As I start thinking about myself as an educator, I can pick out some strengths as well as some challenges for my future teaching. Some strengths that I have are flexibility, organization, and patience. I think these attributes will benefit me as a future teacher. No two days in teaching is alike. I will have to have a general outline for each day, but I will be prepared to change it. Some lessons will go smooth, but others will take longer or shorter than originally planned. I will have to be prepared for that. All teachers must also be organized. I believe that this is one of my best qualities. Even during college I find that I am very organized. As a teacher if your not organized that is just one more thing that you have to worry about. Some students will be harder to deal with and help than others. That is why I think my patience is a good attribute to have. If I can have patience in my class my students will feel more at ease and want to learn.
Some challenges that I might struggle with in my future classroom is caring too much about my students and finding a balance between home and school. Like many teachers, I love children and hate to see them suffer. When I become a teacher I am going to have to find the “happy medium” between caring about a student’s academic welfare and intruding too much in their life. I cannot single handedly make a child’s situation better for them. I can only take the necessary steps get them in touch with a counselor or social worker. There is so much to do as a teacher. I spend hours preparing for my college classes, and can’t imagine how much time I will spend preparing as a real teacher. I will have to figure our how to keep schoolwork at school and make time to spend with my family.
Every day technology changes. What I am learning in technology class this semester might be obsolete when I actually start teaching. I am going to have to continuously learn new and different tools every year if I want to integrate technology into my classroom. When I come across a tool that I don’t know how to use, I’m not just going to pass it by. I will find tutorials on the Internet to help me. You can find tutorial on how to do almost anything these days. If I can’t find a tutorial to use, I will ask someone else who might already be using the tool to help me.
I think technology can greatly impact student learning. Every child learns in a different way. Using technology can help me accommodate all types of learning styles. For visual learners I could use Animoto videos and Wordles to help reinforce topics. For auditory learners I could use VoiceThreads and podcasts more often. Using text to voice technology could help me accommodate struggling readers. I could even use Prezi to accommodate learners who need to see spatial relationships between topics. Technology is so versatile. It takes only a few minutes to tweak something so all learners can benefit from it.
I think all teachers need to have some confidence using technology in their classrooms. We are living in a technological world, and our students need to be prepared to participate in that world. To help promote technology in my school I would work with the principal to bring in professional development workshops on technology. I could also be available to help teachers learn how to implement technology in their classrooms. To help the faculty get ideas on how to integrate technology into the curriculum, I could set up a visit to another school that has successfully implemented it.
There are two projects that I did in technology class this semester that I definitely want to try in my own class someday. Those two projects are Google Lit Trips and a VoiceThread. Each of these projects teaches students more than just how to use technology. Literature, geography, art, math, and science could all be addressed using these two tools. The Google Lit Trip could definitely be beneficial in a classroom. It allows students to learn and “visit” a place that they may never get to see. This trip is especially interesting in Google Earth as opposed to Google Maps.
Now more than ever employers are demanding workers that take initiative, are technologically savvy, and know how to collaborate. It is my job as a future teacher to educate students for that demand. I believe integrating technology into my classroom can definitely help me meet this goal.
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