From University to Third Grade

I regret to inform the readers of this post that I will not be continuing in the GWU School of Education next Spring. I made this decision pretty early in the semester due to financial constraints preventing me from staying at GWU for the extra year and a half needed to change my major to Elementary Education as a junior. What I did not realize at the beginning of the semester as I made this decision was how bittersweet the last few class meetings of Educ 250 would be... I am looking forward to finishing my degree in Missiology with a minor in Biblical Studies and bringing the work of my religion professors to fruition, and I am looking forward to going back to school for a Masters in Teaching after I graduate from GWU... but most of all I am looking forward to the day that I get to stand in front of my first classroom as Ms. Hackworth. Even though I am not able to finish my teacher education at Gardner-Webb, I believe that my future classroom will be better because of the semester I...

This week in Educ 250 we learned about incorporating TPACK into our lesson planning. It was very interesting as I began to think about the need for technology in my future classroom--if I am a teacher until I retire, some of my last students will be born in 2050, graduating in 2068! The world in which they live will be vastly different from my own, and I need to prepare them as best as I can for their adult lives. I agree that incorporating technology into my lessons is an excellent way to keep students engaged and help them see the relevance of subjects. If they view subjects like math as something that can only be done on pen and paper, while everything else in their life is done digitally, they may not respect it or see its relevance. The TPACK lesson definitely gave me a bit of anxiety as I thought about what life might look like in twenty years. I am honestly a bit skeptical about how much more technological progress the human race is capable of making due to the current stress it...