professional organization

The South Carolina Geographic Alliance is a group of educators ranging from kindergarten to seniors in high school and geographers from multiple universities that use geography to improve the education of young minds. Their primary goal is to bring the concepts and methodology of modern geography to the K-12 classroom by providing high-quality, low cost, professional development opportunities and materials for South Carolina educators. The SC Geographic Alliance provides geography and Social Studies standards-based professional development, in-service and pre-service technology and hands-on teaching strategy demonstrations, GEOFESTs, alliance summer geography institutes, high-quality print and multimedia teaching materials, college level pre-service courses in geography, website with lesson plans and resource library information, and cooperation with institutions of higher education who offer little or no pre-service geography. I think I would join this alliance because it is a very interesting concept that is overlooked in education. Geography really does affect history and people everyday, yet it is consistently overlooked; therefore I would join this group.  Geography does affect everything in a society, from cultures, to economy, or anything you can think of, and it is important to be used and emphasized and deeply thought about in the classroom.

Not so proud moment...

During the first week I taught my seventh period class, which I had not officially taken over yet I was merely filling in for my absent teacher, I had one of my not so proud moments of my early teaching career. I had a student that I was continually reprimanding, and refused to let me get my work done. All of a sudden I found myself doing something that my cooperating teacher told me not to do-- arguing with the student. This eventually escalated into an argument in the class, and the student getting emotional, until I gave the student the option to either leave the class or sit down and be quiet.

There were several things that I could have done to prevent this action. First of all, I never should have argued with the student. Secondly, instead of calling the student out in front of the class several times, the first few times I should have just whispered in the student's ear asking her to pay attention and stop misbehaving. Thirdly, I should have either pulled her up to my desk and talked to the student quietly or talked to the student outside. I continuously tried applying close proximity to the student; however, that did not work. It seems to me that there were a lot more little actions that I could have taken to avoid this in retrospect; however, I did learn a lot from this. For example, how little things go a long way, and how little minuscule things could escalate in a classroom and as the teacher I have to control that. I've learned a lot about how I should encounter those situations, and luckily enough I have not had another instance since; however, I know that the time will come that something crazy will happen and I'll just have to take in mind how to handle the situation.

Classroom Management

The one solution that I liked to assist in my classroom management was for every minute I have to calm down my unruly class, which is seventh period, I will keep my students two minutes after the bell. This is rather clever, because it is the last class of the day and I think it will work well. However, it is not fair for the students that aren't doing anything, and I can get into a lot of trouble for a student missing his or her bus because of my disciplinary action. I can see this being a very good idea, or get me into a lot of trouble.

Follow up: I have implemented this action into my class, and I do not let my students know that I will only keep them for no more than two minutes. This eliminated my fear about getting in trouble for holding the students; however, has not solved the problem in the classroom, and is still unfair for my good students. Therefore, I have started dismissing students after the bell based on their behavior in class. If they are good during class, they will leave before the other students who were not. I have also had problems with students who claimed that they could not stay because of getting in trouble for being late to practice. This is something I can relate to in high school; however, individually holding students in their seats solves this problem, because now this is totally left up to the individual student's actions-- and would allow to have no sympathy for them being late for practice because it will be their choice not to act up in the classroom. After all, they are a student first before an athlete. I really do like this modification, for two reasons. It allows me to punish the misbehaving students without the non-misbehaving students, and it also allows me to talk to the very poorly misbehaving students individually after class.

Unit Plan Corrections

There were three things that I could have done consistently better on in my unit plan.

First of all, I had several opportunities that I overlooked I could have used a map. For example, labeling the Roman Empire or the thirteen original US colonies, as opposed to just naming them. This would provide my students the ability to work develop more map skills and more opportunities to work with maps.

Secondly, I could have done a better job on my MIVCA standards, specifically "Meaningful." I explained why it is meaningful to me, or maybe them later in in life as future citizens; however, I didnt' explain how the lesson was at that present time meaningful to my students. For example, instead of stating that it was meaningful because my students would undersand this material, I should have stated how it wsa currently meaningful to them now. Or how they would remember the lesson better.

Thirdly, I used exit slips for most, if not all, my formal assessments. I could have very easily used a graphic organizer or once again a map-- once again this would have provided my students more ability working with maps.

Blog Two

My philosophy of teaching has not changed very much. I still believe that students should be able to analyze, synthesize, justify, and criticize the opinions of others and their own. However, I would add the fact that opinions and their ability to perform these tasks. I still believe that social studies education should provide students with the ability to become good citizens; however, I would add the fact that as life long learners, the definition of a good citizen might change as a student educates themselves and their ability to analyze, synthesize, criticize and justify opinions develops.

I have a class that really reminds me of the class portrayed in the movie Summer School. It seems to be nothing but the trouble students, and "rejects," of the school. I've often wondered how I am going to teach these students, because they legitimately do not care about learning this information. I have had no clue what to do, negative reinforcement has not worked and they do not respond to the teachers criticism. I have came up some ideas how to succeed in seeing success in these students in the classroom.

First of all, like the movie summer school, I have to find a way to make the material covered relevant to these students lives. This may or may not be easy; however, it has to be relevant to these students lives, otherwise it will not be successful. Secondly, it may be a good idea to try to find a way to positively reinforce these students. This will aid in the students learning. Thirdly, I am going to try to implement cooperative learning, and aid the bad students with a both a more capable peer and let them lead their groups. This will aid in classroom management and achieve my goals of educating my students. All of these ideas will hopefully aid in achieving my overall goals for the class.

This I Believe

I believe that education is a life long learning process. The more a person learns and educates him or her self, their awareness of the world around them increases. I recall being a young man, and hating learning things. I would be frustrated with the process, hating trying to master or recall some fact that I deemed to be completely random. In addition, school was very easy and I never felt challenged. Because of these reason, I did not like school and was very bored for many years. The older I became the more I began to enjoy my formal education; however, when I was in High School I did not enjoy it because I enjoyed learning—I enjoyed the social environment of High School. It wasn’t until my college career that I began to realize the importance of education. There is a simple truth in the old adage of “knowledge equals power,” because it does. Since I entered into college, I began to realize the importance of education, or simply put learning. Therefore, I try to learn something new every day. I’ve realized the importance of learning something new in my every day conversations. The more knowledgeable a person becomes, the more a person is admired in society. But more importantly, I found myself having intellectual conversations based on random facts I began to accumulate and formed my own opinions on. As society develops into a more diverse society, especially intellectually diverse, it has become more of a necessity for people to transform into becoming life long learners. When learning is a process that begins as a child and ends at death, it becomes a lifelong journey that is an exciting adventure. In conclusion, with the availability of technology there is no excuse for people to stop learning. If I can learn at least one new fact, idea, or thing for the rest of my life, I would accumulate a vast amount of knowledge and live each day with excitement in anticipation of what I would learn each day, each fact building upon previous knowledge shaping my opinions and beliefs about life, politics, history, and everything in between. Furthermore, learning is shaped by the various situations that people encounter every day—both good and bad alike. It is this informal education that shapes the beliefs and attitudes of people, and direct society to alleviating injustices and beginning to form an individual’s individual tranquility. Therefore, education is a life long learning process that is shaped by formal and informal education. This is what I believe.