My floorplan.

As a speech-language pathologist, I will not have a traditional classroom. Instead, I will be working one-on-one and in small groups with children in my office. I wanted my office to be comfortable and inviting, so I included lots of comfortable chairs both for parents and the kids. I also included bright colors and plants to make the room feel lively. There are lots of windows to let in the sun, a bookcase with children's books, lots of storage by the windows with fun toys, a play area with a pretend kitchen and washer/dryer, and a little kitchen table and chairs. Another corner has a little rug with stuffed animals, a train set, a puppet theatre, and blocks the kids can stack and even climb on. I even threw in a mini trampoline! For when it gets cold in the winter, I put in a brick fireplace to add to the warm and inviting feel of my office.

I chose this design so that I can observe children's speech patterns as they would naturally interact with me and each other. Adding fun games and activities for the children to participate in will help me assess what kind of speech disorder a child might have. I'd love for the parents to be able to observe everything that I'm doing with their kids. Hopefully, everyone who spends time in my office will feel comfortable and welcome in therapy.

Chapter 1 response

In the reading, I found that it is most important to me as an educator that learning is more than simple fact memorization. Collaboration, creative problem solving, and simply making learning fun are absolutely

 necessary to a meaningful learning experience. I think the author made an excellent point in mentioning that teaching children to memorize facts and pass a standardized test really does very little for a child's education. Teachers who are forced to teach by the standard set by federal regulation often have little room for creativity in their lesson plans. I believe that students learn best when permitted to think creatively, work together, bounce ideas off of each other, and help each other find solutions to problems. This way, students can learn to appreciate different points of view while developing their own ideas. 

As the daughter of two educators, I have learned firsthand what works best in the c lassroom to make learning meaningful. My mom frequently has her 4-year-olds come together in reading groups and center time to help each other with little projects and learn certain concepts together. My dad, as a high school principal, has the opportunity to observe learning in dozens of classrooms, and he knows that the really great teachers allow students to collaborate and think creatively together. As a speech-language pathologist, I plan to let my children either work in small group settings, or I will come up with creative and fun ways to help children master sounds.

Digital media reflection.

I definitely consider myself to be a digital native. While I may not be the most computer-savvy person my age, I definitely take to new technologies and learn new things on the computer a whole lot faster than my parents do. I believe that the fact that I grew up in an age of advanced technology makes me better equipped to teach the future generations. The teachers of the future will be much more familiar with new technologies, having learned them from a very young age. I predict that the technology gap between teachers and students in the future will be a whole lot smaller. One day, everyone will be digital natives.

            However, I don’t necessarily agree that “today’s youth are masters of multitasking.” Just because a child may be doing a Google search for a homework assignment while chatting with three different friends on Facebook does not mean that the student’s full attention is on any one thing. Personally, I am unable to get a meaningful learning experience out of technology when I am dividing my attention among ten different tabs on my computer.

            I definitely think that Marc Prensky is right about the generation gap in referring to 21^st century learners as either digital natives or digital immigrants. However, I do think that we can agree that many adults who were not born in the digital age have become fluent in new technologies. Many of my professors and teachers in high school have used digital media in really clever ways that have helped me tremendously, and these instructors were certainly not born into these new technologies.

            It’s weird to think that the class of 2025 (current 4^th graders) will not remember some of the things that made such a huge impact on my life growing up—including technologies that are now extinct. The class of 2025 will not remember VHS tapes, most likely. Awesome 90’s shows like Boy Meets World are before their time. While I grew up playing my Nintendo 64 with very old graphics, they grew up playing much more sophisticated Wii games. Beanie Babies have been all but replaced by Webkinz. They were also born after 9/11, an event that I still remember like it was yesterday even though I myself was a 4^th grader when it happened. 

How I learned to fish.

I love being outside and doing almost any other activity that you can think of that involves the Great Outdoors—camping, hiking, riding on the boat, four-wheeling, and going for long trail rides on horseback. As much as I love doing things outside, I love spending with my dad even more. We usually go together to the mountains, and we share the dream of moving to Montana one day. A desire to hang out with Dad outside led me learn how to fish last April.

Fishing isn’t an activity that I would normally attempt—or even want to do. A good fisherman or hunter is someone who can sit patiently for hours, hunched over in a boat or perched precariously in a tree, waiting for the fish to get hungry or for just the right deer to wander by. I’m not an extraordinarily patient person by nature, so I’ve never had a desire to hunt or fish. Dad, however, is a very patient sportsman, and he wanted to share his love of fishing with his daughter. I agreed to go, and I made Dad believe that I was very excited to sit on that tiny boat under the hot Georgia sun and wait for the fish to bite.

Fishing turned out to be a lot more interesting than I expected. Dad gave me a pole and     taught me how to cast my line and reel it in, over and over in several vain attempts to hook a bass. I learned that you have to be very precise about casting toward the shore without getting your line caught in the trees (which is not as easy as it sounds). Dad caught several enormous fish, one after the other, with his careful, steady casting. By late morning, I was able to cast successfully toward the dock, but I never caught anything more than pond scum and a couple of trees. I’ll probably never become a Bass Pro professional fisherwoman, but I learned the basics of fishing and even more importantly, that fun is not found in what you’re doing so much as the in person you’re with.