My brain received so much new information over the course of four weeks that I fear it will need a week to truly recover and process everything. It was an amazing month!!! I feel refreshed and renewed in the area of writing instruction. I can’t wait for the school year to start (well since it starts next week for me, I can wait…lol) so I can begin to implement things that I learned.

Thank you to everyone in the institute, I learned something from each and everyone of you. Stay tuned to this blog….

I wonder if this is how my students feel when new people are in the classroom, simply observing.  I wonder if they act different because “new” is distracting and they too are wondering about the person they know nothing about.

Everyone else seems to be going about, business as usual.  Maybe I need to just snap out of it…..

As a high school student I was often the only black student in my class.  If it wasn’t just me, it was me and my friend Kristin or me and my friend Cala.  Some combo of the three of us.  It really did often make for uncomfortable situations at times.  Even now as an adult, I still find myself in situations where I’m the only black person in a large group or one of a couple in the group.  Sometimes, in those situations, particularly in high school, I was looked on to be the “expert” on black history, culture and essentially all things black.  I’m not an expert on these things.  I was not given a “Black Handbook” when I was born that told me all I should know about being black!!  I went to the same school as my classmates, studied from the same textbooks and teachers they did, learned the same black history facts they learned in February.  I am not an expert.  Yes, there are probably some areas that I know more than them, either because my mom taught me or I read about it on my own.  In fact, the only thing I am an “expert” on is myself and my experiences.  So a lot of times, I would keep my mouth shut as a student.  Even if it was a topic in black history or culture that I could speak at length I wouldn’t do it.

Now I will climb off my soap box.  As teachers, we must be very careful to make sure that we treat all cultures in our classroom with respect.  But most importantly not to single out students in front of the class asking them if such and such information is true.  Now I’m not saying that any of us in the writing project do that, but I’m sure that we all know somebody that does or has seen it happen when they were a student.  Or even worse had it happen to them.  Our students are not experts on their cultures and should only have to share when they want to.

This weekend I will attempt to shoot footage of a variety of things I come across.  In hope that inspiration will strike and magic will happen!!

I want to bring this digital boom into my classroom.  So far in this class, I have heard lots of amazing ideas.  Classroom blogs, making videos, digital digs, etc.  And these ideas are fabulous.  But they are being used with high students and middle school students.  I need to learn about ways that I can implement all of this into my second grade classroom.  My students need this, and they need it now.  They need it, because in five to seven years, they will be in those middle school and high school classroom that are blogging or twittering or whatever the “latest” thing is.  And I don’t want them to be behind on the times because I didn’t bother to introduce them to something long ago.

Part of the problem though is my classroom.  My classroom has one computer and it sits on my desk.  Can’t do much there.  So of course, you ask, does your school have a computer lab?  Yes it does.  But it is far from current.  There isn’t a working computer for each student.  And they are slow…. And they don’t have a lot of updated programs that would be beneficial.  In order to teach these students, I need the tools, which I don’t have….yet.  I also need to figure out how to get these tools to use in my classroom.  My school. So you see, I have a lot of work to do this summer.  Hmmmmm….Where to begin?