Photo by dole777 on Unsplash

One of the big ideas that really stood out to me in class from September 18th was the idea of as educators, what we are putting on social media. I have been on social media for about 10 years now and have seen it change and grow in terms of the different networks, what gets posted and who can access what. I have never put much thought into who would ever see my online presence because I have yet to be in a position where I may have people looking me up. As far as I’m concerned, the only people that have ever looked me up so far in my life have been my friends or family (and potentially an employer). But now, as I begin my journey into education and look to start my career, that will most likely change as mentioned in class. There may potentially be employers, students or parents that are curious as to what my social medias look like. For that reason, it is a great time to start thinking about the way I use social media going forward instead of simply just posting for the sake of posting. I’m not sure I plan on making any massive changes to the way I operate (most of my accounts are private anyway), but it is just something to be more cognizant of.

Shifting gears now to the movie “Most Likely to Succeed,” there was one idea that I pulled from it that really stuck with me. That idea was featured toward the end when it came to the showcase for High Tech High and how it was open to parents and other family to be able to come in and view the projects that kids had been working. Early on in our program here at UVic, we have spent a little bit of time focussing on assessment of students and different ways to perform it. In my opinion, this showcase system is an amazing for students to be assessed because it inspires the students to put maximum effort into their project in hopes of impressing their families. It’s one thing to work on a project for a teacher in hopes of achieving a certain grade, but to work on a project knowing my parents were going to see and judge it would drive me to do my best.

Finally, in class we discussed resources and how we may access them as we become teachers. Of course there is the internet, teacher stores or maybe even that long list of open resources that was shown in class but one of the most important resources we have as soon-to-be teachers is other teachers. As of this blog post, I have only spent one day in an actual classroom observing but I already feel like just by asking my mentor teacher a few questions about her own resources, it eased my mind on some of the anxiety I had in terms of accessing materials. She gave me a few great ideas for worksheets and toys and just by spending time in her classroom, I got a better sense of some of the physical resources needed to make a classroom feel like a classroom.