A Little Support . . . A Lot of Hope

When I went to college I was was one of the few people, I knew,  who had not changed their major.  There was no doubt in my mind that I would always work as a teacher, an educator in some capacity. There was no question that I would use technology as I was an audio/visual worker in high school. I have dreamt about working as a preschool teacher, a special education teacher, or elementary AND I WOULD BE GOOD.

My dreams did come true, I have worked at each level of education with the exception of post high school education, but I have conducted professional developments for teacher, online and in person.  I have always been interested in technology and that is why when I renew my license this year I will add that endorsement to my license.

It is the end of the year!  It has been a tough year.    I have thought hard and long that there were ways I could manage each job, I could use technology.  However, since I was not the technology coordinator, I didn't have administrative rights, which made it difficult, if not impossible to use anything that was not school issued.  The end is near.  We have rough 3 weeks of school left this year and I will not return next year.

I subscribe to a blog written by Vicki Smith and she provides links to wonderful sites. She has a site that I would like to be part of my blog, but I also like to give my opinion of various sites.

• Some of you, like me have many days left, prayer is a great way to get through the many days and one day can feel like many.  Join this challenge:  Linda Kardamis' 21-day prayer challenge
• Some of you will end school tomorrow or in one of the many tomorrow, check out this link:
• http://www.coolcatteacher.com/finding-your-beautiful-moment-the-last-week-of-school
• check out the rest of her ideas for ending the year:  coolcatteacher.com/blog

Finally, there are individuals like myself who are sad and happy to see the end of the year.  I will miss the students, this is the first year in a long time where students outside my classroom stop and say hi to me during the day.  Students from past years have stopped me; in a lot of ways it has been ego affirming that individuals know, like and remember me.  However, I have also lost co workers and relatives this year.  It has been a year for reflection. 

This blog will still be about technology, teaching and curriculum, but I want to acknowledge where I am and I don't want to be teaching for the rest of my life in a public or charter school.

Changing Your Position in Education

I recently made the decision that after a  year of learning many lessons about working in a different school environment in four different roles I will not return next year. In 25 days, I will be changing my title to that of an online learning specialist.  I will be working online, full time.

There are so many negative things that I could say and why do negative thoughts come into a persona's mind rather than positive.  Of course there are plenty of people who think positive thoughts right away. In the meantime, I learned that the best thing I could do was to keep my mouth closed.  

Working online should be interesting, I need to learn another set of skills as I work online and earn a living.  I am very excited and grateful to see what God has in store with me.

Let's Salute the Week . . . . . have a great one!!!

  I finished my first stack of books from the Research for Reading challenge in March.  I really liked them, in fact as I read them to my students the language in them was great.  I have language challenged students so it was fun to read espcially

"Best Frints in the whole universe" by Antoinette Portis.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and the kids were able to put the right words with the "made up" words by the author.

Teaching/Working ONline

Today I had my first foray into teaching online.  I have been filling out a lot of applications for remote work.  I am a online learning specialist, but I have been looking for other things so that I can get more experience in other online arenas.

Interview lessons learned:

I was interviewed for and English language teaching job.  It was a good experience and I hope I get

the job.  However, even if I don't I did learn a few things during the interview:

• teaching online is definitely different than in person teaching
• requires more preparation, because some of the materials I used needed to be larger.
• the "I Do, We do, You do" format is much different.  The modelling requires more practice.
• planning also includes practicing it online so that visual aspect can be seen ahead of time and problems can be eliminated in advance.
• teaching online and presenting webinars are not the same

Reflecting on the lesson, I don't think I impressed my interviewer, but it was my first time out, so I hope I am interviewed again.  However, I don't a lot, because I do want to teach online.

My Reasons for Online/Remote/Virtual Work

My husband and I own a cabin in the mountains that we want to move to and live it at least six month of the year.  It is not a place where I would feel comfortable commuting to work everyday, especially since the commute is all down hill.  IN addition, there are are several  animals that I would have to share the road with in the morning and at night.  Plus, remote work would mean that I can stay in the house, take a walk during the noon hour and when 5:00 comes I don't have far to go.  

Plus, we also own a 22 foot RV with a slide and a outside kitchen.  We have met several people who live and work full time out of their RV, plus I watch a lot of RV shows.  The main thing we would need would be a cellular enhancer.  This would give us the time and travel we both want to have in our life.

Learning more and more about technology will really help me with this goal!

Bringing it Up to Date

The week has been busy, so has the month. i h started off the month putting all my books and reviews in order so I would remember to post them on a regular basis.  It did not work out well!

However, the day will begin again and God's mercy  begins every day.

The month is almost in the middle, I know we are not in the teens yet.  We are in the single digits.  The week I put in my resignation this week.  I can't go back to that school.  Actually I can't go back to any school.  I need an online job.  I need to find one or I need to develop one myself.  I will be working hard at that this month.  It will be put in place.