Blackwoods Visit!

I was so excited the other night to have one of my former students and his amazing family visit me at Blackwoods.  It was amazing to see them and talk about all of his summer adventures.  Thank goodness I was managing that night, so I could sit and chat with them for awhile!  Nothing like getting paid to catch up with some AWESOME people!  His little sister, who is three, kept telling everyone that I was going to be her teacher next!  :) THREE YEARS...yes, I already started the count down.  It just shows the love and attachment you get for these kids and their family.  The little sister wants me to come see their chickens when they get them....AND go to DISNEY with them.  :)  LOVE IT...... This is why I teach.

The 21st Century Classroom

As I look into my action research, I am overwhelmed with different information.  Joe and Nikki really opened my eyes when they said to look into things such as 21st century skills, productive time-use, differentiation. I was just researching the flipped classroom at first.  This approach to my research is gibing me so much more information and defense to why I need to flip my classroom.  I am currently reading 21st Century Skills by Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel.  This book has really opened up my eyes to how the learner has changed, even from when I was in school.  I must keep in mind these different ideas:  Authentic learning, Mental model building, Internal motivation, Multiple Intelligences, and Social learning.  Everything that I have read so far, supports my ideas towards the FLIPPED classroom.  I'm still just looking for more specific 21st century classroom ideas for the primary setting.  The search continues....

Summer of Research

Our facillitators refer to this summer as the sacraficial summer, but in all honesty I am really looking forward to it.  This enthusiasm is showing me that I have picked an action research topic that really does interest me and makes me think that it will make a difference.  I am interested to see what I find on the flipped classroom for a primary grade.  So far, I have only read about teachers in 3rd grade and up that have used this format, but I spoke with a second grade teacher who flipped her classroom and it works well for her.  She is very familiar with our school district, as she was a former students and her mom is a colleague of mine, and she thinks that it would work well in my first grade classroom, due to all of the parent involvement.   I look forward to finding the best way to go about implementing this new way of teaching with such a young group. 

The last two years have not been the easiest with things in my personal life.  Last year I attended 4 funerals within a month of one another, and I also found out that my grandma was not only diagnosed with Alzheimer's, but she is also full of cancer.  With that, a relationship ended and my new teaching team was not the most supportive group.  There were some really rough days.  I could not have done it with all 21 of these smiling faces.  These kids held my hand through some of the hardest things I've had to deal with in my 26 years of life, and they have no idea that they did.  I will always remember all of my students, but this class will have an extra special place in my heart for being the class that made me just keep going.  Everyone has those days, or times, where they feel like they just can't keep going....we are lucky as teachers to have these little dudes and dudettes to always show us the joy and happiness...even when it's a cloudy day.  So thank you to my class.  You are my true heros.

Introvert speaking out!

My cousin is in grad school to become a nurse practitioner, and recently they had to watch a TED Talk.  She found it very interesting and shared it with me.  I thought it was a great point of view for all educators to see, especially with all of the 'hype' around collaboration these days.  It's 18 minutes, but well worth the time.  Enjoy.

TED Talk - The Power of Introverts