To start off my first blog EVER, I want to give you all a little basic information about me!
Well, as some of you may notice, my name in the tracker shows up as Lauren Capps, however my name in my link appears as Lauren Hamilton. This is because I got married December 29, 2015! As a few of the other ladies in the class know, going through a name change can be a little bit of a hassel.
I live on a farm with my new husband in Hendersonville, NC. I am a preschool teacher at Mud Creek Christian School and I nanny in the afternoons. This is my third year at Gardner-Webb and I absolutely love it! I started out living on campus and was an undergraduate student, but after my second year I switched over to DCP
Teaching is my passion and life long dream. God has blessed me in so many to get me exactly where I am today! I wish you all luck as we endeavor on this (maybe difficult) journey of Social Studies Methods, and pray that we all make it through together!
Enough about me! Let's get to good stuff!
Are you wondering what is happening with Nebraska's social studies standards right now? If so, let me fill you in!
They are in the process of rewriting them! So far from what I gathered from this course is that we are learning to teach students to be the very best they can be and fill them with knowledge and skills that will be with them for a life time! Sometimes I wonder how exactly am I going to teach my students the important things, help them develop critical thinking skills and independent thinking all while following the standards and preparing them for testing.
There are some people in Nebraska who feel that they need to broaden the standards, giving teachers the ability to pick and choose which topics they want to cover, how deep they want to get into the topic, and give their students the ability to develop research and critical thinking skills. The JournalStar told us that Randy Ernst said that "creating a laundry list of facts and figures turns the standards into a textbook of sorts, and it doesn't leave room for the depth necessary to teach the skills students need to know to be able to evaluate sources in today's information-saturated world."
Don't get me wrong, I agree with that statement a hundred percent, but have you ever looked at a standard and thought to yourself "what in the world does this standard mean?" I know that I have! I recently was talking with a first grade teacher, and she told me that if she could create and teach any college class for future teachers, the entire class would be based around looking at one standard and telling what it means to each student, ideas of how to teach it, and ideas of how to even approach the standard. Every teacher and future teacher reads and interprets each standard differently. The problem is not rather or not the student learned an adequate amount of information or skills, it simply comes back to rather or not that is information of skills that the state wanted you to teach. I think this is the issue that many other teachers have with planning their lessons and unpacking their standards.
My biggest goal as a teacher is to make the lessons that I am teaching to my students relevant and meaningful to their lives. I want them to learn things that will be with them many years from now. I want them to look back to their elementary school days and remember, "Oh, yeah! Mrs. Hamilton taught me that!" I want them to learn things that make them a better person. I want them to walk away from my class and be able to have intelligent conversations with people about things that really matter. Ultimately, I want my students to develop into the best them that can be. Isn't that what we all want?
To read more about Nebraska and their new standards click the link below!
http://journalstar.com/news/local/education/education-leaders-are-revisiting-how-we-teach-social-studies/article_cb803cbe-3b63-53e1-8793-a17fae443298.html
I 100% agree with questioning what a standard means! There are so many interpretations to what a standard might mean in terms of each individual classroom, and it's good to see that Nebraska is taking that step forward for clarification.
ReplyDeleteHello Lauren,
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on your big achievement this past holiday! I pray Gods blessings and favor on you and your marriage.
It's so funny how one minute the standards are there to help guide students learning and give us teachers something to measure, and now it is not deep or broad enough for students learning? This why teachers have to be resourceful-unpacking standards, collaborating, doing research, etc.-- because every standard is not always as black and white as we would like. However there are so many resources that allow us teachers to dig deep into content and pull out those big ideas, regardless of how a standard is written. I believe, like stated previously, that standards are just measurements of what we weigh students content knowledge against. But we are the ultimate factors that determine if our students actually learn.
So don't worry about how you will teach everything and prepare your students for test and such. When God calls you into something, He will give you insight on how to deliver standards, concepts, and whatever else your student's need to be successful. Also, you are apart of GWU education program that Transform Educators who are Engaged and Adaptable into Content-driven Experts that are Holistic, Evidence-based and Reflective-Practitioners who are Prepared for a Successful Career!
Great post!!
Congrats on getting married Lauren! I saw where you got engaged but had no idea you got married! I enjoyed reading your blog. This was the first time I have ever written a blog too! I really enjoyed it though. I had no idea all that was going on in Nebraska. I liked what the first grade teacher you talked to had to say about what college class she would teach. That would be awesome! Good luck this semester! I look forward to collaborating with you!
ReplyDeleteLauren,
ReplyDeleteI loved reading your blog post and miss talking to you in class everyday! Congrats on getting married and I wish you all the best! This past semester I was introduced to the unpacking standards and it can be quite overwhelming sometimes trying to come up with ways to tackle all of the information that is contained within one standard. I think it is an awesome idea and I am glad Nebraska is taking a step forward in addressing what can be an underlying issue in many schools. However, I cannot help but question if it is left to the teacher's digression on how much to teach and what to teach, will that not put different classes and individual students all on different levels? I feel like this might create an even larger gap between students. The standards might look like a laundry list, but I feel like they keep everyone on the same page and accountable for certain concepts that the students should know. Great post and interesting topic!!!
Lauren,
ReplyDeleteCongrats on your marriage!
I really enjoyed reading this blog...and...you are right about standards!!! They can be incredibly confusing. We will spend some time on this during the semester but that is a big concept in 410. I hope you have had that class already. How do unpacking standards and planning great content for your students connect to the NCTCS?
Thank you so much! I am really looking forward to actually having you as a professor instead of an advisor!
DeleteI did already take 410 with Dr. Clark and absolutely loved it! Learning to unpack standards made lesson planning much easier! The problem was still I would unpack a standard and would envision this great lesson pertaining to one topic, and my group member would unpack the same standard and would envision yet another great lesson, but it was pertaining to a different topic. This can be great, because students are given the opportunity to see different ideas and strategies throughout their learning experiences. However, in Jessica Shortt's previous comment, she points out that this may put different classes and individual students all on different levels (which was a point well made).
I think this issue mainly relates back to Standard 3.
-Teachers align their instruction with the North Carolina Standard Course of Study.
We can plan a lesson that aligns to a standard, but with many of the standards being so broad, it may differ greatly from what other classrooms in the school, county, and state are learning.
Hey Lauren! Wow, I am amazed at the busy lives of all the GWU students but I am like you, so grateful to be part of an excellent program. For the CCSS standards, I was overwhelmed as well when I first started using them as foundations of my lesson plans in this program. There is an "unpacking the standards" tab in the Common Core website that was so helpful for me. Before, I was trying to cram ALL of the all into my lessons but I am learning to break down everything from lesson plans to GWU requirements into bite-sized pieces. I am not by nature an organized person, but taking Dr. Parker's advise and sitting down with a calendar and the SSED 307 weekly calendar, I wrote down when everything is due so I'm not trying to use my time on things that aren't due for a month when I need to concentrate on things that are due in February. The only thing I forgot to include in my time/schedule were family maintenance incidentals! I am an older student (almost 50) and my kids are in college. My daughter returned to her college campus just yesterday, but her van wouldn't start so we had to arrange for a tow truck and mechanic at the last minute, thus taking up my entire Saturday (which I planned to spend completing homework...sigh...). I tell you all this to encourage you to breathe and realize at the end of the semester, God wants all of us to be successful and He has provided peace and provisions for that to come to pass! Best of success in your teaching endeavors!!!
ReplyDeleteCongrats on getting married! I am so happy for you and Tommy. I hope to see you soon!
ReplyDeleteI also wonder how exactly am I going to teach my students the important things from each standard and prepare them for testing. I think that is is good that Nebraska is revising the standards. I recently learned in EDU 410 how to unpack standards and I was very overwhelmed. I like the statement you made about wanting to teach your students things that are relevant meaningful to their lives. I completely agree with this.
I agree that the teacher should have more say in which topics they choose to discuss. I believe that it should be up to his/her discretion as to what facts are more important than others. I believe that this will enable the teacher to focus on the information that they want to communicate and they will be more passionate about the topics they teach because it is their decision and not a decision that was made for them because of standardized testing.
ReplyDeleteGreat Post Lauren and congrats on getting married! I agree also that it is the teachers responsibility to delver the content in a way that empowers student learning. Not only to pass tests, but to create good thinkers and human beings. Some students thrive on testing while others don't. It is the teacher's job to observe the best ways to assess so that each student is equipped. Being a teacher is so much more than relaying information.
ReplyDelete