To be digitally literate means to be able to use your digital resources to the best of your ability. In my classroom this looks like being able to use the chat in Zoom for relevant reasons and not saying "hi" 20 times in the chat, or emailing me your concerns rather than putting incomplete sentences in the stream. Being digitally literate in groups is also very important because students should know how to respectfully communicate with each other and collaborate on work. Being digitally literate and having Digital Citizenship go hand in hand with one another, being that you need one to have the other. Digital Citizenship supports college and career readiness because you need to be able to communicate as an adult.
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I am lucky enough to be at a school where parents are very involved in their students school loves which makes this easy to implement. I have been looking into trying out and using classdojo to track students behaviors and assignments to share daily with the parents. This is great for those students who are not recognized for their excellent work and even better to show parents how their students are poorly behaving in school. My school already has a points system for positive and negative reinforcement but this is a way to get parents involved with the points.
There are so many barriers that students face when thinking about the world outside of high school. Many students are not prepared to enter the workforce or attend a college because they simply don't know how. I am lucky enough to work at a school where we require community service hours for graduation, career readiness classes and internships. Along with all of these, we also help students begin college classes while in high school. I feel that students need guidance and resources to be able to have a clear path to enter a career or college. It is hard for me to think about this topic since I am a middle school teacher, but I think giving them options and encouraging them to continue school is all I can do. I can have students research resources and see opportunities of life after high school that branches off from the typical college path.Are state standards a waste for the education system? This is such a controversial topic among teachers and others that work in education, but I have mixed feelings. Although I feel that the way they are approached in education today does not set students up for success, the standards we follow give guidance to teachers and students aside from the 21st Century Skills that are essential to students after their life in education. I believe that the system needs to change the way we teach and expect students to learn while still setting boundaries of what needs to be taught. As of right now, our education system will be changed and I hope that it is for the better. Our education system needs to show students the importance of the standards while showing them the relevance of what is being taught... Teach students book and street smarts all in one place... school.In class today it made me reflect on why I became a teacher. When I started this path early on in my education I wanted to become a teacher to make school applicable to life after high school. Now almost credentialed, I know that this has a big factor on us as teachers teaching 21st Century Skills. With all of my lessons I always try to find a way to either make it relatable to the students so that they are engaged, but also I try to add relevance to the lesson so they understand why they are learning it. Teaching ELA, I have it pretty easy because students can understand why they are learning it for the most part... aside from poetry... but other subjects teachers need to strive to show how this is going to be useful in the outside world.
I hope that even if a student fails the content that I teach they are able to learn from the failure, but also I hope that they are able to take away the essential 21st Century Skills such as communication, critical thinking, collaboration and creativity when they leave my class. Over the course of history, schools have changed from what they teach to how they teach it. Our current educational system believes that the students need to be taught the "Common Core" subjects. I feel that students do need to be taught these four essential subjects: English Language Arts, Social Studies, Science and Math. These four subjects all include certain matters that can be useful to the students in life once they are out of school and into the real world. Education over time has developed both for the good and the bad, students now have education that is much more relatable and fun, but lacks rigor and challenge. With this being said students are less prepared for post secondary school because they are coddled by their teachers and the education system by not being challenged and only being measured by the tests that they take. I do think that the history of education contributed to the current downfall or the education system and the lack of student success, because they believed that students should not so much be prepared for college and careers, but that they should be measured by the units and grades that they receive.
In class I stated that school was 90 percent communication and 10 percent government led knowledge. Then I began to think that there were so many other perspectives, aside from my teacher bias, that can answer this question. I found this video and it really hit home to how I felt as a young student, and still find it relevant to todays kids. Is school just to feed kids knowledge that we think they need to know and scold them on how they need to act? Is school just a government business? No.. School is a place for students to question authority, build relationships, and learn to accept failure. School is not for opportunity, but some students are lucky when they get the glimpse of hope that they might be successful in life. Some students are lucky to have teachers that care about them and become mentors. School is for reality checks.
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Audra Greene
7/8th English Language Arts Teacher |