Ashley’s Weblog

I was looking for something to blog about today and I came across and new blog for beginning teachers. It is called New Teacher Assistance – “A place for teachers (or those interested in becoming teachers) to learn, share, and discuss the ups and downs of being a new teacher.”

There aren’t many posts yet, but the ones that are there are really interesting! Keeping Kids Motivated and Staying Positive When Teaching Gets Rough are the first two posts. Both of them provide things to think about for new teachers.

I really liked the discussion of how a boring textbook is suppose to be able to compete with video games. It is hard to keep kids motivated and I also think they need a lot of action to keep them entertained and interested in class. This post goes on to say that gaining students attention requires the material to be related to their lives and to have meaningful activities. In my pre-internship I tried my best to relate learning material to students lives whenever possible. At the end of each unit I had the students complete a questionnaire about the relevance the unit had to their live. In most cases, students said it was relevant which I was happy about.

The blog also gives pointers on how to stay positive during the first years of teaching when everything is pulling you in different directions. This is a great website for all of us new teachers to read. I know I am happy I found it and will continue reading it as it makes me feel more comfortable being a new teacher!