I am definitely going to have to become more familiar with blogging, skyping, and Live Binder. I feel like I've just scratched the surface in learning about these ways to communicate in this on-line course. However, I've always enjoyed writing. From time to time in my life, I've written things down in a personal journal. I'm a very private person, so this will be a new experience for me. To tell you the truth, I have never understood why people write such personal things on Facebook. But these writing activities will be a way to express my thoughts and understanding, so I'm looking forward to participating.
I agree with everything Parks wrote about in Chapter One. Professionalism is the key to presenting oneself to others in a way to gain respect from peers and students. One idea that I had not thought of before was the comment he made about how we've been in a student's shoes before, but they've never been in ours. That put things in perspective for me. It means I should be able to sympathize with most of the things kids are going through at this stage in their lives. Another thing I had not considered was the idea of joining the state and national associations. That's a great way to get support. Keeping a portfolio is something I wouldn't have thought of either. Keeping documents and even things from students is a great way to have documentation handy if it is ever needed in the future.
From Brighton's book I learned that the teacher will be faced with more challenges than just presenting a lesson plan to the students in the time she has with them. Students will be present in body, but not necessarily in mind while in the classroom. I understand that children are going through a lot of changes during that stage in life. I have a 15 year old. But I didn't quite grasp through my son's developing stages that he might be fearful or confused about those changes. Since he has been more open to asking my husband about things, I feel like I've been a little on the "clueless" side of his stage of puberty. Now I realize the importance of my husband being there. I'm so glad he could be. I realize now that as a teacher I have to be aware of all these changes and understand they will have more anxiety going on in their lives than just worrying about passing a test.
One of the questions I have about this course has to do with finding the video on "Various Ways to Close." I signed up on Live Binder and after that, I could not figure out how to locate the article. Can you help me with that? A question I have related to Chapter 8 of Brighton's book has to do with a school's or teacher's responsibility to the student to step in if there is some concern about deep depression. He made a comment that because of liability reasons a teacher might find it difficult to play a proper role. Can you elaborate on that topic?
One thing I am interested in learning about working with middle school students how to influence them to make good decisions in their lives without trying to be their mother, so to speak. I want to be a good role model, but will not be their guidance counselor. I've always been a good listener. I guess that's why in high school, friends would always come to me just to talk about their problems. How can I listen and not give advice?
The LiveBinder should be public. The link is here: http://www.livebinders.com/play/play_or_edit?id=113942 If you copy and paste it into the browser you should be able to get to that binder and review the items in it.
ReplyDeleteWith regard to the issue of deep depression...that is tough. That is where you have to rely on the support services of your school - hopefully you will have a counselor on campus that you can refer the student to for further evaluation. You do have to be careful with addressing this with family etc. I believe this is more true in certain communities and you have to determine the nature of the community within which you work and go from there.
With regard to helping the students make good decisions...I believe it is important to be relatively straight forward with the students about the effect of their decisions. For example, I am always very upfront about the decision to drink or do drugs. I arm myself with basic knowledge of how this affects the biology and brain development of young adolescents. They react better to facts and information and a discussion of potential consequences to their decisions more than to "mothering" or any sort of "just say no" type of interaction.