Technology and Academic Achievement

Technology and Academic Achievement

This article written by Les Foltos has led me to think even more about the enormous responsibility that I have as a teacher. Being actualized and conscious about the academic learning necessities that our students have is very important. Our mission then would be to prepare them to reach the new social labor skills in which they will be required.

In recent years, schools have increased the use of technology in the classroom, so they have distributed the necessary equipment to improve teaching and learning process. However, some parts of the society question the reality of this investment in terms of real knowledge achievement. Meanwhile, supporters of educational technology believe in academic achievement and scientific progress that a student would gain by being effectively exposed of the use of these technological advances.

New research has published a growing body of factual evidence of the positive role that technology can provide in academic achievement. Teachers must be trained to apply technology and encourage the students to develop the necessary skills to resolve problems.

This means that schools and districts must adopt the urgent necessity to promote technological professional development to their teachers. This training must be complete and not just conform with being familiar with the basic skills. Teachers need opportunities to work with colleagues, and, as the author said in this article, they need a continued interaction in their school building and beyond. Teachers need to share ideas and learn. Professional development needs to be ongoing to provide an effective model instruction.

Educational technology being conducted in the classroom is promoting a positive impact that challenges educators to accept and promote. In this period of time, it is impossible to isolate technology as a variable in good instruction. As good effective teachers, we must embrace the powerful learning tools that technology is offering us. We must find the right strategies to apply in our class setting to achieve our goals effectively.

Blogging In the classroom

Blogging In the classroom

Anne Davies takes huge steps further to help students to develop writing skills and critical thinking by using the blog. Nevertheless, students must be aware of using adequately this learning tool where they would share smart opinions with a worldwide audience. Anne Davies strongly believes that not just by exposing the students on blogs these skills will be developed. It is necessary the immediate teacher intervention to establish the proper methodological connections between different types of writing. She believes that teachers would have an incredible possibility to build a unique and very attractive pedagogy to teach by using blogs in the classroom.

In my opinion, I believe that as educators, facilitating and updating learning is our responsibility. Without forgetting that we also are part of this process, if we adapt new ways to make simple and interesting our daily learning exposure everybody would benefit. For example, we can promote the use of blogging inside of the classroom by creating a reflective journal. Teachers would provide information about some strategies that have worked inside of the classroom or did not work. Teachers can share this information and give an informal feedback.

As a teacher we can provide some other tips to other teachers like fun teaching activities that we can use in the classroom or simply to explore and learn important teaching techniques that many websites provide us.

If we want to create a coordinated class blog it could help us to inform the students in a very organized way about homework assignments where they have to respond on their own blogs. The coolest thing about this is that students become aware of what they are doing and how they are doing it.

The information that they post on their blogs would be visible to many people outside of the classroom or even outside of school to respond to. That kind of activity motivates to our students to be critical thinkers, but, of course, teachers must provide them with the necessary information to let them know what they are doing.

These were the activities that most interest me from this article to apply in further time in my own classroom blog setting.

Create an online book club to promote critical interactive sharing replies.

Provide online readings for your students to read and react to.

Provide vocabulary activities, which build grammar skills.

Post assignments based on literature readings and have students respond on their own weblogs, creating a kind of portfolio of their work.

Communicate with parents and promote continual interaction to their children educational development.

Build a class newsletter, promoting student-written skills and other computer learned basics.

For instance, promoting the use of blogs in the classroom it would provide an enormous opportunity for our students to interact with many people sharing their personal thoughts more constructively. Students would have access to put in practice what they have learned fostering their personal education, making it relevant.

The attributes that blogging represents to us as a teachers would revolutionize our pedagogies. We can develop strong, fun and easy access to interaction with our students, parents and other teachers with more effectiveness. Let’s try these new challenges to become better teachers.

Teaching Strategies/Teaching Philosophy

Teaching Strategies: The Teaching Philosophy/Teaching Statement

What?! It was my first reaction when I had to work on this new concept. My first encounter creating a teaching philosophy was in my ED560 Diversity class. When I started writing it, I felt that I became more connected and more serious in my beliefs about education. Then, with a lot of surprise, I heard that it works much better when you offer to your administrator your teaching philosophy at the beginning of the year. I am very happy to have started this.

When I started reading this article, I began realizing how important it is to have a statement or philosophy. That seems to be becoming a common expected part of academic life. Faculties are increasingly developing teaching statements as they approach tenure to help the promotion of their particular views of their practical teaching. Consequently, a lot instructors at all levels find that writing their statement helps them develop, as teachers, nice personal teaching environments where students can identify.

I looked trough some other links that this site offered like Rackham-CRLT May Seminar on Preparing Future Faculty, which offers overviews and suggestions for getting started, as well as examples of statements. Also, this site contains a library of teaching philosophies. Wow! This is an excellent source to help us to create our teaching portfolio. I opened this link which provided several very practical samples of Philosophy teaching statements and general formatting suggestions. After that I create my Teaching pre-teaching philosophy. I still working on it and once it get done I would share it with you!

♦♣♦♣♦♣♦♣♦♣♦♣♦♣♦♣ ◘♥

It is not easy to achieve what we want. Frustration sometimes comes to my mind, and tends to convince me to quit. But, as my teachers told me, I need to embrace my dreams and make a tangible true attempt to approach and defeat any obstacle that I would face. If I think that I can do it, I can do it because my mind is my real self and once I get what I have worked on, an enormous satisfaction will come, letting me give thanks to all my teachers who let me project myself. Then, I will never shut my mind off of dreaming and never give up my dreams. I know I am going to make it no mater how much time and effort it will take me.
Teaching Philosophy
Becoming a teacher, I would want to be a bridge between cultures, helping communities to be part of the whole integrated society. I want to share values and common sense. I want to feel part of this change. I want to learn and be part of breaking false misconceptions. I want to make a difference by inspiring others to keep following the heartbeat of their dreams. As my best teachers taught me, I want to teach that, with a lot of patience and love, we can make all of our earthly goals reachable if we think that we can do anything.

Although some times I may even hesitate, wondering if I am the right person to teach others, and whether it is really worth it, I have confidence and I know I will make it if I keep trying, and I can teach others by my example.

My enormous desire to help the youth has let me know more about my own self and the role that I personally play in the community. I believe in multiculturalism, and being part of the creation of a balanced world. Nevertheless, we need to keep working to promote a nice social environment. Even if I feel like I am falling, I will look for new educational experiences to keep me motivated to learn and to share with others the new innovations and motivations to keep us in an interactive social vanguard.

Ana Viridiana Mercado Ratliff ♣♦♣♦♣♦♣♦♣♦♣♦♣

self-efficacy teaching

Teachers’ self-efficacy teaching with technology

By Peter R. Albion____________________________________________

Information technology in education has shifted towards curriculum integration. Consequently, teacher education programs need to prepare graduates for teaching with IT. Graduates should possess both skills in the use of IT and belief in their capacity to integrate IT into teaching. Teachers’ self –efficacy in actual interaction with IT, can provide an enormous feed back in the process of evaluating the long term impact of performed courses after taking the new technology used design.

Providing equipment to schools was a necessity, provoking a futuristic vision to prepare students with real needed skills to be functional in the society. The first approach with this new technology was when Queensland government provided equipment and shifted to the new concept of information and communication technology (ICT) in education focused for its use as integration into the curriculum. In the words of current Queensland policy, information technology should be applied "to effective learning and teaching in all key learning areas, P12"(Education Queensland, 1998b). In Queensland, the most recent policy initiative included competencies that are to be achieved by all teachers in the state education system within the three year span of the program (Education Queensland, 1998a).

Although, there are no stated requirements for graduating teachers to meet these standards prior to employment, it seems that employers of teachers will soon expect that applicants and current employees become capable with respect to ICT. Then, a necessary training would be required to address these actual issues using strategies such as new technology standards for teacher education programs.

The way that teachers address the use of technology in the class setting could be the result of multiple factors including the accessibility, nature of the curriculum, time and personal capabilities to be adaptable into the new era of technology. However, relevant evidence suggests that teachers' beliefs in their capacity to work effectively with technology are a significant factor in determining the use of the computer in the classroom. Studies of computer use during teaching practicum have found that, despite possessing positive dispositions towards computer use, pre-service teachers lacked confidence in their capacity to teach successfully with computers. (Albion, 1996; Downes, 1993)

A continuous growth in the movement for the integration of technology into the daily practice of teaching may become a community expectation. Consequently, as teachers, we must be careful to be aware of these new expectations, because these ones may become as a requirements to approach quality of content in the classroom. Being in the vanguard and providing and integrating information technology into our daily practices of teaching could be now our new philosophy. We can be separated by the new innovations. We must embrace the self-efficacy theory that offers insights into the development of materials with more powerful instructional designs, and take advantage of it, to help our students and offer them a true interaction with technology.

Teaching Feedback from a Veteran Teacher: A response

Teaching Feedback from a Veteran Teacher

While reading this mini article from Melissa Kelly interviewing a veteran teacher, a lot of questions came to mind. Which level he was teaching? How many years of experience he had? What subject matter he was teaching?

His advice appears very simple. I am sure that there are a lot of things to consider before starting to lead a class successfully. I believe that teachers need to be consistent in their own rules and content. Also, I consider it very necessary and important to listen to others who have more experience in the area, and adopt the good ideas like, not yelling at the students but writing larger on the board to ensure that every body can get the instructions. In the future, I would take the same philosophy of not yelling but instead writing larger and I would adopt creative computer programs to promote a better classroom setting where the students feel more interested in the content and less distracted.

Another advice that I would keep in mind is about the short and simple surprise quizzes. I think this is a very sharp strategy in which the students can feel challenged and in future times more motivated to follow instructions and pay attention.

I still believing that this little interview could be more completed if our veteran teacher give us some tips dealing with behavior or school policies like when students come late and misbehave, and or how teachers must handle all the referrals.

After reading this section, I had to open other links that provided me more information about what to do in order to succeed in the class room. I think being consistent and knowing our students better and establish wide communication with parents would help enormously.

THE EMOTIONAL BASIS OF LEARNING : My response

THE EMOTIONAL BASIS OF LEARNING

Once again, we need to know how sensitive a human being is to keep learning, keep remembering and keep teaching. This is one of the most touching articles that I found in this series of reading. It reminds me that a human being is a complex and beautiful organism that has multiple biological systems that exchange information, and change and interact internally and externally with the environment and all the stimuli that can effect you emotionally.

While reading this article, which is based on various studies made by Noboru Kobayashi, M.D., I was awakened again to remember how much information or stimuli a child is perceiving before it is born. How developed and well prepared will this child become after being born? All this is a previous biological and physical interaction in which external emotions are already affecting the whole cognitive program of a child.

On the basis of these studies, as teachers we must be sensitive with our students, because probably a large majority of them come with traumatic cognitive function. As educators we do not know how the pregnancy history of our students was so we must provide a warm environment to promote a tender place to learn and a welcoming feeling to enrich the emotional human being.

I believe that if we promote an environment that helps students to feel valuable and comfortable, they will demonstrate and develop their cognitive powers in all capacities. We need to promote a better educational environment and feel totally compromised to adapt to the new social necessities like technology to prepare them for the future.

Technophobia response

Technophobia

Nancy Salvato started talking about the importance of being educated. She considers education as an important element in the continuous functionality in the democratic republic.

To ensure this functionality, members of the communities which make up our great nation need to have equal access to learning and be knowledgeable of the need of the society as a whole. That is why schools become very important in promoting stability and equilibrium in society. Schools then must insure to provide the same tools to everybody.

This is something that sounds easy, but it is not. There are many factors that can affect the integration of new ways to approach effective learning.

Computers have become part of the new technology of the 21^st century. All the advantages that an individual can get through the easy access to be informed will make a huge difference in the human perspective.

There could be many reason or excuses why some people reject to use the computer. But, by not taking the courage to incorporate this technological tool in their lives, and learn how to use it, makes the individual more isolated.

Why is important that teachers know to use the computer? In my opinion, teachers must know how to use the computer and other devices, in order to facilitate the enormous multitasks and responsibilities that a teacher must be dealing with every single day. Teachers can be better organized and create a better class setting by using the tools to deliver a motivated class.

By embracing new methods for teaching, we are transforming the nation by “not leaving any child behind” and vice versa. Educators must be familiar with all these new methods of teaching, not matter how intimidating it is to be in front of a computer. We need to learn how to take advantage of it, in order to prepare our students with enough skills to face the 21^st century’s necessities.

Intelligence in 7 Steps- A response

Intelligence in 7-steps

Several research projects have recognized that intelligence is conceived as a multi-set of many independent modules or “intelligences”.

However, Howard Gardner, Ph.D. says that human beings have evolved to be able execute at least seven separate forms of intelligence like:

1. Linguistic

2. Logical-mathematical

3. Musical

4. Spatial

5. Bodily kinesthetic

6. Interpersonal

7. Intrapersonal

Nevertheless, all these forms of intelligences do not work totally independently. Intelligence will be an active interaction between biological inclinations and possibilities of learning in any cultural context.

These ideas have attracted the attention of educators, who are looking for comprehensive ways to understand the learning diversity process that students could bring with them.

As a teachers we need to remember that we cannot see our students like a box to add just information. We need to be aware to identify our student’s inclinations of approaching knowledge. We need to be supportive to them and promote the love of learning.

10 worse things that a teacher can do.

10 worse things that a teacher can do.

According to Melissa Kelly, we should be really careful in the way that we approach our students every day. She suggests that being aware in these items could help us to polish for better performance.

Yelling is a synonym of a losing battle. Some teachers lose their patience very easily and the result will come with a yelling response of their personal frustration. I do not know how it works with the students but sometimes I see them having an enormous satisfaction to see teacher's losing control. Others are offended by this yelling, but in either way that action is not healthy to anyone.

Avoiding to be friendly or even smile. Some teachers lose the fun part of being at school and act as it were the worse place to be. Already, in every single day we have multiple pressures around, and we tend to be highly alienated by the system. It looks then as if everybody were robots. We are not robots. We are human beings that feel and smile in life. We can be bitter on our way to work. The environment will be settled with a lot of negativity without a smile.

Being too friendly, some teachers become the buffoon of the class because he/she acts as best friend. This attitude can be dangerous because it could be appreciated as giving all the control to the student who later will treat you as a doormat.

Stopping the lessons to confront students for minor infractions is not the way we are going to make progress. Students will feel humiliated and consequently we are going to be suffering the consequences. Students will not learn what they need to learn. They will react and unfortunately the classroom could appear as an arena.

Inconsistency, this is one of the most important items to remain. We cannot make progress if our attitude toward what we are teaching according to a lesson plan or daily goals to achieve are not made true. If we are too weak to be consistent in our rules or if we treat different our students for what they believe or do. If we set a certain rules we have to be conscious that those ones are fair and realizable. Once we have our rules settled we must follow with out breaking them. For example, if we say that some day is the deadline for turning homework, that is the last the time to do it.

Setting unrealistic rules will not make a difference. Student easily can overpower the inconsistency of maintaining them.

The last link and one of the most important. Gossiping about other faculty members or students. That is the most unethical thing that we must to avoid in order to have a great environment. Gossiping is one of most dangerous acts that a teacher can do in.

This links seem to be silly, but these things actually happens and if we put strong attention to what we are doing and how we are doing it in our class we are going to improve our performance enormously.

Integrating Technology Into the Classroom

Integrating Technology Into the Classroom

By Melissa Kelly

Besides being in the vanguard, using the internet in education old and new generations learn the advantage of having it. Everyone can be close vast information around the world.

Using this technological tool, we can waste less paper while creating documents. Also it provides an immense way to improve the quality of well researched information. I mean, students and teachers can look through a huge number sources.

However, as teachers we must be careful with the quality of information that students are getting. We must be familiar with the reliable sources, and let the students know why it is important to be aware of that.

It is important to stimulate our students about the research on internet and other kinds of technology to help them to create better debates and investigations. We never know where this continuous search for truth will lead us.

Using all the possibilities that students can get, like website creation, students get excited and participative in what is happening. It also makes them more aware of the new technology advances.

For a teacher using the technology in the classroom can save valuable time. We can integrate and create new assignments and present to our students new topics with a lot of more attractiveness. I really believe that we must take advantage of this type of technology and do not be afraid to try it.

Top 6 Keys to Being a Successful Teacher

Top 6 Keys to Being a Successful Teacher

Melissa Kelly in this article offers us some of the most frequent characteristics that some teachers have in common. If we focus on these qualities we can get a benefit from them in our personal manner of teaching because it always is going to be very close with our personal attitude in how we approach ourselves into the school environment.

Sense of humor will release our stress and will relieve the tension in the classroom. Then the environment will be enjoyable for everybody.

Positive Attitude will help us directly in the resolution of our daily challenges. All will depend on how easy or hard you want to seek a solution. The impact of our own attitude will be reflected in our students.

High Expectations in my opinion always are going to be supported by our own consistency in order to achieve our goals. We must be aware of setting realistic goals and even be flexible to modify these in case of not having the specific expectation.

As teachers we must be fair to treat students equally and help them to keep motivated while learning. It is very important to be consistent in our methods and keep fresh communication with other teachers to look for second opinions.

10 Reasons to become a teacher

10 Reasons to become a teacher

By Melissa Kelly

Through this article I found once again some of the advantages of became a teacher. The teaching experience has a lot of advantaged like giving you the opportunity to laugh and learn at the same time. This profession is not easy. It requires a lot of patience and a continuous looking to increase and lead the seeking of knowledge.

Although, many teachers quit around 3 to 5 years, it is not easy to say this. Hopefully, all this generation of new teachers will become truly teachers who promote a difference.

In my experience, I have been inside of the system forever, and I can see some of the tough situations that teachers have to deal with, for example the bureaucracy. But in any other profession, I think we still deal with the same.

One of the things that make me laugh about this article was that it offers the juicy part of having the summers off or all these vacations. I think that it is necessary to have them in order to keep a healthy mind.

Becoming a teacher is one of the most beautiful professions and one of the most challenging. Keeping a positive attitude and keeping a nice communication with you co-workers will help enormously to be there.

Tapping into Multiple Intelligences

Tapping into Multiple Intelligences and learn about how to apply the general concepts to a real classroom setting.

· Theory of multiple intelligences (M.I).

All humans have multiple skills that play a very complex role interacting each other in everyday problem resolution. This is then what I will call M.I. Although, the intelligence of how well executed is the resolution of a problem will be determined by the effort of developing each skill.

· Howard Gardner’s definition differs from the traditional definition of intelligence.

According to Howard Gardner, intelligence is a set of skills that help a person to resolve their problems in every day situations. The person has to make multiple decisions according to what he knows previously and what he is learning through experience, creating interconnections between the knowledge.

The traditional definition of intelligence is the uniform cognitive capacity that an individual is born with. Consequently, this one can be measured in a simple short-answer test.

· What to consider next time in our classroom setting.

Each student is a universe that potentially could have a diverse way to gain knowledge and expressed it. We most be open and flexible to accept new ways that students demonstrate their learned knowledge. I think everybody could benefit from this experience, bringing something knew, but not rigid.

· Howard Gardner’s theory has evolved.

A very wide number of teachers and administrators have been more aware about how to apply a M.I. theory into their classroom setting and school, helping and understanding their students better.

Many critics point to the argument of not encouraging the educators to teach the traditional stiff core knowledge. Others demonstrate a big fear of an increasing knowledge that probably they would not understand. There are many different points of view referring to the acceptance of the hugely diverse way that human minds play around in everyday interaction, as memory and capacity to process the information for future use.

· Benefits of using M.I

I really like the malleability to teach for understanding, not just for adding information to our students as they where boxes. I like cooperation and I strongly believe that everybody can bring to the table something new to learn while having fun. If we are open and cautious into new generational interest, not only are we learning something new, we can interact in promoting solutions to actual problems in life. Students will share their interest and become more involved into the learning process increasing even their self-esteems. That is the most important fact that I can see by being aware of the idea of M.I. We are diverse in thoughts and incredibly versatile in the resolution of problems.

The planet of PDF

The planet of PDF (Portable Document Format)

PDF is a type of file created by Adobe Acrobat. Acrobat is the kind of program that is used to create those PDF. This system was created with the intention to make easy the process of moving information around.

According to Duff Johnson, a pioneer of this program, PDF has many varied ways to use it. Everything or almost everything that we could think to do on a piece of paper we can do it even better matching elegance and all these new applications that technology provides.

PDFs might contain in one file a vast, diverse use of electronic documents. You can have a file with graphics, movies, and a number of optional ways to dress up your document. This one could be shared and secure. You can trust the confidentiality that you can get through this optional tool.

One of the super applications that I could see to be beneficial for teachers is the FREE library. With this, and all PDF documents, teachers and students will not be limited by expenses if the teacher provides the PDF documents to the students over the computer. As teachers, we can give a reading assignment and the students would go to PDF FREE Books and find the specific book then, download it and save it. This is awesome.

I am still learning how to create a PDF. The idea of saving paper and doing a really nice presentation excites me a lot, and once I get it, all the work and effort that I am putting in now will shine later.

Virtual Library

Virtual Library Review

It is amazing how well organized is this virtual library. Personally, I am very surprised about this. Of course, I had to explore it and be silly about it. I thought that I would get a scanned book through this site. After I realized how it works, I laughed at myself.

Anyway, in this site you can find any kind of information or almost every thing. If not you can make a "quick search" into the information and libraries site. There you can get a broad idea about how this site works. If you need more assistance you can go to the help desk. There you can ask for specific information that you know is relevant, but is not available (Personallly, I tried to ask but, it was more complicated that I thought because my email program was not set up). With this site you can feel more confident in looking to many sources. It is easy and fast.

If you become very familiar using this site, you can play will all this information to provide more options to your students to work with and be more informed letting them know how many things are there to learn. As a teacher counting with this kind tool would help a lot in setting our class dynamic using any kind of available sources that we can find here.

I went to the education section and it was super. I found, for example, diverse teaching methodologies, strategies: everything. It was amazing how much information you can get through this.

The challenge then, I found was that we need to be careful about how we manipulate this information. We need also be super-aware of how students will work without cheating.

I really think this site would help us enormously to become efficient teachers who are in vanguard of our field.

The best part of doing this research was when I got into the museum section. I just I loved it. For an instant, I felt that I was travelling around the world and visiting all these beautiful places. It was awesome. I highly recommend this part of the virtual library.

FURL Review

Furl features give us a big picture of all the things that we can do while furling, like saving documents, sharing and searching many other web pages. Also, we can add comments and categorize and date them. With this new side, I learn that we have a lot of options to keep informed. This is a web site that offers a lot of practical options that we can apply to our teaching method. We can find the most popular information around, organize it, and even better we can share with others our selected web pages adding more information. We can play with it and still learning.

As it its application, for example, if I have n number of students and we are making a research about x theme, every one can share others' favorite pages. Teachers consequently can have access to monitor student interaction and progress, if you are set up correctly.

The nice advantage of this is that we can learn a lot and use this web as a nice research feedback. The bad things that I found are that students can be very distracted while using it, there is a lot of bad information avaialble, and at the last minute they could copy others information.

Well, I imagine that becoming a teacher I must be quick in learning how to use this new technology, and detect the bad information that students can bring. I am pretty sure it will be very useful. Already, I signed on in the furl site. That was fun and very educational.

http://www.dumblittleman.com/2007/07/50-tools-that-can-improve-your-writing.html

Hello, blog readers. Here is a summer busy picture of me dealing with all this new technology.

Autobiography

My name is Ana Viridiana Mercado Ratliff. I am from México D.F. (Mexico City) where I was born and grew up with over 20 million other people. My parents were high school teachers, which has led to my interest in being educated and my deep respect for education. I have a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology, and a vocational degree in secretarial skills.

At an early age, I was involved in Folkloric dance, public speaking and poetry. I performed for several years around the city, allowing me to express myself and deal with the daily stress of the crazy city.

In 1997, I met the love of my life, Nathan John Ratliff, who gave me the opportunity to enjoy his culture and his country. I immigrated to the United States in 2001. Upon my arrival, learning the language was crucial to my development in this society. I immediately enrolled at the English as a Second Language Program at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon.

Simultaneously, I got involved in Middle Eastern dance, while my husband was studying Law. This activity helped me deal with my frustration of not communicating my thoughts with fluency.

Through these programs, I met a lot of people from all over the world, who had different backgrounds and different ways of thinking, which was very enjoyable.

In 2003, we finished our respective programs and moved to Klamath Falls. This place ironically reminds me a lot Mexico City, because of their geographical similarities. Both cities are in long valleys surrounded by desert mountains. Mexico City had a beautiful lake, while Klamath Falls still has one, but without the billons of lights all over, yet.

I like this place a lot because it is clean and not overcrowded. I like to have time to be around my family, which has been very supportive, whereas I found it still a little bit hard for me to be away from my family who is still living in Mexico. So, I try to visit at any opportunity which I find I go to see them.

I have a brother who is living in Canada, and my sister who is with my mother in Mexico. I enjoy taking care of my pets a lot and being at home. That is why I like to work with the community through education to keep this place clean and peaceful.

In Winter 2004, I started working at Mazama High School in ESL/ELD (English Language Development) as a paraprofessional. I help other students to deal with the transition of being in another country, in which English is the most important key to understanding the culture and feeling like part of the community.

Also, I started a Middle Eastern dance club, which helps my students, and myself, build our self-esteem and have fun. Learning together and enjoying new and exciting things as a team is fun. For this reason, I have a constant interest in improving my education.

Becoming a teacher is my next goal. I have met a lot of excellent teachers at Mazama High School, who have helped me to stand by my dream and to clarify my decision to become a teacher like them. This summer I started the MAT (Masters of Art in Teaching) program at Southern Oregon University (SOU), from which I believe I will learn lot, and I will be meeting very interesting people who have very similar lovely interests around education, as well as to improve it. I am really excited to enjoy this new experience with you.