Hello, I’m Cheryl.
I’ve never blogged before, so I am
already learning a lot in this class. I
am happily married, and we have an incredible 15 year old son and a really
goofy English Springer Spaniel who is basically my other child. I love to travel, and have been all over the
United States, Mexico, and Europe. We moved to Rockwall a few years ago from
Southern California. I was a Juvenile
Probation Officer there, but I was injured on duty and retired. We love Texas, especially the people
here. I am currently working part time
as a paralegal. Initially, I went back
to school thinking that I wanted to go into law, but I sort of made a left turn
this year. I realized that what I really
missed was working with kids, not so much the legal end of it. I am a perfectionist, almost to the point of
OCD, and I have always loved writing. I
proofread all of my son’s papers for school before he turns them in, and he has
told me for years that I would make a good teacher. I finally realized that he
might be right, so I am working on obtaining my teaching credentials while I
pursue my Masters in Curriculum and Instruction.
When I was in
high school, we had one computer in the library, and it didn’t do much (I know
I sound really old). Things have changed so much in such a short time. My son’s
high school issued the students laptops, they have iPods in class, and they’re
able to upload homework directly to their teacher’s websites. That is great! The
availability of instant answers to questions via the internet is amazing. When
I was a child, whenever I would ask my dad what a word meant, he always told me
to go look it up in the dictionary. I
hated the dictionary, so I rarely looked them up. I think it’s great that students can have a
dictionary and thesaurus at the touch of a finger when they are writing. PowerPoint and all of the other programs that
I am just beginning to find out about are really useful tools when used in
moderation. However, I am concerned that
kids today might be spending too much time creating these types of digital
projects and hanging out on social media, and not enough time learning basic
skills. Quite a few of the kids that I
have worked with in the past were able to text at warp speed, but they were
unable to write a basic paragraph on paper because they couldn’t spell. I would like to see some sort of a happy
medium. Technology is a supplement, not
a substitute for a teacher.
While I am
really nervous about this class, I am excited about it too. I hope to learn about all of the tools
available today that will help me be a better teacher. One of the blogs used as an example for this week
was a teacher’s assignment about the 7 wonders of the world. It was basically a blueprint for her students
to research each of them, and the countries that they were in, and then write
about what they’d found out and include pictures. I thought that was such a fun, creative way
to make what could have been a boring geography report into what seemed like
more of an adventure. My goal in this class
is to learn how to use technology to make learning fun like that for my
students because the more they get into it, the more they will want to learn,
and the better job they will do.
