My View of Teaching

 
The idea I chose to work with was my view of teaching. For that, I created a teacher starter kit, it includes a pen, idea books, inspirational books, and test scores.  When I started back in undergrad, teaching was not all about test scores and how children are doing on a test. Now, it is a conversation had almost daily about where students are testing, are they on grade level, what should they be working on, and how do we get their scores up. It is an exhausting conversation to constantly be having, but it is all about the data now. Teaching is also about being creative, coming up with new ideas, keeping a child's interest in this day of so much technology. Instead of reinventing the wheel, I am constantly looking for new lesson ideas online, in books, and from co-teachers just to keep the process of learning going. The purple pen is a part of everything in my classroom in writing. Years ago, I read that instead of writing and correcting in red, like I grew up with, that purple is a calming color for students and does not cause as much anxiety. Since that point, I have checked and corrected everything in purple. The last two items in my kit  are the inspirational books. Teaching is being a teacher, a mom, a dad, a therapist, a nurse, a counselor, and about 5 other jobs all rolled into one. At times, we as teachers need to be reminded about the how and why we do it. We also need help and advice on new challenges throughout the year. Though everyone's inspiration is different, Ron Clark and Dr. Seuss are mine. Throughout the year, I pull out these stories just to remind myself what I am really doing with my students and my end goals. I also use them as reminders to I may need to change things about myself in order for them to understand. 

Prototype is a hard concept for me to wrap my head around. I always want it to be all the way perfect and have no hiccups in the process. That being said, it is hard for me to even start the process because I want things to go exactly as planned. The construction process did change for me. At first, I thought about making a picture collage on a board, but then realized, I had all the items to create this idea. Once I started thinking of that, the process was very simple for me to complete.