Teacher Shana

  Click here and check out my World Tour of Music! It’s time for MUSIC!  This week’s galaxy mission is all about music in the classroom.  I was very excited about the topic because I have always loved music - but I wasn’t sure how to incorporate it into a lesson plan. Let’s start with a little history lesson from MY past!  As a child, memorizing stuff was hard (and now that I’m in college, I’m learning why it was also not the greatest thing!).  I wasn’t able to memorize my states and capitals, I had difficulty remembering the order of the planets, and memorizing poetry was out of the question.  I could, however, memorize songs.  I was a fan of all types of songs.  I would record my favorites onto a cassette tape from the radio (yes, I’m that old) so I could listen to them over and over until I could repeat them when I had no music to listen to!  My Mom was a smart women, and she knew my strengths.  When I struggled, she would either ...

  This week was all about “visuals”.  As a teacher, we are taught to cater to numerous types of learners.  As a visual learner, I am careful to include LOTS of visuals when I teach.  When I make a presentation, there are always pictures to go along with what I’m trying to talk about.  We learned this week just how effective pictures can be. I type out my notes in class due to the fact typing is much quicker when my professors are speaking quickly and I want to get all the information down.  I could spend an entire lecture copying from slides word-for-word and not be able to reciprocate those words at all.  Thankfully, I know this.  I know that in order for me to learn, I have to write it down.  Many professors give us “study sheets” for tests and I spend hours not only writing but color-coding index cards in order to help me study.  When it comes to test time, I know the answer because I have visualized it with the definition.  Ofte...

  Let’s continue the discussion on WHY teachers should be putting creativity into the classroom.  This week’s theme was a continuation of last weeks and made some excellent points of the necessity of Creativity in the Classroom. We were linked to another TED Talk, this time with Catherine Thimmesh .  She referenced Ken Robinson’s talk I listened to last week in which he questioned if schools were killing creativity.  Thimmesh offered valuable advice in which she remarked that we can use what we have creativity-wise and add it to the existing structure of lessons.  I mentioned something similar in my last post about the fact that obviously we have to teach the curriculum, but the curriculum does not specify exactly how we have to teach it.  In fact, the curriculum is written wonderfully for our purposes by specifying that the student “will be able to…”  This is excellent news because that means we aren’t required to teach everything a specific way....

      My Education 324 class is literally titled, "Creativity in the Classroom".  At first glance, someone (like me) may be a bit puzzled as to why we need an entire class to learn about incorporating creativity into a classroom environment.  I thrive on creativity, but I have to remember that not everyone does!     Naturally, the first few weeks of class is all about defining Creativity and exploring what creativity is in a classroom environment.  Week 2's task was met with the essential question: what is creativity to you?  I wrote a long summary, as per usual, so I'll spare all of you an even longer post and give you the finer points.  Prior to reading any material issued to us, creativity to me is thinking outside of "the box".  That is to say as teachers, we have a curriculum we have to teach from.  A creative teacher will take that lesson and give the students an experience from outside of the textbook.  Textbooks ca...

  How I feel about my current semester...scared of the unknown.     Before I start, I should note that my professor can see my blog, but I'm still going to be honest.  Obviously, this is a professional blog either way so it's not like I planned on bashing all of my professors online.  Truthfully I don't have anything bad to say about any of my professors past and present at CSU.  I have struggled in a few classes, but I still had glowing reviews about the professors.     My Creativity Education class is completely online this year and my professor, Dr. Pleis (hi!) is perfect for it.  From the very beginning, I could tell she's in touch with the online world and will be providing us with many technology resources we'll be able to use in our future classrooms.  This year she has designed a curriculum where we "launch" into space and visit galaxies to conduct "missions".  For a typical college student, this probably would sound silly o...

  Pictures Left to Right: In front of Lightsey Chapel with my Go Bucs mask, One of our reminders to social distance, and finally a photo of me in my "classroom" both for VIPKID and now for my own learning.     It's officially been one full week of class since we started last Wednesday.  I  have officially been to all of my classes AND turned in insane amounts of assignments!  I only had one in-person class last week and two in-person classes on Monday.  This year is very strange - for obvious reasons.  History meets M, W, F but students only attend one of the three classes to keep class size down.  My designated day is Monday.  My T/Th Psychology class is splitting in half, but my professor had to quarantine for the first two weeks so we've been attending online classes.  Starting next week, I will only attend classes in person on Thursdays. Another class is "hybrid" so we meet in the classroom on Wednesdays and have out-of-class a...