What if you Can’t Sleep?

So while I am laying in my bed not able to sleep tonight because there is just so much going on at all once, it got me thinking of the future. When we become teachers our personal lives aren’t just going to stop. Bad things will still happen, things will get stressful, things will keep us up at night… How do we handle that happening as well as handling our classes.

I know that it is totally inappropriate to tell our students about our personal lives. It isn’t their buisness nor should it be, but how do we separate our personal lives from our work lives without mixing them?

For me personally, I cry when I feel any emotion too much no matter if I’m happy, sad, stressed, or nervous. So I’m really worried that I am going to completely break down in front of my classes. I can hide the emotions sometimes, but there are some times where I cannot get through the day without crying.

Any advice?

Citing Sources

In my education 275 class, we are having a full discussion on citing sources. I agree that citing sources is something that needs to happen in every paper that you write, you never want to say that words are yours if they really aren’t, but something that I don’t get is the different styles of citing. Why does it matter whether or not a source is cited in APA, MLA, or Chicago Style? Does it really matter that much because it’s being cited at all? I really just do not get it.

Are there different rules and regulations that tell us what format we should cite our sources or is it up to the subject or up to the teacher? And if there aren’t these rules and regulations, then why can’t teachers just agree on one style of citing formatting? It is so incredibly annoying that all through high school and my first year of college I had only used MLA citing, but now that I am in my second year of college I have to learn how to do APA citing when I already know a great and reliable way to cite my sources.

Tell me your thoughts! And give me answers if you have them.

What is appropriate for teachers to say?

This topic has come up in my mind a lot. I know that this is an area of controversy for a lot of people, but when will we as teachers cross a line with what we say to our students?

I know so many teachers in high school and maybe even middle school that told my class to shut up. I never really thought of it as being bad because most of the time it was said, my class deserved it.., but in EDUC 275 my teacher was appalled that this was ever said in a classroom and she said that it was incredibly inappropriate. But is it really that inappropriate? I believe that it matters what class it is. I never believe that a teacher should ever tell their students to shut up right off the bat. If the class is being rowdy I think saying something like “can you all please be quiet and listen?” Or something respectful is a good way to ask at first. But if the teacher has to keep telling her students three, four, or even five times, is finally saying “shut up?” That bad?

I do believe that there are moments where teachers go to far. On Fadebook, I am friends with some of my former teachers and yesterday one of my teachers from high schools put on her status that she finally told her students that they were acting like assholes. I’m sure that her students were acting that poorly, but I believe that in a professional setting, that is highly inappropriate. No matter how much you as a teacher think this about your students on some days, I do not believe that should ever be said in the classroom.

This leads me into the topic of teachers cussing in classrooms. This did not happen in my classes ever until high school, and it was shocking. In college classes it happens daily so I guess I’m just used to it by now… But is it okay for teachers to cuss in their classrooms, even if it is not directed to their students? There are times sitting in my classes where it really doesn’t bother me, but there are other times where I feel a little offended when a teacher cusses in class.

I’m torn… Is it okay for teachers to say any of this? Where should we draw the line of what we say in our classrooms? Tell me what you think!

Bullying in Schools

This topic is something that I am very passionate about. I have had some personal experiences with bullying and I know lots of people where this has affected their life in many ways. I have seen the effect that bullying has on people up close and personal and it is absolutely heart-breaking.

This is what I did my third genre project on. I made a power point. The audience was to schools about what they can do to help prevent bullying, and also what to do about it when it does occur.

The most important points in my power point in my opinion is that there will be consequences for the people who do bully others. I believe the parents of the bully need to be called and they should have a meeting with the parents of the child who was bullied by their child. If this happens, then the parents of the bully will know what is going on and they will be able to watch their child more closely, and then the parents of the child who was bullied will also be able to watch their child to make sure that everything is getting better.

Another point that I feel is one of the most important in my power point is that schools need to be a safe environment for all students. This needs to be promoted in the school as a whole, but also in each and every classroom. Every teacher needs to be educated on the school rules and policies on bullying. There also should be a full day where each and every class should go over classroom norms so that every student understands the policies of the school and of each classroom. HOPEFULLY by giving the students information so they know what is and is not acceptable bullying will be less prevalent.

But whenever when bullying does occur, the teachers need to be educated so they know what to do. I do not believe that the same consequence should be given for all aspects of bullying. There should ALWAYS be consequences, but each and every case is different, so therefore the consequences should be different. But if the teachers and the staff of the school are educated on how to deal with bullies, then they can be handled in appropriate ways rather than ignoring it or just suspending the kids each time they do it.

Genre project 3 power point

Here is my powerpoint for my genre project 3! I think I got it to work, but if not let me know. Enjoy.

Antero gave me this great idea for a blog post so I decided to do it! When I say “teachers and their voices”, I don’t mean what they say, I literally mean their voices and HOW they speak. Antero made a comment to me say g that he lost his voice a couple of times each year in the first couple years that he taught, so being a singer, he thought I could give some suggestions on helping teachers preserve their voices.

One of the most important things you could know is that how you breathe really affects how you talk. Whenever you take a breath, you want to try and breath DEEP, all the way down in your stomach. If you breathe and your shoulders move up and down, it means that you are breathing out of your throat, so it makes it so much easier to talk out of your throat, which will ultimately make you loose your voice. This is more important when it comes to singing I do admit, but when I had a problem incorporating this aspect into my singing, I did it all the time so my body could get used to it and my throat didn’t hurt for weeks!

Whenever you speak, or yell, you want to project using your diaphragm. If you are yelling at your students and your throat hurts afterwards, that means that you were projecting out of your throat rather than your diaphragm. Yes, I do understand that when you are upset with your students and need to yell at them your first thought is not going to be, “I need to make sure I yell from my diaphragm rather than my throat”, but it will truly make a ton of difference, mostly if you have to yell at your students a lot.

Another big thing is to TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF! If you ever start to feel yourself getting a cold, don’t just hold of and wait for it to happen, try your hardest to prevent it! Or prevent it as much as you possibly can. Orange juice and tea should be your new best friend. Whenever you feel like you are getting sick or if your throat hurts, whenever you drink water, don’t drink it ice cold. Drink room temperature or above water, it’ll help relax your vocal chords.

If you are starting to lose your voice and your throat hurts, the absolute best thing to do is to not talk. Being teachers, that is incredibly challenging to do. But you ARE the teacher, you get to choose what your students do! Use that to your advantage! Have the students have a work day. Maybe have your students read aloud rather than having you read aloud. There are so many options that the students can do that has you talking very little.

Here are some tricks that helps get you your voice back. When I played Elle in Legally Blonde the Musical the weekend before/the week the show opened, I was so incredibly sick. My singing voice was so exhausted that it just started to go away. These tricks all put together in massive loads helped save my voice for the previews that we performed for my school as well as the three shows.

1.  Yes, this stuff is gross. But it totally works. When you spray it, you need to spray it all the way in the back of your throat. The spray will numb your throat and it should soothe it while it’s numb.

2. I adore this stuff. Whenever I have a show, or a voice recital, or a vocal competition I have a glass of this at least twice a week, and most definitely the evening before. It tastes pretty good too, so that’s good.

3. Water with lemon juice and honey: it needs to be warm water, and this is very sweet, but it does wonders.

If you have any questions, feel free to comment and I would love to try and answer them for you!

Weekend

This weekend was full of lots of singing for me this week. I had a voice competition that lasted 12 hours on Saturday and then I had a voice recital Sunday night! So here are a couple of the videos from this weekend 🙂 Enjoy

Cute Baby Animals

I have had a pretty horrible and stressful week, so I just don’t have the energy to talk about something that I am worried about in education, so instead I am going to post cute baby animal pictures to hopefully make some of you smile if you have had a hard week like I have had.

Something I do need to say that is that all of you are incredible. This part of the semester just keeps getting harder and more stressful, but we can all get through it. Just a month left and then we are done with this semester and we will get a very well deserving break.

Okay… now on to baby animals.

How do we Handle the Troublemakers?

Something that I am really worried abo for when I become a teacher is the troublemakers. You all know what students I’m talking about. The ones who never stop talking, who interrupt everyone, make rude comments, who are failing classes, etc. The students that don’t respect you basically. These students keep me up at night.

How should we handle these students without it getting out of hand? When I was observing a teacher for my EDUC 275 class, there were a couple troublemakers in the teachers class, but the teacher handled everything with lots of class and in a very professional way. How can I get to be at that point with my students? Obviously experience will help, but what about the first couple of years where we aren’t that experienced?

This is is the aspect of my future that scares me. Ahhhh

Spanish

I just realized that I’m a blog behind so here we go. I decided that this summer I’m going to try and learn Spanish! Because Spanish is a language that so many people know and so many people speak in the United States, specifically in Colorado.

I made this decision when I was at work on Friday night. I work at Claires in Flatirons Mall, and so this group of Mexican boys came into the store and one of them wanted to get his ears pierced. Out of this group of boys, only one of them spoke English, and it wasn’t the boy getting his ears pierced. Because of this reason, that boy had to be the translator between me and the boy getting his ears pierced. It was one of the most awkward situations I have ever faced at work. I felt awful because I wanted to talk directly to him because he was the one getting his ears pierced, but because I didn’t speak Spanish I couldn’t talk directly to him because he would have no idea what I was saying. After this happened, I came to the realization that that could come up in my classroom. If there is a student that is an English Language Learner where English is their second language, it won’t do that student much good in my class if they cannot understand what I am saying to them.

I know that I probably will never be fluent in Spanish, but knowing at least SOME Spanish can and will help immensely when it comes to being a teacher. So yeah! That’s my news.

Writing Outside of Your Comfort Zone

I really enjoyed the concept of the book “Writing Outside of your Comfort Zone,” but I actually really hated reading the book. I do believe that I will use this project in my future classrooms because I believe that it is a good idea, mostly when we are doing something similar in our class. I just think that the book is incredibly dry, and I also believe that they just ended up saying the same things over and over again. It was very redundant and I felt like a lot of parts in the book could have been removed and the same concept would still be clear.

Something that I did enjoy about the book was that it was actual teachers that wrote the book. I liked knowing that what I was reading came out of a real experience and someone didn’t just make it up in their heads. This is also why I came to the conclusion that I want to do a project like this in some of my future classes. If their students liked the project and did a good job on it, then my students can do the same thing!

The project itself is very interesting, and I like it so much because of the fact that it is so creative. The students can choose a genre that they really like, even if it is challenging for them, and they can also choose whatever topic they would like. I believe that this is why their students liked it so much. When students are in 6 or 7 or sometimes even 8 classes a day, they get so tired of just doing the same thing over and over again for each class. So because this project is so unique, I believe that is why it is so enjoyable for the students. Also, the project isn’t one that just takes a couple of days in class and then they move on to something else, but it can last up to 9 weeks. This means that the students can really bring to life their vision of what they believe is the perfect genre project, because they have more than enough time to do so.

There are lots of components in their version of the genre project, and I’m not sure if I would incorporate all of the components when I do it. I completely will want to see my students drafts so I can see how much their project changed and grew from beginning to end. But I am not sure I would make the students create a journal of each and every time that they worked on the project. I personally feel like that is too much work for the students to have to journal about their project on top of actually having to do the project. I might have the students write a letter. I probably would the first couple of years that I did it to get feedback about the project so that I could make it better as it goes along, but once I like it the way that it is, I don’t think that it is necessary to write a reflective letter. I will always make it an option just in case there is something the students need to tell me about their project, but I won’t make it mandatory. I just believe that some of the work that they made their students do is not necessary and that it doesn’t add to the project. I feel like some of it is just busy work so that there is more to turn in after 9 weeks of work.

I really do like the project, and I know that I’m going to use my own personal version of the project once I become a teacher. But I am not going to lie, I was very happy when I finished the book because I know that if I ever pick it up again, it’s to help me come up with ideas for my own version of the genre project.