Educational Blogging

Educational blogging allows teachers to share their thoughts, ideas, opinions, and/or current events. Blogging enables teachers to voice their opinions publicly while still maintaining professionalism. Blogging in elementary schools is more of a platform for parents to check rather than the students, but it still could be beneficial to discuss the same topics with your students so they can be in the loop. 

The word "education" spelled out in Scrabble pieces.

I had the opportunity to learn about more educational topics from a few of my peers by reading their blog posts. First, I read about the benefits of reading to children in Maggie Beeler's blog posts. Maggie agrees with my views on how beneficial literature is to children's development. Books can be used to read aloud or independently by children and provide them with new skills and knowledge. Then, I read a post from Ava Holder's blog. She discussed the "whole child approach" in one of her posts which I was very interested in. The whole child approach is when educators focus on social, emotional, physical, intellectual, and health development. This approach ensures that we are focusing on each child as a person, not just a "test taker". Lastly, I read a few posts from Cat Dillard's blog. In one of her posts, she discussed school safety which I believe is a huge concern in schools today, unfortunately. Administration plays a big role in keeping the school physically safe from any potentially scary situations/people. It is also a job of a teacher to make sure their students feel emotionally safe at school by gaining trust and allowing students to open up and share anything going on in their lives that could potentially be damaging. Overall, I really enjoyed getting to read and learn from a few of my peers because we all chose to write about different topics that were important to us regarding education.

I have enjoyed getting to experiment with blogging. Previously, I would not have thought of a blog as a beneficial tool for teachers, but now I can see the benefits. Blogging has allowed me to select topics to write about that are important to me. I have been able to write informatively and share my opinion on these topics. Future parents might enjoy getting to read my stance on some controversial issues that are currently going on in the education system.

Standardized Testing in Elementary Schools

Standardized testing...everyone has an opinion, whether positive or negative. Standardized testing is essentially a way to measure and compare students' skills or abilities at a given point under controlled conditions. These tests are administered and scored by a standard measure, usually a machine. The same test is given, the same time allotment is given, and the tests are graded in the same way. Standardized testing has become a prevalent issue in public schools in recent years with educators and parents split on whether they do more harm than good.

Bubbling in answers on a bubble sheet

I believe that standardized testing can be a useful tool to use occasionally. When teachers begin to teach so their students do well on a test rather than teaching to make sure students understand a concept is where there become discrepancies. Teachers begin to "teach the test" instead of teaching the material to the students. I think that standardized tests can be beneficial to get statistics to see where children have missing parts in a curriculum, but that should not be the teacher's focus. If teachers teach the material that they have to according to their curriculum and standards, then children should be able to excel when taking a standardized test. This is where there is a crossroad between teachers versus the state requirements.

Standardized testing has and will continue to cause conflict within school systems between administrators, teachers, and parents. Standardized testing provides statistics in order to see where students are at in order to improve the quality of teaching and learning. These tests do not measure students' natural abilities though, and should not be used as an indicator of intelligence level. That is when teachers feel the pressure to "teach the test" instead of teaching the students.  School systems and parents should look at standardized testing as a data checkpoint that can provide helpful feedback.