Sunday, January 22, 2012

First Post

Hello all,
My name is Anne Russell and I am a junior at The University of Southern Mississippi studying elementary and special education.   Oddly enough, I knew that I wanted to be a teacher since I was a little girl.  “School” was my favorite activity to play with my friends.  I was never caught playing the role of a student; I was always the teacher.  On my free time at home, I would organize activities and pretend to grade papers for the next meeting with my friends.  The thought of special education came to mind after volunteering for the Special Olympics- an experience that I absolutely loved.  I don’t exactly have one ideal grade level as I love working with children ranging from 1st to 3rdgrade.  The content area I am most nervous to teach is science as I have never taken an enjoyable science class.  It is a subject that I am not particularly interested in and therefore I will have to be sure to not pass on this disinterest to my students.               
 I am from Maryland and have two brothers.  I am extremely close with both of them so being so far away has been tough.  However, I also love the south and the friends that I have made here.  After graduating, choosing my location will be a very hard decision.    I love watching football and I am a huge Ravens fan!  In high school I played basketball, soccer and field hockey.  Now, I keep up with my athletic activity through intramurals and occasionally going to the gym.  I also enjoy going to the beach and skiing. 
After reading the syllabus, the fact that the class is geared towards adolescence really stood out to me.  I have not had a class thus far that focussed on that.  Also, I found it interesting that the class deals with social and personal development, not just writing.  
I believe the course is about learning strategies and techniques based on the six language arts components that make instruction more valuable.  Knowing that a classroom is diverse, multiple instructional strategies are necessary as students learn best in different ways.  Since this class focusses on adolescence, I believe we will specifically learn how to move students towards the direction of deeper and independent thinking while incorporating personal and social development.  
After reading the syllabus, I don’t think anything about the course looks particularly daunting.  I will have to manage my time wisely and stay on track with all of the postings etc. I hope to learn ways to improve instruction and have the opportunity to use them during the volunteer hours at Hawkins as I plan on attending the 3-5 PM time slot with the hope of helping students with their academic work.  I am also interested in experiencing the “pen-pal” project as it will be fascinating to hear thoughts from other students.  
I have come up with two questions after reading the syllabus: 1. Do blog postings have to be a certain length?  2. What exactly is the design-thinking approach? 

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