Reflection on the "i believe"

 Doing the “I believe” project the one thing I discovered about myself was I get extremely bad headaches. After the headache stopped I learned over a long period of time I can create one awesome project. I really enjoyed being able to tell my story. I find it very interesting to hear other peoples ideas and life stories as well. The difficulty of this was learning yet another program, and uploading it to youtube. The easy part was adding music to the project. Every project comes with draw backs and discomforts, but I look at it as a possible project for my future students. As for this project, lets just say, it wont be at the top of my list. Im not a huge fan of videos, just because I do not see myself using it for my kids.   

Open Educational Resources

OER or open educational resources have a positive side but also a negative side. In my opinion the positive side would be OER is a great resource for both students and teachers. Looking from a teachers point-of-view OER is a great alternative way to teach. From the students perspective OER offers the most important thing, little to no cost. The downfall is teachers or future educators might become dependent on this resource. It scares me that the only thing future kids might be learning is all based off the internet. I feel going to school to become a teacher you should actually learn what you are being taught and not rely solely on the cyber world to do the work for you.   

http://maine.edc.org/file.php/1/oer/math_ProjOverview.html

http://archive.org/details/education#forum

http://maine.edc.org/file.php/1/oermath.html

I believe...

                                                       I believe teaching should not just be a job but a passion.

I was born into a family of teachers, so teaching is basically all I knew. My parents weren’t teachers but my cousins, aunts and uncles were. My cousin Lori really inspired me to teach. When I was growing up Lori was my idol. She was and still is a first grade teacher. All I heard was stories about her little first graders or I helped her come up with different craft ideas. I have never met anyone so excited to go to work everyday or try and make school fun for the kids. Lori opened my eyes to teaching and I never stopped dreaming of being a teacher.

Most little kids played dress up and had dreams of being a ballerina or a firefighter. Well when I was growing up I had dreams of being a teacher and nothing else. I had a small easel, one side a chalkboard and the other side dry erase. It wasn’t hard to find out where I was because I rarely left the chalkboard. When my birthday or christmas rolled around my wish list would always say “more chalk.” I would write things on the board and teach my friends what was on the board. When I went to play outside I used to pick pieces of grass and have my neighbors do math problems with them. This may sound silly, but I was obsessed. 

In high school I had teachers that were excellent, but I also had teachers that had no idea how to teach. All I could think of is how I can be the best teacher. I kept a note book with different attitudes, things I liked and disliked, even certain activities that caught my eye. My 11th grade math teacher Mrs. Balduff, was the one that inspired me to teach math. She was not only my teacher but one of the biggest role models in my life. Her class made me fall in love with math. My other math teacher I had both my 10th grade year and my senior year was Mrs. DeRose. I loved the way she taught. She broke everything down step by step and created so many activities that made math enjoyable. My favorite activity was a game called MATH-O which was bingo but with math problems, which we played every Friday. Another thing she did was create stupid songs, that really stuck in your head whether you wanted it there or not. Till today I remember those songs and still apply them to my math classes. I will be teaching those songs to my future students.

Right now I am making my long time dream become a reality. My life doesn’t consist of work, but a lot of passion and drive. I am currently studying to become a secondary math teacher. Nothing can get in my way of fulfilling my dream, I have wanted to be a teacher for too long to let anything stop me. I plan on being the best teacher I can be. I want my students to say “oh I can’t wait to go to Mrs. C’s class.” If I can change the life of one student I have accomplished my dream.