Myself
My name is Benjamin Cox. I am a sophmore at Edinboro University. I am currently in school to become a early childhood teacher. I first thought that I would like to teach some other the older kids, meaning 3rd or 4th grade, but now after going into some classrooms I would perfer to be in kindergarten or 1st grade. Some of my interest are sports and outdoors. I love to watch and play all sorts of sports, football and basketball being my two favorites. I love being outdoors and going hiking, camping, and boating. Some of my beliefs about education is that I believe that the teacher should try to make learning fun for all students no matter what you are teaching. Also, I believe that with the right teacher, all students have the ability to succeed in school.
My Future
I have a lot of plans for my future, but first I have to finish the present. I plan on trying to get through school in 4 years with a hopeful GPA of 3.3. I also want to get a lot more experience in the classroom. So far I have gone to schools where it is just note taking and all the stuff I grew up with. I want to go to new places like a montesorri school or maybe go into a city school. This would give me an opportunity to get outside of my comfort zone and learn new ways to operate my classroom. But the opportunity I really want to take advangtage of is studying aboard. I would love to go to another country and find out their ways of teaching and learn their education system. I feel like it would give me a lot of good and new ideas that I could use in my classroom. Now it is time for my future. Like I said above I plan on graduating from Edinboro University in 2015 with my major being in early childhood/special education. I am not sure yet if I would like to persue a master's degree, so that will give me something to think about. If I don't go for one, I plan on trying to move out west to work in an elementary school out there. I would try to work in a school that is located in a suburban neighborhood. I hope to teach kindergarten or 1st grade. I plan on implementing all the techniques that I learn in college to make sure that all my students are excited to learn and succeed while doing it. I will create fun games and activities for a lot of my lessons so the students have fun while learning everything they need to know. All of these techniques will be used to make my classroom exactly how I imagined it. I see my classroom as both being fun, but while keeping order.
My Classroom
Since I would like to move out west I looked at some schools in Montana. I have gone there and I absolutely love it there and would love to work out there. I found Emily Dickinson Elementary School. It is located in Bozman, Montana which is right above Yellowstone National Park. It has an enrollment in the school of about 500 people. It has a student to student/teacher ratio of 17:1. It has an rank of 54th out of 165 Montana schools, so it is a decent school. As for the students, there are 512 students total with 8 being African American, 7 being Native American, 19 hispanic, and 457 whites. I found that out of all those students 25.2% are on free or reduced lunches. So if I teach there I can expect some diversity, but for the most part my class will be white. I would expect a pretty even split between boys and girls in my classroom. As far as socioeconomic status goes, I would probably have a wide range of class with some students be poorer and some being more on the rich side. As for as learning composition goes, the school has decent grades for math and reading, but they need some work. The average math score is 78 and the average reading score is 83.2. Compared to other schools in Montana they are ranked 54th. So based on those numbers, they are in good shape, but have room to improve.
Setting
I put everything in my classroom exactly how it needs to be. I first chose to use tables instead of desks because I plan on doing a lot of hands on activities in groups. Tables allow more room to do these activities, and also it is perfect for groups. I chose to put the desks facing that direction because it will allow all students to see. And I left plenty of space on the outsides in case I have a student in a wheelchair. I chose the teachers desk where it is so that I am still kind of close to the students, and I am able to see almost everyone. I decided to put the projector up front so everyone can see, but I also didn't put anything around it because it might distract the students. I have a reading area in the back, so that I can have a reading session or so that during free time the students will have a place to read. I have a computer in the back for educational computer games, and also so the students can work and publish their work if need be. I have storage on each side of the room so one group of people don't always have to walk to the other side of the room, they will have their own supplies on their side. I have a table in the back for me to have conferences with the students. For example, if we are writing papers I can take kids to the back table to have their papers proof read. I have a sink so that the students can wash their hands without having to leave the room. And it has a water fountain attached too, so that the students don't have to leave to get a drink. And as you enter I will have a shelf where the students can put their coats.
Intergrations
A technology that connects the students and teacher inside the classroom is the projector. I chose a projector because it allows the teacher to put up the notes from the class, so that the students can write down the information. It allows the teacher to put up the directions for assignments so the children know exactly what they are doing. And finally it allows the teacher to play videos that reinforce the lesson that the teacher is teaching. A technology that supports the publishing of student and teacher work is computers. I plan on having a computer station in my classroom and there is also usually a computer lab in schools. It can help with publishing by allowing the students to write a paper and upload it to a blog or a website. It also allows the students to put their papers up on the class website for me to grade. And finally if I have a school website I can put my work up on the site. A technology that connects the students and teacher outside the classroom is a class website. It allows students an easy way to upload their work so I have all their work in one place and the kids and parents can go back and look over their work. It also allows students to look up work that they missed because the teacher can put the notes and stuff up on the site. And finally It allows the teacher to connect with the parents by putting up a calendar of assignments and a place where parents can ask questions about what their kids are doing in my class. A technology that connects the classroom with experts from around the world is the library website. The library can have a lot of helpful resources for finding information. One way is their website. Say that your students have a research paper to write. They can use the library website to find a ton of reliable resources, including journals, books, and websites, that can help them find all the information that need. A technology that allows collaboration with others to create and share knowledge is Google drive. The students can use Google drive by having group projects and they can all make the changes directly on Google drive so that they don't have to meet up. Then, it also allows the teacher to go in and make comments to the students to help them with the project that they are working on.
Assistive Technology
My student is Felix. He is 5 years old, and he has been diagnosed with down syndrome. Down syndrome is caused from a child being born with a partial or extra chromosome. It is not that common with only 1 out of every 691 babies being born with it. There is currently 400,000 people living with down syndrome in the United States. They also are at a high risk for diseases because of down syndrome. Some common characteristics of down syndrome would be a short stature, low muscle tone, and an upward slant to their eyes. Felix can attend school, and later on in life get a job, because although they have some cognitive delays, they are usually pretty mild.
Bibliography
"Down Syndrome Facts." - National Down Syndrome Society. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2012. <http://www.ndss.org/Down-Syndrome/Down-Syndrome-Facts/>.
"Emily Dickinson School." School Digger. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2012. <http://www.schooldigger.com/go/MT/schools/0456000017/school.aspx>.
Self Reflection
I learned a lot of things that could help me as a teacher. I learned that I can use a blog to ask questions to other educators about how to handle my classroom. I can also use it to look at others blogs to find new ideas on activities and how to handle my class. This is especially helpful when I get my first job or start student teaching because if I run out of ideas for activities, I can just get some suggestions to help me. I also learned that how to use Google drive. This is especially helpful for the students to collaborate with other students. I know when I was in school if I ever did a group project and we had to work on it outside of class, it was annoying trying to find a day where everyone can meet up. So by using Google drive the students have a way to work on their projects as a group without having to meet up. They can simply go onto Google drive and work together all at the same time. The third thing I learned was how to use prezi. Prezi is useful for making presentations more exciting. Throughout school I had to sit through boring, plain powerpoints, and with prezi you can spice them up to make them more interesting. I took a risk using prezi for our group research paper because none of use were really sure how to use it, so we took a risk and decided to use it.
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