This week’s compelling question proposed by my teacher is what is worth teaching. Schools are now very focused on text books, standardized testing, district mapping, and standards that this has now been the main focus in curriculum. As a teacher there are things we are expected to teach to provide our students with the required information that is given in the TEKS and to help them do their best on state required standardized test. However, we are not limited to just teaching just that information and we are not limited to one teaching style. As teachers we are responsible for teaching our students important information to help them succeed in life and to help them gain information on different topics to help them discover their interests. To do this we need to go beyond the minimum requirements when teaching. We also need to make sure we present the information in away that is interactive and interesting to the students because then everything can be worth learning for them. I am studying to be a special education teacher so I feel as if there is a lot of things that are worth teaching my future students that are not included in the TEKS or on the STAAR test. I think with using the right resources there are many ways to incorporates any of these things into lessons so that they can be beneficial to my students in more than one way. One thing I feel is very important for individuals with disabilities to learn is how to apply all their skills learn in school to real life. Such as math for grocery shopping, ordering food, paying bills and other things. Also learning to use public transportation. All these thing can be incorporated into other lessons and used as field trips.
Hannah's Blog 
Hi Hannah, I love that you posted such a beautiful infographic at the beginning of your blog! It is a great hook and I liked analyzing all of the different learning icons. Your blog was informative on different aspects of learning for students and students with disabilities. It is interesting that you mentioned that as teachers we need “to go beyond the minimum requirements when teaching.” It is interesting because I think each teacher/administrator has their “own” minimal standard of teaching practices. It is imperative that as future teachers we see gaps that need to be filled besides teaching only to the TEKS. I love that you see the importance of individuals with disabilities, ” to learn how to apply all their skills learn in school to real life. Such as math for grocery shopping, ordering food, paying bills and other things. Also learning to use public transportation.” I agree that learning has to be applicable into everyday life skills otherwise students will lose the information and it is not benefiting their quality of life to retain the information. Teachers will have to figure out those special added learning needs each year with a new class and hopefully apply those added learning needs into unit lessons and class conversations. Great job 🙂
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Let me know whoever it is that posted this! 🙂
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Hannah,
You picture really captured me and made me want to read your post. You picture really reflect that there is so much students can learn to help them develop and acquire the knowledge they should have outside of core curriculum. Incorporating core standards with everyday like skills such as grocery shopping is a great way to gain students interest because there will be days where they may have a budget as they go to a grocery store alone. A good way to present material that is interactive for the students is by picking topics that are of interest to the students that they will be able to elaborate on orally or with paper and pencil. I love that you mentioned public transportation I feel like this would decrease wrecks and deaths. As a future educator I think if I as teaching public transportation I would be cool to take a train ride field trip, or attend a airport observation center. Mentioning learning and teaching the different transportations, I remember in Elementary school we went to the science center and we were taught how astronauts fly their space shuttles. This fostered so many great conversations in English class and Science class.
I really enjoyed your post this week! Brought back some fun memories and made me think of ways I could incorporate every day skills into my future core curriculum subjects.
Madison Frazier
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Hi Hannah!
I really enjoyed reading your post. The picture was a good addition at the beginning and made me think of all the different ways people learn and different paths people can take in life. One thing that really stood out to me was when you mentioned teachers “need to go beyond the minimum requirements.” It made me think that teachers and students are not much different from each other. They are both always learning from each other and if one, or both, is only doing minimum work, then neither is learning. The teacher and the student rely on each other to do their best work and learn.
I also love the idea of presenting “information in away that is interactive and interesting to the students.” When you talked about using math at the grocery store I thought that would be an interesting field trip. Especially because it’s a place they likely go to often. Then, after the field trip, they could use these skills you taught them everytime they went to the grocery store.
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Hannah,
Just like the above comments, I love your picture at the beginning, in my opinion it represents all the things that are going on at once and that at the same time we are absorbing in. I like how you used the grocery store example, growing up we don’t have to learn the purpose of couponing, if it’s really a good deal, or how to even calculate the tax when finishing up the transaction. Also, the fact that you want to be a special education teacher really requires you to think outside the box I think. What are some ways you could probably incorporate these life/social skills with your students?
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Hannah, great post this week! I like how you referred to the concept of knowing basic math for daily/weekly activities like grocery shopping or taxes. I can relate to this because I worked at Sonic for a couple of months the summer of my sophomore year in high school. As a carhop, you must calculate the amount of change given to the customer. It was imperative that I gave back the correct amount of change, otherwise, the money given away would come out of my paycheck! Thanks for sharing this week, and I also want to point out that teachers are responsible for taking the curiculum and present it to the students in a way for them to succeed on the exams, just like the model given by Cameron Smith.
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Hannah,
I really enjoyed reading your post! Just as everyone else – I really liked the picture you chose to include in your blog. It definitely grabs attention. One point that you made that I particularly enjoyed and thoroughly agree with is what we, as teachers, should and can do to teach our students legitimate real world skills. I think this is valuable for all kinds of students. I think back to myself leaving as a senior in high school going out as a freshman in college and how much I had to learn that was never taught to me in school. How to pay bills, how to do your taxes, how to create a budget, interview skills, resume writing skills – all of these things are so important to successes after public schooling and it is something I think more schools should be putting emphasis on teaching their students. Great post! (:
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I enjoyed your post! It is very important that teachers are compelled to what they teach. If something is not important enough, then why should we teach it. Many of the important topics are usually misrepresented through bad teaching. A lot of the different ideas can be giving them hands on interaction. If teachers created the assesments then they should begin to encourage application based assessments.
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Hannah,
I loved your inspiring blog post! I think it’s so great that you having the calling to teach special education! I totally agree with your statement ” To do this we need to go beyond the minimum requirements when teaching”. It is so true! I was in a speech class over the summer, and on the first day of school my professor explained her grading criteria. She said if you did the minimum requirements for your speeches, you would receive a C, because that is the grade you get for doing exactly what I asked for. In order to receive an A on a speech, you had to go above and beyond expectations, to bring something truly great to the table. As educators, this is what we all should strive to do.
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Hi Hannah, definitely i agree with you how schools only focus on the Standardized testing, i remember being in school and the first day of class the teacher gave us a TAKS outline,which basically is the outline of the class for the rest of the year, its sad that schools have come like this where they teach to the test, when schools lack creativity and excitement students are getting exposed to new information, and if we don’t challenge students how do we seriously expect them to achieve? I early enjoyed reading your blog you made very good points,good job!
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Districts and states sadly focus mainly on the standardized testing. I completely agree that we need to incorporate real life experiences. Children are being dropped in the world knowing nothing about it unless their parents made them work. But even then their knowledge is limited. I agree there should be more field trips and field experience to help prepare children for when they are done with school. I think that’s why people drop out of college so fast. They aren’t prepared and didn’t know how to organize their time and money. Great post!
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