Blog Assignment #12

I admit that this is a late but I will do it either way. I feel that it's important and we, as students, have the power to help others learn or think about things they may not have before. I am a K-6 teacher education major, more so early childhood education, and I hope that this assignment will help future, as well as current, educators .

The post that I require you to read is a reply to a comment I posted on her blog for a C4T assignment. In the comment, I asked her a question. I asked her, "What advice would you give to a future educator?" Surprisingly, I received an entire blog post as a reply! That was exciting. In her posts, she lists several advice she would give to a future educator.

Assignment

For this assignment, take some time to seriously read Andrea Hernandez's post, "So, You Want to Teach?". After reading her post, please follow the requirements in "Writing A Quality Blog Post" and do the following:

1. In two or more paragraphs, tell us a little bit about her, summarize the post, and explain the significance of this post.

2. a) Create your own list of at least 5 advice you would give to future or current educators (regardless if you are one or not). You may be surprised of the many different advice people would give based on their own experience!

b) Explain each of your advice in one or more sentences so your readers understand what you mean. Everyone interprets things differently.

3. In a short paragraph, write about why you think this assignment is given. Why was it important? Why was it helpful? Why did we need to create our own list of advice?

4. Please send Andrea Hernandez ( @edtechworkshop ) a thank you tweet! Remember to include #EDM310 in your tweet.

A Little Piece of Advice

Andrea Hernandez is the owner of a blog called "EdTech Workshop". Andrea Hernandez labels herself as a "passionate educator" and is currently exploring the usage of blogs as a platform for personalized learning and documenting the changes & growth in each subject. She is currently a 21st century learning specialist and instructional coach at Martin J. Gottlieb Day School, facilitating online classes for Professional Learning Board and co-creating a conference called "EdJEWcon".

In her post, "So, You Want to Teach?", she gave future educators many helpful advice. In her list, she suggests that you find a mentor that you may look up to in order to learn from them, learn from everyone, be reflective, know yourself, understand that you are a learner, practice what you teach, work within your circle of influence, be prepared to work very hard, be prepared to be criticized, and to take care of yourself. You might have heard of some of these before or you might not. The advice she shares are coming from her own experience as an educator. These are things she feels that are of importance. She gives a little explanation along with each advice so the reader can understand it from her point of view.

The list of advice is mainly directed towards future educators but it may be helpful to current educators as well. The post is significant because it's a list of advice coming from an experienced educator. As an experienced educator, she knows what new educators will or may face in their future. These are her set rules and guidelines in which she goes by, worked with, and would like to share. Every educator has their own list. Some may be different than others but that's what so great. Because advice can vary from one person to another, we can compile a long list and share our own experiences and ideas. By sharing it, we learn from them and we can be better educators. By replying me as a post and not as a comment is significant as well. I think she feels like the question should be answered as a post because her blog readers will be more likely to read it since it's on the front page, and it's an important topic for her. The readers may be prospective students, future teachers, current educators, teachers, parents, or students! With the use of technology and the ability to blog, we can pass on or share our experiences to everyone around the world too! I am sure she is also trying to reach out to people with her blog post.

Advice doesn't have to come from an experienced educator. It can come from future educators, like me and you. We can provide advice based on our experience from relationships, our jobs, working with children, what we learned in our education courses, what our professor tells us, what we remember from elementary days, and etc. Here is my list of advice for future or current educators:

1. As an educator, you should be understanding and open-minded. It is not just only understanding the students but yourself, your co-workers, your environment, the work you must do, and things that might happen as well. You should keep an open mind and not be stubborn about certain things. Don't be too hard on yourself if a lesson doesn't work the way you want to. You should understand that some student's learning processes are different than others. You should understand that you are an educator, a role model, and changing lives. It's going to be a lot of work and requires your dedication and focus. I understand that this may be a hard thing to do but it's worth trying!

2. As an educator, you should keep your eyes and ears open in your classroom. There are a lot of students who are timid, shy, sad, angry, uncomfortable, or have problems. You will never know what is going on in the student's mind. They might not speak up. Even if a student acts "okay", be wary anyway. Be wary and pay attention to your student's behavior, learning process, personality, individuality, and etc. Please take notice of everything that goes on in the classroom as well, especially during activities.

3. You should be organized as much as you can. I am speaking in terms of your environment, class schedules, lesson plans, projects, due dates, daily class schedules, and etc. It is good to think and work ahead of time. It is also good to keep your papers organized. The usage of folders, notebooks, and/or schedule books can help you. I have a notebook for every subject, keep a folder for lesson plans, and use schedule book to know when due dates are. Schedule books are also good to jot down events or reminders. It is also good to keep your environment organized in a way where you can find things easily or access easily. It will save you a lot of time when you know where things are. I know it definitely helps me! A messy desk drives me crazy.

4. Don't allow peer pressure of your friends, family, and etc. change your mind about being an educator. A lot of people tend to think being a teacher is easy. They think the job is easy, the degree is easy to get, and it's "useless". You read it correctly. I've been told the degree is useless many times. It angers me but don't let it do that to you. Just remember you are changing lives in a different way. It's not bio-medical engineering, marine biology, mathematics, or anything like that, but in the end you are still helping people. Teaching is not easy at all. I tell my friends to try to be in a classroom with 15 Kindergartners. They immediately say no. Why? Because they said they just can't. They don't know how to speak with younger children. They don't know how to hold back things they usually say to adults. They get annoyed easily. I worked with Kindergartners and 1st grade for two years. The most repeated phrase is, "Miss Anna!!" more than 100 times in an hour. You need a lot of patience when it comes to younger students. Remember that everyone has their own opinion and not everyone will understands your point of view. You may try to convince them but sometimes it won't work. Don't allow people's negativity divert your path. Always stay positive and believe in yourself. If you want to become an educator, march forward and continue. Follow your heart or what makes you happy. It's your life, choice, and way of contributing to the world. No one needs to completely understand it but you.

5. Please take care of yourself. This advice is repetitive but it is very important and it needs to be stressed. You are an educator, a role model, an adult, a person, and have responsibilities. It is very important to take care of your health, your needs, possible stress, have good hygiene, have a good sleep schedule, exercise, be positive and relax. Like Andrea says, we are the conductor of the classroom. We need the energy to guide young students throughout the day. We need to be good examples to our students. It's tough being an educator. A lot of people cannot grasp that. Not everyone can "teach". Please take care of yourself. We wouldn't want the students to miss their favorite teacher!

I think this assignment was given because we get to help and share our advice with others who might want to become educators. By posting it on a blog means anyone on the web can find and read it. We will gain an audience, some may even be current educators. They might join in on creating their own list too! This assignment got me thinking and reflecting on my past experiences. I believe that through my experiences, I can help other educators by compiling a list of advice that has helped me. I believe that other students may have their own advice that they would like to share in order to help future educators like themselves. We are all connecting and helping each other out and I think that's a great thing.

I leave you with an inspirational video that I found while looking through YouTube after reading Carly's Blog Assignment #12 post.