EDSS 531 Journal 3

I think I understand the needs of my students to a fair amount, because doing such “get to know” your student activities during and outside of class instruction time, creates a solid foundation to build upon for further developing a sense of student knowledge.  Also, the day to day interactions and spontaneous behavior and actions displayed by each student also informs me about my students.   I will be co-teaching periods 3 and 5 Biology with Mr. Brubaker and period 6 Biology with Mr. Sills this semester at La Costa Canyon High School.  After my first initial week observing and gathering information about my students, for period 3, there is a total of with 2 IEPs; and for period 5 there is a total of 2 IEP’s.  The school’s demographics lend to a class of a majority of respectful and well-mannered and behaved students. 

What these students will need for the 21^st century is more a focus on critical thinking skills, technology skills, and communication skills.  Also each student must experience well-diversified life skills ranging from survival to cooking, money marketing to fashion, in order to succeed professionally. 

The gap between them and me is somewhat wide because I’m in my early 30’s and they grew up without the notion of pagers, phone booths, typewriters, and the computers were a lot bigger and took a lot longer to work.  The cell phone was as big as a dog. I didn’t start to experience using the internet explorer until I was a senior in high school, so most of the communication was in done in writing, regular post office mailing, and by phone, fax or in person.  Life was done at a much slower pace.  So I think today’s students need to learn how to slow down and not impulsively act on their every whim like they are used to doing.  Information is at their fingertips; therefore my job as an educator is to teach today’s youth the processes of finding information, gathering it, organizing, and applying it to create a better world for them as individuals and for them to use it to become better citizens.  In order to make connections I must tap into their world to reach them, therefore, I can provide lessons online, communicate through a blog, and have Web quest activities to increase their researching skills online.