Teacher, Teach Me How to Teach!

I learned a lot throughout the course of my practicum experience. I had a great time at my placement at Mt. Blue Middle School in a 7th grade Social Studies classroom. This experience further solidified my love for teaching middle school. This experience is coming to an end soon, so here is my final that reflects what this experience meant to me. I hope you all enjoy!

On Tuesday (12/4) and Thursday (12/6), I attended the student teaching portfolios event at UMF. It was great to see where I will be at the end of my program and to see the hard work the students put into their semester-long field experiences. It was great to see the range of student programs represented, from Early Childhood all to Secondary Education. For my in-field practicum seminar course, we were asked to take a selfie with two of the tables. I took pictures with two tables, both the exact same path as myself, Secondary Education Social Studies. It was a great experience attending portfolios and I am looking forward to going again in the spring.

For my class on Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment, my classmates and I were asked to join the twitter conversation. Aside from the really cool things I learned in the book, I thought it was really cool to connect with my classmates to see what they were posting about the chapters along the way. Here's the link to my twitter feed to check them out: @emkessel . Chapter 1:   This chapter touched on teacher quality and how it's the backbone for the education system. In order to increase teacher quality, we need to provide support and feedback to our teachers. In the book, they talked about the presumed thought that replacement was the way to increase teacher quality. I believe that we should support our teachers in schools with continuous training, to create a more even playing field for all of our students to benefit. Chapter 2:   This chapter touched on professional development and teaching styles. Professional development opportunities allow educators to open their e

Hi, I'm back! I had a great three weeks in the field. I learned a lot from my mentor and I got the opportunity to teach many lessons. I am very excited to go back in three weeks. Tonight I am back sharing some cool resources that my peers shared from their wise teachers and my own. I got the chance to go through these really cool tools and pick out my favorite things, some things that I might use in my classroom.  I like, I wish, I wonder Gallery Walk example found on bie.org  On BIE.com, many educators are talking about Project Based Learning (PBL) and how we can engage students to take pride in their own learning. Something that I really enjoyed was how educator John Larmer wrote about doing a gallery walk for his students. In some of my classes, we have done gallery walks for our projects. Most of the time we got small notes or verbal feedback about our work that might have helped us currently in that moment. This educator talked about putting all of these comments and

On Friday, my practicum classmates and I had the pleasure of attending the ACTEM education conference in Augusta. It was a powerful experience that opened my mind to some of the great tools and techniques that educators use to support their pedagogy. Not only did we get to see other teachers present, we got to present out units that we have been diligently working on so far this semester. I was able to attend an amazing presentation done by two high school co-teachers from Morse High School in Bath, Maine. They talked about how to apply co-teaching methods to their English classroom. This is something that I am learning about in my Special Education class and I was fascinated to see Maine schools putting this into play. These two educators highlighted how technology and the tools they are using are "leveling the playing field" for students in their least restrictive environment. I learned about new tools such as pear deck and how to create specialized assignments on google

As educators and continuous learners in our own experiences, we all thrive from feedback and knowing what is expected of us. There are people who provide us with standards that we have to teach and have our students understand, but there are also expectations that we have to live up to as educators. When thinking of being evaluated and knowing what expectations are, I think of assigned rubrics in the classroom that line up to assignments. They are great when your educator took the time to make a clear understanding of what was expected of you, as the student. As educators, we want to provide our students with tools that help guide them on the path for success.  Here is the good. This educator broke down what the students were expected to do. Expectation is the key word. If our students do not understand what they must do, we are setting them up for failure. Each category explains what tasks the student must preform to reach that level of understanding. It is clear, concise, and

My practicum classmates and I are presenting our units that we have been working all semester on (so far) at ACTEM on Friday. Of course they are still a work in progress, so I am personally excited to receive feedback from the experienced educators who are in the field! In my EDU 222 class (technology in the classroom) my classmates and I were asked to use padlet, a technology tool that we have been testing out to visually create the three stages of our unit that we created. Here is the link to my padlet that provides the pre-assessment, middle learning task, and the summative assessment. Emily 

Last week in EDU 222, my classmates and I had an important learning experience in understanding the student. As educators, we expect to have students that have varied needs that we will need to attend to, but this was an example that we got to experience for ourselves. I was able to realize how different student needs are and how we, as educators have to adapt to how they learn and understand the content. During our class last Tuesday, we were handed "extraordinaire cards" that had strengths of characters. As future educators, we were to see these examples of students walking into our four-student classroom. One side of the card had strengths of the character and the other side had the reasons behind the strength, showing why that "student" acted that way. We began with what we knew, wished, and wondered about the student. Our first card was a vampire teen and my group decided that the teen looked sad, excluded and lonely. After sharing our thoughts with the cla

Today I am back writing about how I might use community in the classroom. For my unit, I have been asked to incorporate community into my classroom. I really think that is a really neat component and it allows students to see the big picture in their work and to realize that it, in fact, applies to the real world. My unit is based around the power of political propaganda in the Holocaust. I want my students to understand the power of the media and how our words really do have power. My students are playing roles as Jewish families, where they will be giving their artifacts to the Holocaust museum that wants to open a new wing dedicated to personal experience. The students would collect various products showing that they understand the historical content and the connection to propaganda, which would be shown at a gallery walk night open to the community. Students would be able to explain their work, which is a great learning experience for both! The event would be set up like a muse

T-Pack represents a full understanding of using technology in the classroom. The venn diagrams represent technological content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and content area knowledge. My task is to tell you all about a time that I belonged, where an educator used this framework and it work for me as a student. I have always loved school and felt connected with a lot of the content I explored throughout the years. Well, maybe except science. As I progressed through middle school and high school, the technology integration became better and better as technology improved. The example that comes to mind was not in a high school classroom. I think of my sixth grade social studies unit on World War II. A topic that I grew to have a fond interest in and found the technology integration so fascinating. The classroom was set up like a simulation, where students would participate in a "game" and would head to various stations, all of which that hit almost every single mul

In EDU 223, my classmates and I were asked to contact three of our favorite teachers. For me, that task was easy. I had some of the most amazing teachers throughout my schooling experience and I could not be more thankful for the experiences I had in their classes. The first few weeks of the school year is busy and overwhelming for everyone, so I was not expecting immediate responses. After a few days, I got two responses back from some of the most amazing teachers I had at Camden Hills. I was so excited to hear back from my teachers and for them to know how much of an impact that they have had on my life both as an individual and as a future teacher. For this project, we were asked to request some resources related to curriculum, assessment, and instruction, in which I got some amazing professional development tools in return. Last weekend, I got the chance to review the materials that I received over email. All of the materials and advice was truly amazing and I am so excited to

After exploring the Innovation and Success center at Mt. Blue, we were asked to explore various google apps and how to tie them to our units that we are creating. One of the major assignments for the semester is working on a unit from our content areas. After reading and exploring various google applications, I figured out how I could use google draw as a part of my unit.  For our units, we were asked to pick a topic in our concentration areas. I chose to form a unit around the Holocaust for 7th grade social studies students. In many of my classes, I have been learning on how to make a lesson engaging and meaningful.  One of the learning tasks for my unit was to have my students create a blueprint for their own secret annex after listening to Anne Frank over read aloud. After creating the blueprint, the students would then create their team's secret annex using cardboard and other various art materials to create a birds-eye view of their product. Each student would write a shor

Hi, Everyone!  Welcome back to my blog. I haven't posted in the past week, because I have busy working on assignments for my practicum. This week in my EDU 222, I was able to explore the awesome Innovation and Success center at Mt. Blue High School in Farmington. My classmates and I were able to understand how technology plays a even bigger role in the classroom, through productivity and focus.  This week, we were given an assignment on how to connect music to the role of technology in the classroom. Here are the connections I made with the songs I chose:  Forever by Chris Brown: I was able to connect this song to the fact that technology is always changing at such a fast pace. The tools that my classmates and I used when we were in school for technology have improved and changed to become more engaging and advanced. As future educators, we have to be able to keep up with the constant change and implement it into our classrooms. I was able to connect this concept t

Yesterday in EDU 222, we were asked to make blogs and social media accounts and post meaningful content on them. In the past twenty-four hours I have been rethinking how I utilize my social media and how I might improve myself as a professional pre-service teacher. Since then, I created a new instragram which I totally recommend you follow! For homework, we were asked to create IntentionFoundTyPoetry to:      1. Explain the role that we believe technology has in teaching and learning ;      2. Express an important concept from our content area. I had a lot of fun walking around town and campus (I spent lots of time at the library) searching for the correct terms to match my beliefs! Emily

     Welcome to my blog! Over the course of the Fall 2018 semester, I will be posting about my journey as a pre-service teacher. Welcome, for those who already know who I am, and for those who do not, let me introduce myself! My name is Emily Kessel and I am studying Secondary Education Social Studies at the University of Maine at Farmington. I graduated from Camden Hills Regional High School in 2017 and enjoy spending my time in Mid-Coast Maine. Upon graduation from UMF, I am hoping to teach Middle School Social Studies in the State of Maine.       This semester, I will spend time in the local schools learning what teaching is like, where I will get to apply concepts in my methods courses to in-field experiences. I am really excited to go on this journey and will be posting frequently, so all of my followers can keep up with what I am doing.       We have learned so much during the first week and a half of classes. I am here tonight to post about some classroom norms that w