My First Meme

I am not sure if I chose the most efficient way to do this. But thanks to Sarah Amick, I'm learning about memes. So here I go. I just cut and pasted this from her blog and changed the answer part. If anyone else knows an easier way to do this, please enlighten me.



1. I am a good teacher because I try to use children's interests to guide my planning. Making my classroom authentic (also mentioned by another blogger) is of extreme importance to me.

2. If I weren't a teacher I would want to be doing something involving reading and writing. This could range from working at a university to working in publishing, bookstores or libraries.

3. My teaching style is very organic. I try not to pin myself down to any specific programs. Of course I use programs as resources to help provide excellent models of reading and writing for children. But, it's interesting to see how much teaching is connected to one's own learning. Since I understood the connectedness between reading and writing I can no longer totally separate them as two distinct disciplines. I am beginning to feel that way about teaching and learning. I am a teacher - constantly learning about learning and teaching.

4. My classroom is open, happy, busy, collaborative, relaxing and hopefully fun!

5. My lesson plans, are constantly changing as I teach and observe. I begin with a plan for the year, the month, the week, the day etc. But I end up tweaking. There are so many moments, that I cannot anticipate, that demand I take notice and mold into "teachable moments"

6. One of my teaching goals: I am challenging myself to continue helping children learn to read for three reasons. According to Dorothy Strickland, strategic readers need to know the purpose behind their reading. Are they reading for pleasure, to complete a task or to get information. Using technology and the world around us will become less overwhelming if we stick to our general purpose for the task at hand. I hope to put readers in control of their reading and writing to get where they want to go, and where I ask them to go. I want children to love reading the print in the classroom, and understand that reading and writing are vehicles for their future, just like talking.

7. The toughest part of teaching is that education is not a top priority in our American culture. I do see very positive world views in education stemming from web 2.0. However, children cannot vote, parents often do not understand how the classroom is different than when they were in school, teachers do not want to change, administrators do not have a positive coaching role and school districts do not have the funding equitably distributed across all school areas.

8. The thing I love most about teaching is I can never stop learning about how to become a better teacher.

9. A common misconception about teaching is that all teachers are alike.

10. The most important thing I have learned since starting my career is how little I know. The more I learn, the more I feel like there is so little I know.