Day 3 Student Teaching

Greetings friends,

Wow, I almost cannot contain myself in all that I have learned and the potential for all that I have to learn on this assignment.  My cooperating teacher has demonstrated more and more confidence in me by allowing me to:

• co-teach
• serve as a reader and a scribe for a common assessment
• small group instruction
• one on one instruction
• and now the opportunity to conduct whole group instruction!

I am so excited to be studying the System 44 manual for the opportunity to begin instruction next week.  Also, today I got the opportunity to attend a grade level collaborative meeting with the fifth grade teachers.  I have never met a group of ladies that work so closely together than I have at Beechgrove Elementary.  I am so lucky to be a part of this wonderful group of ladies.

Did I mention how incredibly clean this school is?  Well, it is.  They also have scrumptious lunches including huge salads.

I almost cannot wait to see what tomorrow (Day 4) brings.  Stay tuned!  Oh and tonight is my first live chat! 

Have an awesome night. (9/5/13)

Peace and blessings, Mrs. H.

Day 2 Student Teaching

Greetings everyone,

I am back to report about another wonderfully charged day (9/4/13) of student teaching.  Today I was able to experience a PLC or grade level meeting with the school Principal and Assistant Principal.  We learned about reading and interpreting MAP test results for students and how to interpret a growth plan. I was able to observe a third grade student being administered the Woodcock Johnson test.  I experienced co-teaching for the first time with a small group of students in Reading. My assistance was needed as a reader for a common assessment in Social Studies for a fifth grade class.

A new area for me was the introduction of System 44.  It looks like I will be given the responsibility to teach a small group of six students in the instructional phase and the differentiation phase of System 44. I am now reviewing trainer notes and the teacher's manual in order to begin to prepare effective lesson plans for review by my Cooperating Teacher.  It's only the second day and she already has confidence in me to lead this group beginning next week.  I don't know if I should be nervous but I'm not.

I also enjoyed working with a small group in third grade reading and math as well as small groups and assisting with whole fifth grade classes in math and social studies where needed.  It has been a jam packed day filled with lots of new and exciting adventures.  I am already looking forward to tomorrow.

The third graders were working on polygons and I thought this was an interesting tool for recalling some polygons.

I hope that your day was filled with opportunities to learn.
Peace and blessings, Mrs. H.

Day 1 Student Teaching

Greetings!

What an awesome start to the first day (Tuesday, 9/3/13) of sixteen weeks of student teaching.  I am so excited and I am equally as "happy" as the faculty and staff at Beechgrove Elementary School where I have begun my student teaching experience.  The link below is a featured photo of the faculty and staff "happily" returning to start a brand new school year.

http://issuu.com/cincinnati/docs/community-recorder-090513?viewMode=magazine&mode=embed (See Page A4)

Beechgrove Elementary School

As I began my new experience, I didn't realize that I would be so filled with questions.  The morning was kicked off with a regularly assigned bus duty.   Immediately everything was "new" all over again.  It didn't take long after jumping right in with both feet to observations, participations, and even some co-teaching experiences with my cooperating teacher, Suzanne Smith.  Then off to an RTI - SAT meeting for a working lunch.  With schedule changes and planning changes it was easy to see how flexible a teacher must be.   The day ended with a staff meeting that I was excused from because I wasn't aware that it would be scheduled and plans were not made for me to attend.   It will be very easy to get used to an 8:20 am start with a 3:31 end, a very welcoming staff, and a beautifully adorned school that is immaculately clean.  Finally, the students made me feel like I had been there since the beginning of time.

Some technical questions came up today about the program for my cooperating teacher.  She needed to know how to access the co-teaching training module in Elluminate and the Personnel Director needed my FBI background check, physical examination, and TB test results.  Both were addressed with University personnel.

Looking forward to the next 34 days of this!
Mrs. H

The Debate - RTI and/or UDL - For Me A Happy Marriage

Good morning everyone,

Wow, it's nice to have a day off work. I feel free from everything today and the weather is actually awesome and it is planning to be around 60 degrees today. I cannot ask for any more than that on a day filled with homework assignments. I hope that your weekend is off to a great start as well.

As I reflect on these two ideas, it occurred to me what how artistic teachers actually are. It is a craft. Knowing when to use what strategies for which students must be carefully crafted in order to achieve maximum results. The most important thing gained from research on RTI (Response to Intervention) and UDL (Universal Design for Learning) is that we should use them together and we should be proactive in our approach rather than being reactive. The other thing that I garnered from research is that it's never too late to begin.

While RTI is a legal requirement, UDL is an appropriate response to that intervention. Who wouldn't want all students to learn? Who would want to not have all students in the general education population? My husband tells me that at his job, adults of all types work cooperatively everyday. These same students will one day find themselves among the general population of employment. It is important for us to teach them how to get the most of the inclusive situation. We cannot do that if we allow faulty curriculums and poor teaching practices to test them out of an inclusive education. I believe that if these two interventions and teaching strategies are implemented harmoniously that it may just reduce or eliminate the need for interventions and education in separate settings. If used effectively by anticipating student barriers and presenting educational objectives proactively rather than responding reactively this may just be the case. Finally, we must continually find ways to assess our students to ensure they are learning.

It is important to understand that UDL and RTI working together helps to educate the whole child. It is easy to see why students would want to retreat to a resource room where their individual needs and requirements are being met. That is not necessarily their educational goal and objective. It is also easy to see where some parents may be quick to agree with a disabling diagnosis to help them get the help they need with their child. Our role is to be objective and optimistic in the situation and make sure that we are offering highly flexible designs that are more likely to be adaptable for a broader range of students ruling out the need for interventions or reassignments. We can do this by implementing RTI and UDL collectively for an optimal educational experience. It will make our job more enjoyable as well.

What's not to like about it?

Enjoy your weekend. May the sun shine on you.

Peace and blessings, Belinda Harrett

All Rights Reserved ©, Please Request Permission To Duplicate. Belinda Harrett, University of the Cumberlands.

53302_Harrett_BlogWk8 A Little Early Start

Greetings friends,

I know I am getting a little early start on the week but I did want to go ahead and get a jump start on finishing up this eighth and final week.  This has to have been one of my all time favorite educational experiences.  It was a short and sweet term filled with loads of information, lots of informative assignments, never short on conversation and fellowship, and a sure bet to spark one's curiosity.  Dr. Cristine Goldberg is a Web 2.0 technology genius.  She knows exactly what can go wrong and how to prevent it ahead of time.  For that, I am very thankful.  I like to say that she has taken all of these sites for a test drive and now we can claim ownership.  All joking aside, it's been a wonderful start to my graduate school experience.

This week we will focus on developing our own idea toolkit.  This toolkit, if well thought out, and developed over time will prove to be beneficial to us as educators in a number of critical situations.  Having a continual focus on visual literacy I know that our students will benefit as well.  She developed sets of pictures that peaked our interest, stirred our curiosity, and made us laugh.  One thing I picked up from her sharing is that we should never leave home without our teaching credentials and our digital camera.  You just never know when an opportunity will present itself for you to begin to develop visual literacy sets.

We continued discussion on the brain and much valuable discussion came from that.  It is actually senseless not to incorporate all that we have learned in this area into our lesson plans and into our teaching.  Our students can benefit from this, we can certainly receive huge benefits and rewards from this knowledge, and our families will certainly share some of the benefit as well.

Once again, we're doing blog reviews, so I hope that I've characterized my blog in a way that is pleasing to every reader and made it visually appealing for all.  On a more personal note, today I got the privilege of taking my 16 year old to get his driver's permit and boy he wants to drive everywhere literally in one afternoon.  I need a break! I'm just joking.  He's been a real trooper and I believe that he's going to be a great driver, just like his big sister.  This is the culmination of all of those things that we do to nurture our kids.  It all starts to work towards their independence and our letting go.  He's my last one at home so I'm cherishing every moment of this.  Now, that's a very happy child, wouldn't you agree?

Have an awesome week.  Pictures to come soon.

Peace and blessings, Belinda Harrett
 
All Rights Reserved ©, Please Request Permission To Duplicate. Belinda Harrett, University of the Cumberlands.

53302_Harrett_BlogWk7: An Anniversary, Sweet 16, Fall Break, and a Little School Work

Greetings Friends,

Happy Fall! The weather is reaching an awesome pinnacle.  I'm reminded of that special ceremony 22 years ago on this day when I married the most wonderful man in the world.  And then 6 years later to the day, he gave me one an absolutely adorable blessing in my perfect 16 year old son, who is celebrating his birthday today.  This week begins my Fall Break but it will be filled with much work as a substitute teacher filling in for those getting an early start on their weekend.  The week will end with me traveling to spend time with my beautiful daughter in Tennessee to spend her Fall Break, college style, with her.  I'm going to need a vacation when I get back.

Sadly I report that this week's theme and activities hit home with me.  The brain is an area receiving much attention these days and with good reason.  There's something going on.  Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other brain related diseases seemed so rare or almost completely unheard of when I was a child.  They all seem so commonplace now.  The push to understand and combat these diseases is very much a reality for me.  I lost my father-in-law recently to Parkinson's Disease and Dimentia.  I also lost an aunt to Dimentia.  My father was also diagnosed recently with Parkinson's and he is fading fast.  If you think it's not important to me, think again.  I must aggressively pursue information on a regular basis to help my husband who has a propensity to develop the disease as well as my children begin now finding ways to preserve their brains.  My daughter danced the ballet for 11 years and I know that there were huge cognitive benefits with her participation in the arts.  My son danced the ballet for awhile as well and I know there were cognitive benefits for him as well.   The connection between the arts and cognition are critical for us to understand.  The need to parlay this information and use of the techniques are also very important for our students.  The need to push these learning tools over into our curriculums will have huge benefits for cognition, memory, motivation, temperament, attention, and things like reading acquisition and sequence learning.

This week at UC we explored many websites that take on an area that is new to me "social bookmarking".  I have found it to be incredibly useful for many applications but none more than personally for myself in my own classes.  The PBS site "Cyberspace" is a wonderful tool for the classroom especially for exceptional children.  The sites are carefully designed to meet the needs of the 21st Century classroom but more importantly for the 21st Century workforce.  Combining these two elements are important in the individual classroom in many ways.  It once again, affords teachers everywhere the opportunity to move back to creativity in the classroom over the "teach to the test" method of learning.  This is exciting.  I know that each and every one of us can embrace some of the technological changes coming about in Web 2.0 technologies and the implications in the classroom.

Finally, we seem to be rounding out our early Fall semester.  For me, I will be complete my first two graduate level classes.  As a student who comes from a family with no advanced education it is very rewarding for me to personally reach this pinnacle.  This semester has seemed to go by at warped speed but it has been very influential in my ability to consume and collect information that I can use directly in the classroom.  For that, I am very excited.   I wish everyone much success in the rest of the term.

Now you see why I do what I do! These two beautiful gifts from God.  God Bless You.  Catholics everywhere, the Year of Faith has now officially begun ~ embrace it.  Ooops, sorry, but one last minute addition ~ my piclit ~ so excited ~ I am actually creative. I love it.

http://www.piclits.com/viewpoem.aspx?PoemId=180319

Peace and blessings, Belinda Harrett

All Rights Reserved ©, Please Request Permission To Duplicate. Belinda Harrett, University of the Cumberlands.

Those Dominicans and Their Preaching

Hello everyone,

I hope that everyone is having a great week. I am so sorry that I am a little late posting this week. I was called in for the entire week to fill in for a gym teacher whose mother has taken a turn for the worse. She is not expected back any time soon. Please pray for them as they go through this most difficult time and please pray for the students of this inner city school as they make the adjustment to their long-time p.e. teacher being called away. This is very difficult for young children.

St. Dominic was a preacher at heart. His preaching was purely passionate. Dominic devoted himself to a passionate life of teaching and preaching out of a pure love for God. I love the way that even though he knew how it was necessary to overcome some of the most egregious heresies of his time he demonstrated time and again that the best approach to overcome the enemies of the faith was to solve the problems with a steadfast devotion to prayer, contemplation, and humility. In his preaching his focus was the dignity of human life. He was humbled and insisted that Dominican Friars were unrelentless in their pursuit of humility and their entire trust and confidence in God as the answer to evil. Preaching is an artform that takes much preparation, self-denial, and strict obedience in the spreading of God's Word. As he died, he encouraged his followers to hold true to humility. Their spirituality is largely apostolic.

One of the things that struck me as interesting about both the Dominicans and the Franciscans was their devout vow of poverty. Their mission had them completely devoted and focused on the ministry of preaching. According to Aumann, Bishop Fulk of Toulouse issued a document in which he declared: "We, Fulk ... institute Brother Dominic and his associates as preachers in our diocese ... They propose to travel on foot and to preach the word of the Gospel in evangelical poverty as religious." (127) I cannot imagine how poignant their preaching must have been given this devotion. I'm thinking now of our recent diocesan wide census where parishioners volunteered to go door to door. I wonder if our message would've been more powerful to those in our neighborhoods if we had traveled barefoot, devoting ourselves to a defined observance of poverty. I tell you if someone showed up at my door and said they were from the neighborhood Catholic church and was conducting a census of the religious traveling barefoot with a visible vow to poverty I would take them in and I would convert just on the face of their humbleness.

St. Dominic is an excellent example of how we need to rid ourselves of our personal self-efficacy and devote ourselves to the whole spirit of God. We need to let Him work in us the way that Dominic allowed Him to work in him. We can begin to appreciate what Dominic has left the Church in his contributions to sacred doctrine as a preacher and teacher.

Have an awesome week.

Peace and blessings, Belinda Harrett

All Rights Reserved ©, Please Request Permission To Duplicate. Belinda Harrett, University of the Cumberlands.