, I looked into the common themes among the roles. These people were all forced to assimilate to the dominant culture and suppress their native language. The students we got to see in a video were students of Linda Christensen.... I wish I was in that class!! Anyways, these students completed the same assignment and they were able to make so many connections, including their own lives. I thought I loved Christensen while reading her book, but being able to listen to her speak to us on the issues of power and privilege, share her own teaching experiences and lessons and answer questions was something I will never forget.

Changing gears now.. moving to small workshops.
First up, The Importance of Putting Down Roots: Greek and Latin. Here, the two speakers had three stations of activities set up to teach the meaning of the roots and using a variety of words to students. We made riddles to reveal our words with specific roots, we played a game similar to go-fish to create words made with roots, bases and suffixes and we completed revising student work just by looking at overused and oversimplified words that could be expanded on. This workshop was very helpful in providing lessons that I will keep noted for a future classroom! Not to mention the fun I had while engaging in the activities!!

#selfie #meaningfulwriters #justteach

Last, and unfortunately my least favorite part of the day was Miracle Minis: Small Lessons to Teach Effective Narrative Writing. At first I thought I was just jealous I wasn't in Christensen's workshop, but I then continued to be disappointed. We went over a few lessons and examples of how to help students but the majority of the workshop was revolved around writing our own narrative.. actually the teacher was writing out a narrative. I would have liked to have a lot more focus on how to teach writing narratives and on the little lesson worksheets we were given because I already went through high school, college and have taken extensive English courses where I know how to write an effective narrative, but I had never seen the handouts for the lessons that we received. It was nice of the speakers to plan and take their time to share their knowledge with us, after the first two amazing sessions, I was expecting a little bit more from this one.

Overall, this was a wonderful first experience at an education conference. I am so happy I was able to share this experience with a few of my classmates. This made the day even more fun, while I learned a ton! I can't wait to look into more conferences and I will be keeping an eye out this time next spring for the annual writing project conference!