From+my+Heart

From my Heart

The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book. -- Author Unknown

This semester has been an eye opening experience. This has been my first semester back in the academic setting since my graduation from college in 2004, and I am now more sure than ever that teaching is what I want to do for the rest of my career. With working full time, taking four classes, planning for a wedding, buying a house, and still having a social life sometimes I feel overwhelmed, but I know in the end it will be all worth it. I know that teaching is my passion and is it something that I believe that I will excel with. When I hear that 68% of latino children do not graduate from high school, that is something that saddens me. I believe that it is obvious that there needs to be a change, and I want to be part of that change. I want to give youth the opportunity to strive for success and show them that anything is possible. As an ESL teacher, my goal is to teach these at risk students English so that they will be productive members of society, but I also plan to incorporate their primary language into the classroom as well. I want to give these students the same opportunities that any other child would have in the class, no matter what their language, race, economic status, or gender. I plan to teach with compassion and teach with my heart and have my classroom operate in the same way. I hope to create a bond with my students where all opinions and cultures will be honored and valued. This particular class has been something that I truly enjoyed and looked forward to the assignments every week. I honestly feel that I will use more information that I learned in this class more than any of my other classes. I feel that all of these lessons are something that my students will be able to learn from and also enjoy at the same time. By using technology, we create a bond with our students and we are teaching to their interests and outside activities. It is obvious that the days with the teacher lecturing out of a text are something of the past, and technology is a much more interactive way to teach students in the 21st century. I have to say that I really enjoyed the web 2.0 tools and the youtube videos the most, however I enjoyed all the lessons. I found the youtube videos fun because I used videos that I had very fond memories growing up as well. The School House Rock videos are something that my generation enjoyed, and now we can share that with the youth of today. In my opinion, those videos never grow old and are always a fun and interesting way to learn grammar. While technology is wonderful and I plan to use it in most of my lessons, I have some small concerns. My worst fear is the unreliableness of technology. If I have a fantastic lesson that uses several components of technology, I fear that there are sometimes technical difficulties that may be out of my control. If this does happen, I will always need to have a backup and a different lesson in place, that may take some practice and experience. Something else that I am a little leery about is what will happen when the child leaves the classroom for the day. In a perfect world, students will go home to a household where both parents are able to help with the homework and there is a computer with the most up to date technology, however this unfortunately is not the I know that this is not the case. When students leave the class, some will go home to an empty house and are lucky to have dinner. Technology in some households is just not an option. I guess that my main concern is how to include all students in the class, some may be technical savvy, and others may not have ever seen a computer. While those concerns do exist, I am still very excited and I plan to use technology in most of my lessons. These lessons are concepts that all students will enjoy and benefit from. Technology is a fantastic way to teach to what students are interested in and make them more engaged in learning.