New-Teacher Panel

On Monday, our Educational Psychology class held a panel of new teachers located in the local area. As I sat there thinking about who they were and what they did as teachers, it was very interesting to see where each of them was in their careers.

When one starts off in the real world it can be incomprehensible at times what is expected of them. Teachers are constantly having to figure out what goes where, much like a puzzle piece. One thing that stood out to me was the way that each one talked about their classroom and the behavior that students displayed. It's not that the students were horribly behaved, spitting gum wads into each others hair or swearing at the teacher, it was more so the fact that many of the students seemed to not be receiving developmentally appropriate materials in their every day lives.

As a child, I grew up like many other children with my parents telling me the woes of their time and "How hard school was when everything needed to be done by hand." It seemed to them, much like the teachers that sat in front of me talking, that children were losing sight of the important things in life. One issue that was brought up included the use of technology in the classroom. Living in the 21st century has enabled us to generate more technological advances then anyone has ever seen. Children are very impressionable people and when they see people within their microsystem constantly using, they adapt similarly, even receiving cell phones at a very young age.

I feel as though with each new generation the developmental stages of children are slowly becoming sooner. Especially with technology, many children are lacking developmentally, not experiencing face-to-face interactions like "the good ol' days." An important part in a child's development is language and without practice it can hurt them severly in the future with reading, writing, and even social skills. In the tv ads with the babies talking, you gotta wonder if children will ever get like that.

Maybe we are right in criticizing children these days, but before we do, maybe it's time to look at reality and realize that times are changing and how much can we really stop it?



Check out this article discussing the littlest of technology users
http://www.babble.com.au/2009/02/25/the-littlest-surfers/

TV ad commercial: Babies talking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_npD8zzFi0w

Paper Clips

Recently in our Educational Psychology class, we watched the movie "Paper Clips," a documentary covering the Holocaust project done by Whitwell Middle School in Tennessee. The movie was very well done and presented the story of Whitwell Middle School in a great way. I found the idea of the project very unique as well as a great experience for the students. As a future teacher it is great to hear of new techniques in getting students actively learning and interested in the subject matter.




One thing that I did wish the movie touched on was how they taught the unit of Holocaust. It was evident that the students collected paper clips to demonstrate the number of Jews killed, but we weren't shown how the students were taught. It was amazing to see the affect that the project had on some of the students and the community. The great thing about the Paper Clips project was that it not only got the students involved in learning, but guest speakers were held for the public, as well as the students, getting them involved in the lives of the students.