Sage Plagge's Edu Blog

     Goodbyes are always bittersweet but mostly sweet, I think of it like coming to the end of a large journey, all the hard work has finally paid off. But you will miss all the friends, the students, you made along the way. I always get a little teary eyed as I see my students walk in the classroom for the last time during my placements, but it always gets easier near the end of my time on the last day, the sense of accomplishment will always motivate me to go again!      I have a tradition for my placements, questions are part of being a teacher. Students will talk to you and ask about your interests. I give them the opportunity to do this at the beginning and end of the placements. I don't really want a big party or event or anything like that because I feel to pressured to make it so amazing that it keeps any and all sad emotions down, but then my CT has to deal with the fallout, so I keep it simple and clean.      For this placement, I u...

     Parent communication is a tricky subject. I have not really done parent communication much outside of my own newsletters for my diagnostic class. Newsletters are the primary way that my current CT communicates with parents.      Obviously one way to communicate is via emails and messaging. This is more common in our ever more technological world, I have seen a growing number of examples of teachers being available through text and or emails. My CTs have talked about how they might just message, call, or maybe even have group chats with parents. My current teacher even has been called directly by parents from time to time. I have had exactly one conference with a parent before for diagnostic, and plan to go to conferences for my first placement.      The parent connections I have seen is maybe parents come in every now and again to drop something off, and at my current placement the students can have lunch with their parents, which gives ...

 One of the specific pieces of feedback I have asked for is for my advisor and CT to watch my pacing, as I have had a history with dragging things out for a little too lang. This was first pointed out to me during my math placement, where it would sometimes take me 20 minutes to do a simple warm up. I have been told that whilst I am very thorough when I teach, I can be too thorough sometimes. There are times where I have this whole strategy in my head to help students understand the concepts they will be learning about and by the time we get to that point, sometimes not even a quarter of the way through my demonstration, it feels like half the class already knows what I'm talking about.  So why do I keep going? Why not just stop and move on? Well, part of it is routine, I write very script like lesson plans so I don't always have the best improv, so I just keep trucking. The main feedback I have received when talking about this idea is student engagement, students who already ...

 I would say that my comfort zone is patrolling the classroom, being in close proximity to students as to quickly be able to help them with any problems or questions. I like be available but not right next to the students as they work. I believe this encourages them to think through their options before asking me as the teacher, as I won't be instantly available at a set location.  Something me and my teacher talked about was physical contact with students, to be more specific, hugging. My CT is perfectly open to hugging students first, touching them on the shoulder, all kinds of things like that. However, I am very much not one to really interact with students physically, I will do fist bumps and high fives, but that is about it. I will never be a hug initiator, I will reciprocate a hug, but I don't really feel comfortable hugging them first. This is actually a pattern as my CT had another ST who behaved the same way.  I find sitting down and grading work pretty relaxing...

 So, I have been sick with Influenza A for the first two days of student teaching, luckily for me, I had recovered enough to go in on Friday! I had prepared a "Get To Know Me" Slide show for the students to view. I put on there pictures of my dogs and my family and my Job at SpareTime, we had fun and had a time at the end for the students to ask questions. The way my CT set was very interesting, She had them stand up and give me their names,  however, on a few of them, of course I've been practicing their names, so I accidentally blurt out a couple while doing the questions, one kid even looked at me with the side eye and stated, "You already knew my name".  We had a really good opportunity to do a bonding activity when I suggested using DannyGo during our "Fit break". A few kids already knew about it, but some were seeing it for the first time, and some were acting like they weren't having it, but once me AND Kris got into it, all of the class was...

 Benefits of incorporating Maker Education - Maker Education allows us to utilize much more hands on approaches, for those with impairments like blindness or just as a hands approach for those who may prefer it. We were shown an example of this at class at our Maker studio at Coe, A, if I recall, one to one scale of the brain was for a blind student so they could understand the location of hemispheres in the brain, we also used our hands to build structures, which allowed our hands to do as much thinking as our brain. The addition of Maker in education allows us and students to bring ideas and represent things physically rather than just visually.  However, challenges that come to mind, one to me is price and actually utilizing the tools, like our 3D printer. Those are pretty dang expensive, even having one would have some hefty long term expenses, due to maintenance and materials based on usage, my high school had a whole class that involved 3d printing and I'm sure it wasn't...