Throughout these past two years I have learned a great deal about teaching literacy efficiently. Engaging myself in a variety of ongoing assessment techniques, using data to create informative lessons, and reading and understanding a variety of children’s literature, I strive to learn more. My goals continue to focus on teaching literacy effectively, while also including aspects of integrating technology, creating a classroom environment where all students are able to succeed, and focusing attention on ensuring all students feel represented in books and literacy experiences throughout the year.

               

Technology has been integrated into our classrooms at a very dramatic rate. Throughout my years as an educator I have witnessed this “technology rich” atmosphere where administrators and educators feel that the more we have the better, yet I have seen the reverse occur. When students are exposed to a wide range of apps, programs, and educational sites that have not been thoroughly assessed for its educational benefits, the technology serves as time fillers, busy work, rather than an opportunity to advance in their technological understanding and abilities. Taking a look at my Education Site page, one can see a list of educational sites that I deem fit for the classroom. My goal is to continue to advance in integrating appropriate technology into the classroom as it is a necessity for my students and their future. While viewing Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier I became aware that these technologies also affect how students learn as well. Therefore, an additional goal will be to ensure students have access to technology that they are able to use collaboratively, such as Kahoot, which enables students to work together to answer questions that earn them points. 

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In addition to integrating technology effectively in my classroom while increasing student’s abilities to work together collaboratively, I will also work towards increasing my students drive and self confidence in the classroom to increase their abilities to work collaboratively as well. Throughout my many courses, I was extremely intrigued learning about School Wide Positive Behavior Intervention and Support and how important prevention can be to ensure positive behavior in the classroom. While sticking with the theme that less is more, rather than spending time, and money, on prizes and candy for students positive behavior, I began to learn that by simply showing students how much you care can increase positive behavior much more than any toy or reward.

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Having a variety of books available for my students to read has always been an important goal. Collecting books from garage sales, family members, and donations from other teachers, I had this misconception that more was better. Not until recently did I realize that the quality of the books I had available to my students was more important than quantity. While we spend so much time and energy teaching students that they can do and be anything, there is an aspect that remains lacking while looking at the representation of culture in children’s literature. It is my goal to ensure that all students in my class have access to literature where they are represented on the pages so they continue to read. While white characters and authors continue to dominate the literacy world, there are several movements and articles focused on this growing issue, such as Marley Dias who began a campaign to collect 1,000 books about black girls. During my in depth studies on African American’s represented in children’s literature, I was able to begin to explore a variety of the books Marley recommends, many of which now fill the bookshelves of my classroom. While I have begun to work toward my goal of creating a more diverse library for my students, I still have a great deal to go, and hope to have help from various grants offered at my school and grants written through Donors Choose. I aim to increase books that focus on Latinos, LGBT, and Native Americans to list a few.

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As an educator I will always strive to learn more to advance my effectiveness in the classroom. I will also remind myself that often times more is not the answer. By investigating effective technology to use in the classroom, increase the quality of my literacy library rather than the quantity, and working towards positive relationships with my students rather than bribery, I can increase this effectiveness as an educator as well as increase students abilities across curriculum, not just in literacy.