A Collection of Random Thoughts

My project's focus was helping students who are being bullied. I think the best way to help them (or the thing that helped me the most) is writing or drawing. I had my participants doing that today. Some of them didn't want to keep their pictures so...I took them because I love them too much! It was great! I guess the motivation for the project was that I've seen so many teachers get it wrong when it comes to dealing with bullies, that I wanted to know how I would act under such a situation. How could I improve? My audience for this project was future teachers and current teachers as well. This concerns all of us, and we all have an influence on all our students. If we see bullying and don't do anything about it, that sends the message that we don't care. The form of my project was more activity based. I had my participants draw or write something which I thought was really fun and kind of relaxing. If I had known that we got so little time, then I would have ch

I think the greatest way teachers can help students is by letting them tell their story and paying attention to it. This can be by a short story assignment or just encouraging kids to write. Especially for kids who are bullied--we have a lot on our minds that often goes unsaid because we felt like no one would care. It's important to encourage students to write about their experiences so that they could try to learn from them. A great resource I found, though it seems a little rushed, is National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo. This website encourages people, student or not, to write a "novel" in the month of November and submit it at the end of the month. What you do is you make a profile so that you can start your novel on November 1st. And every time you write, you copy and paste your progress into their website so they can keep track of your progress. You earn badges along the way and even get some feedback from other users. This is a great way to encourage kid

So, recently I started looking into Jack the Ripper. (Don't ask me why, it's a weird story.) I found out potential suspects and the one I think did it is named Joseph Barnet. Barnet was "active" during the late 1800's, and targeted prostitutes in London because he disagreed with "their choice of life". So you know--he killed them. (Allegedly!) He was roommates with the last Jack the Ripper victim; Mary Kelly. Rumor has it that Barnet was in love with Kelly, and wanted her off the streets. He earned money so that should wouldn't have to do the dirty , but he lost the job after a while so she was forced to go back to being a prostitute. They had fights over money, and ten days before Kelly was killed, Barnet left her. Coincidence? I think not! Now, as I questioned my life while researching this, I thought maybe I could write a historical fiction short story about Jack the Ripper! I could have someone kill him! So I made up a story in which Kelly'

In this semester I got to go to Preston Middle School and teach/observe students. I got some of my questions answered like what should I do if a student in class keeps goofing off, or how do I get my kids to pay attention and do their work while having fun? There are just a couple questions I still have unanswered. How will I help students who are struggling? How do I teach a student in my class whose first language isn't English? How do I get my kids interested in what I'm talking about? How do I get my kids to engage in lectures and discussions? How will I conduct my class? Will it be traditional or untraditional? Will my teaching techniques work? How can I try new things with my students without failing? Like I said. A few questions. Truth is, I'm filled with even more questions as time goes on, because I don't feel like I'm ready to enter a class on my own. I'm not ready to teach on my own! But that's ok, because I'm not even close to earning my