As a future high school history teacher I have come to realize that it is going to be difficult to get students to complete final research papers due to the lack of accessibility.  Many schools do not offer adequate time for students to use computers during the day and many students are reliant on bussing to get to and from school.  Those who rely on busses are not able to stay later and then there is the issue of resources at home.  Some students are not fortunate enough to have a computer available at home.  I believe that final research papers need to be assigned to high school students to help them expand their knowledge beyond what is taught in the classroom, b

I am a sophmore at East Carolina University and I decided to do a project on developing a better way to evaluate my teaching.  I decided to focus my research on Standard V of the new goals for educating in the 21st century.  I thought it would be a good way to get tools that I can use when I am a first year teacher and there is nobody to give me feedback.  I think it is important to evaluate yourself as a teacher because there is so much that students have to learn.  If a teacher is not being effective then it is not a good use of time.  I plan to go over lesson plan ideas with am experienced teacher to make sure I will be on the right track for when I am a teacher.

Here is a petition calling to dismantle NCLB.

I recommend all teachers read and sign this document to prevent further damage done to public schools in the U.S.

Take a minute and read it over, it is WORTH your while!!!!

http://www.petitiononline.com/1teacher/petition.ht...

Hey everyone! I'm fairly new at doing this blog type thing, but I'm going to give it a try.

I've been reading through other people's blogs and I liked the idea about fears of being a teacher. I am going to go ahead and throw out a few of mine, that I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with.

As I was shamelessly watching Sesame Street today (I woke up earlier this morning) lots of things were suddenly brought to my attention. After learning the letter of the day they proceeded to mention their sponsors when suddenly I was thrown off by the mention of "paid for by a No Child Left Behind Grant"...my heart sunk at the mere mention of this. Being a future educator this highly concerns me. Not because NCLB gave grant money for educational programming but rather it served as a reminder to me the this act is being put into consideration for renewal. This act that promises nothing for out children and wishes to label all our public schools as failures, whereby inevitably privatizing all schools.

Here's a topic highly germane to classroom practice, particularly in Humanities.

So, you have a text that you want students to read. It's good and important content, likely the heart of what you want them to learn.

Yet, you come to class and you can tell, using your well-honed teacher's antennae, that almost no one has done the reading.

What went wrong?

Likely, everything. Starting from the fact that most kids have a ton of things vying for their attention on a daily basis. Whether it is working, sports, music, cell phones, instant messaging, videos, the internet, TV, partying or hanging out at the Mall, young people have more to do, more they want to do and less time than ever.