"Introduce yourself. I want to know about you as a person and as a learner. Tell me the ways that you learn best. What has your experience with technology been like up to this point? Cite examples from both your personal life and your educational life."
Hello! My name is Kelsey Smith (soon to be Parent!) and I'm a student in the Secondary Education: Life Science program at Husson University. First of all, I would like to do a casual introduction of myself. I was born and raised in the "County" of Northern Maine in a small town called Van Buren (population about 2,500). I have an older brother, an older half-sister, and two younger step-siblings (a sister and a brother). I attended SAD 24 and graduated from VBDSS in 2007 as Valedictorian. In high school I was class treasurer, a member of the Drama Club, National Honor Society, Varsity Softball team, and Varsity Basketball teams (manager for both girls and boys) along with being a devoted sports fan and taking part in Project Graduation (which included doing a lot of 'stage' acting including a Comedy Night and Mr. Van Buren fundraiser) . Now that I am at Husson, I spend the majority of my time studying and doing homework, and spend the rest of my time with my husband, whom I married in August of 2009. For fun we enjoy watching movies, playing intramural sports and watching professional sports on television (we're big Laker and Arsenal fans), and visiting local restaurants during "Happy Hour" to take advantage of cheap appetizers! We really are not 'party' people (neither of us drink), so on weekends we enjoy 'movie nights' with friends and just relaxing.
As for my personal characteristics, I'm a t-shirt, jeans and sneaker kind of girl. I don't spend more then an average of 5 minutes doing my hair on any given day and the extent of make-up that goes on my face would be powder. I love books, music and the arts (I absolutely love watching plays). As you will be able to tell by the end of this blog I also enjoy writing, something my professors often dislike for I write much more than needed! I am content and at peace when I relax with a book or am at the local lake back home in Northern Maine with my family. God is first in my life closely followed by my family, whom I am extremely close to. My best friend in the world is my memere (french for grandmother) and I absolutely love spending time with her and my extended french family. My Franco-American heritage is very important to me and I enjoy listening to my family members speak the french language, eating 'Valley' food (ployes and poutines!) and visiting Canada (I am especially fond of Quebec) whenever possible.
When it comes to learning, I tend to be extremely obsessive! I often make the mistake of putting school first in my life and I spend a lot of time studying and doing assignments. As a third grader I made the promise to myself that I would become Valedictorian and that state of mind has stuck with me. My mind is determined to excel no matter how many times I try to tell myself to 'relax'! I have reached the stage where it is more important for me to do what I want to do rather than what I have the potential to do, which is why I am majoring in education (instead of Pre-Med like everybody around me wishes I would). I absolutely love to learn, but I absolutely despise school. The pressures of test-taking and assignments drives me nuts and I wish that I could do independent study for every class (just give me a textbook and objectives and I'll acquire whatever knowledge you want me to!). This is one of the reasons why I want to become a teacher- I hope to create a classroom that is as stress-free as possible, where my students can enjoy learning instead of being pressured into learning. When I am free to learn on my own (during winter and summer break) I often become entranced in a topic that I find interesting and spend hours researching and learning about it. For example, this past winter break I read a fictional novel based on the factual history of the Tudor Court (more distinctly King Henry VIII of England) and became so obsessed with the topic that I spent hours reading biographies of each family member (and any person associated with the family), figuring out the family tree, and watching the Showtime series 'The Tudors'. Most of the time my obsession with learning revolves around human anatomy and what happens when something goes wrong with the body (I am a devoted watcher of 'Mystery Diagnosis' on Discovery Health and 'House' on Fox).
As for learning styles, I prefer a variety of different techniques. I especially enjoy hands-on learning, but I don't mind visual and auditory learning techniques. My hope when I enter a classroom is that the professor will use as many different learning styles as possible to keep the class exciting and non-habitual. When it comes to learning about technology, I think I will definitely prefer hands-on learning.
Personally, I do not really have that much experience with technology. I know the basic stuff that every college student knows- how to surf the Internet for information, how to download and upload documents, how to create PowerPoints, and how to get on Facebook (which I do have, but its for family and close friends only!). My husband works at BestBuy so of course we are up-to-date with everything, including an LCD television and a BluRay player. Other than that, I have a four year old Walmart brand one gig MP3 player, a five year old Canon digital camera, and a Dell Inspiron laptop but that would be about it for my personal 'technology' expertise.
Fortunately, I was able to experience the Maine Laptop Initiative when I was in school, for my high school was one of the first schools in the state to have laptops for all students in grades 5-12 (I was a freshman at the time). At the time we mainly learned how to do PowerPoints- there were really no exciting applications like IMovie or GarageBand at the time. I am extremely excited to learn more about the different Apple applications in this class, especially the two just mentioned. I look forward to being able to incorporate as much technology as possible into my classroom, especially since I will be a high school science teacher. In my biology classes at Husson I have been able to experience microscopes being hooked up a projector so the slide could be shown on the 'big screen', along with 'virtual' dissections instead of real ones. I would love to put techniques like these into use in my own future classroom and hopefully I will learn about new things that I can do as well!
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Hi Kelsey,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for sharing so much about your life with me. The more I know about an individual student, the better teacher I feel I am for that student. That was one of the goals for me for this first blog post was to get to know you better.
Through your post, I understand that you seem to be a very motivated student and you already have a vision for what you would like to be as a teacher. I am also a teacher that tries not to stress their students out with work just for the sake of doing work. I really want every assignment to mean something and to build skills. I think a little stress in the classroom may be a necessary evil. For self motivate students, like you, you put pressure on yourself to do well. I think that is where the stress comes in. However, you will find that some students will go through your class with absolutely no stress because they are not self motivated to do the work. I think the key to be a good teacher is to find a balance between challenging the self motivated student and motivating the less motivated student. (If that makes sense:)
It's wonderful to hear that I have a first generation MLTI student in this class. I've been wondering when that would happen. It's nice to hear your reflections on how that was and how it has effected your life as a college student.
Thank you again for your detailed response. Congratulations on your marriage. Enjoy your time together!!
~Judi
P.S. I just reread what I wrote to you. Please excuse the typos. As I wrote this, I had a 3 year old in my lap watching t.v. and playing dinosaurs. I was a little distracted. :)
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