Hi ho, Spring (or Summer) Cleaning!

Over the past several months during my student teaching, my room has become a conglomeration of papers upon papers upon papers.  Not only was I not able to see my floor (it might be a black hole!), but it was difficult to maneuver through my room just to get to my desk!  I know, I know, terrible, right?  I was afraid to throw anything away during my student teaching for fear of needing something later or forgetting that I hadn't passed back something, etc.  Now that I have officially finished student teaching (submitted all my grades, said goodbye to my students and my MT), I decided to tackle the mountain of papers on my floor.  

It's amazing how much stuff we, as English teachers, collect.  Perhaps this relates to teachers in other subject areas as well.  I had extra handouts, student sample work, student artifacts, scantron tests, worksheets, packets, etc. all sitting around my floor just begging to be recycled.  It was difficult throwing things away, even when the year was over!  I still had that feeling of "perhaps I'll need this..." even though I'm completely done.  That's not to say I threw everything away.  I kept one original copy of everything I ever gave to my students and filed them in folders with appropriate titles (i.e. worksheets for Lord of the Flies went into a folder with Lord of the Flies written on the top, worksheets for miscellaneous activities like learning comma rules went into another folder).  Granted, I have nowhere to put those folders at the moment (my bookcases are exploding with books, my filing cabinet is full of art, stories, classwork from UCI, etc.) but at least they're all nice and organized.

A fellow student teacher at my school site and I discussed the importance of being organized and tidy.  Towards the end of the school year, it became exceedingly apparent to me just how organized one needs to be.  I had two piles on my floor that consisted of things I needed to grade for both of my classes.  In those piles, I had paperclips attached to specific assignments so I could differentiate one assignment from another.  Other piles around my room consisted of UCI schoolwork, old worksheets, new worksheets, etc.  I feel I wasn't as organized as I wanted to be (though I never lost a students' work the whole year!), but I feel that part of the reason I wasn't as organized is because I didn't have my own classroom (let alone my own space in the classroom).  I hope to be better organized when I get my own room.  After all, I'll have filing cabinets, a desk, (hopefully), etc. in the room that I can use for the multitudinous papers I'll be making and handing out.

Maybe I should start using colored paper....

As an end note, paperclips are the new love of my life.

My Educational Experiences with Technology

I was interested in technology since I was introduced to the computer as a little girl in third grade.  Little did I know how interested I would become, though, as I grew older.  The majority of my memories concerning technology circulate around high school.  During my time at school, when everyone was getting into new and snazzy phones, I was taking a Web Design class and fascinating over the new computers.  In the class, I created my own website on a topic of my choice (Geisha in Japan), and learned HTML and CSS.  I was already pretty computer savvy, so I knew my way around the computer pretty well.  Right now, I'm still learning and my friend is teaching me Flash and the programming language used for animations so I can create flashes to use in my classes (rather than power points).  I used Photoshop in high school (and still use it now) for art, and I am an avid gamer.  So having a top-notch laptop is important for me to get my gaming on.  I never quite learned Excel, though, to my disadvantage, but I'm sure with time and effort, I could easily pick it up.

At my school site, I was dissuaded from using technology in my class.  The computer in my class was super old (256 mb of RAM!) and hardly functioned well, if at all.  The computer labs in the library were nice, but every one was using Vista, which - in my opinion - is slow and not as great as XP or 7.  It look about 10 minutes to get students to just sign into their accounts, which took away time from them doing research or the assignment I wanted them to do.  I did not have an ELMO in my classroom, and thus I couldn't utilize that form of technology, as well.  I did experience some students who did not have a computer at home, or who did not have Internet at home (and thus could not upload their essays onto Turnitin.com), and so certain accommodations had to be made for those students.

And that's my story!