Educational Blogging Reflection

Educational blogging is a creative means of teacher communication with students, students' parents, and other teachers. Blogs can be expository, such as my first three blogs, while others can be narrative-based. For example, many teachers use blogs to document their work, often starting with their classroom organization and lesson planning before the school year begins. From there, they can share the blog with families so that parents can view the teacher's profile and establish a positive relationship at the beginning of the school year. This way, when the teacher posts classroom activities, shares student work, or announces important upcoming events, parents can always be up to date with their child's educational experience. I also believe educational blogging is a great resource to share knowledge and experience with others in the profession. 

Students practice fine arts: a group of students
practice dance with their teacher to talk
about books from around the world.

In my Educational Technology class, I had the opportunity to read three of my peer's blogs written about various educational topics. I focused on those discussing the importance of learning through the arts. One point that resonated with me was that access to artistic programs has positive impacts on student's academic, social, and emotional success because they allow for creativity and reprieve from the school day. Furthermore, the arts help develop students' mathematical, language, and fine motor skills, all of which are especially important for younger students. However, I was reminded of some unfortunate realities, such as the decline of creativity in mandated curricula and the disposability of arts programs in the face of school budget cuts. I could not agree more: the use of arts in classrooms of all subjects should not be in decline as they are essential to students' success and wellbeing. Some of my favorite memories from PreK-5 were of art projects that I was proud of creating or that helped me visually learn a difficult concept.

My experiences with blogging have been positive -- I find them to be a fun creative outlet and have yet to be concerned about who has read my blog or not. In my future career, I can 100% see myself documenting my teaching journey on a blog (maybe this very one) and sharing it with my students' families. Since I plan on teaching second-graders, I am unlikely to task them with writing their own blogs on a regular basis. However, I could definitely create a blog post for each student to showcase their work. This would be a great way to document student progress, celebrate student successes, and communicate regularly with parents. After all, blogging should be fun and a form of art in and of itself.

Anxiety in the Classroom

Anxiety: this overwhelming emotion of worry has gained awareness as an important facet of mental health of all ages. Thankfully, increased transparency and education about anxiety signs and symptoms have brought this once-taboo yet universal experience to the conversation.

Anxiety can undoubtedly hinder student learning and confidence. Anxiety from academic challenges can activate the same fear centers in the brain that are affected by snakes or spiders. This is often tied to the fear of failure, which prevents students from taking risks and working hard to learn something new. Edutopia discusses the right kind of anxiety in the right amounts that can be conducive to learning. While anxiety can debilitate these skills in excess, it has been shown that anxiety can motivate critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills. It is this classroom experience that helps students grow, take control of their learning, and take away new understanding.

So how can teachers create challenging tasks that are out of their student's comfort zones without inducing too much anxiety? A lack of challenge prevents real exploration of a topic. I have been in both scenarios: my academic anxiety was so high that it prevented me from doing my best, or my academic anxiety promoted the creation of something truly special and otherwise inconceivable. 

There are a few ways in which teachers can promote the latter scenario. Dr. Mac, my Educational Technology professor, recommends beginning each class with a class agenda outlining each task set up for the day. This transparency is essential to soothing student anxiety about the unexpected. Edutopia further recommends fostering strong relationships with students, advocating for mistakes, and promoting risk-taking in areas students are passionate about. Project-based learning is another method for allowing students to apply their learning with a healthy dose of anxiety. Before I changed my major, one project in my Engineering Fundamentals class was to build a rudimentary mouse-trap-powered car that could shoot at a target. The team task took nearly all semester, and the entire time my group was motivated by the anxiety that our final product would be a failure. As a result, we were very motivated to start early, meet consistently, and do extensive testing to ensure success on evaluation day. Because the professors offered adequate support throughout the weeks-long process, the project effectively leveraged our anxiety to produce the best learning outcome.

A classroom "worry box": a tissue box 
decorated with pipe cleaners, eyes, and teeth.

Anxiety is often associated with teenagers, but it plays a role in younger students as well. One idea I really like is the use of a classroom worry box, where students can write their worries and feed it to the box to represent coping with that worry. This philosophy is captured in a quote by Ivan Nuru: "If it's out of your hands, it deserves freedom from your mind too."

Celebrating Literacy Traditions

Literacy traditions are the sum of familial and societal engagement with text and storytelling. A paper in the Journal of Aesthetic Education discusses cultural literacy, which involves understanding and participating fluently in a given culture. A child's literacy journey begins in the womb, where they are first exposed to sounds, music, and the cadence of speech patterns. As a child grows up, the more speech they hear, the more language skills they develop. The same is true for engagement with printed text. 

A girl child whispers into a boy child's ear
as he grins and looks to the side mischievously.

One principle to always keep in mind in the classroom is that each student has a different literacy background, so they also start the school year with varying skill levels. More and more, teachers have become advocates for celebrating diverse literacy traditions, since literacy skills and proficiency can be shown in many different ways.

A traditional classroom may put heavy emphasis on print-based learning and print-based literacy. While this is an indispensable and critical part of the literacy curriculum, it does not always account for diverse literacy experiences and hinders students of different backgrounds to showcase their skills. For example, students from African American or Native American families and communities may or may not have rich experiences with print or regular reading of children's books. However, this does not necessarily mean that they are behind in their literacy journey. In fact, it usually means that their family celebrates oral traditions, with storytelling as a common practice among family members. I myself was blessed to be read to as a child. However, I did not feel like my bilingualism was valued in my school in East Tennessee. As a result, I refused to read books in my native language and lost my ability to read or write fluently with all of the accents. When these diverse literacy traditions are welcomed and celebrated instead of looked down upon in favor of other modes of literacy, this creates a more dynamic classroom environment. Focusing on both oral and printed language allows students to learn from each other and see each other's differences as strengths, not weaknesses.

Diverse Neurotypes in the Classroom

Neurodiversity describes the spectrum of neurological differences in the ways we think as individuals. As the University of Edinburgh notes, a person or student is neurodivergent if they have dyslexia, ADHD, or autism, among other mental health differences. However, it can be argued that each and every person is neurodivergent to some degree, meaning we are all on a spectrum of differences in thinking, learning, and socializing. This continuum is something to be celebrated in schools, as our differences should be defined as individual strengths that can enhance the overall classroom experience.

Raised children's hands
covered in multicolored paint.

As someone with dyslexia that went undiagnosed all throughout my time in grades K-12, I know firsthand how it is to feel like there is something different or even wrong about the way you think, feel, understand, and complete tasks than those around you. This can be especially true if many of those around you seem neurotypical, even if it is a facade, as they may be masking their differences due to pressures to fit in or meet expectations. Particular areas I struggled with (and still do) include memorization, organization, and following step-by-step processes. However, my strengths include above-average creativity and visualization skills. 

While screening, testing, and accommodations for neurodivergent students are improving in classrooms, there is still much to consider about how we as educators can tailor each child's experience to maximize their benefit from each activity. For example, the Say Dyslexia law that required screening and intervention in Tennessee was not implemented until 2016, way after students like me could have benefited from that support. Students screened for dyslexia in this program could be offered more visual supplements to reinforce print-based instruction as well as be given the option to present their work in more visual and creative ways than the original task intended. In the same manner that you can't judge all of a zoo's animals based on their performance in climbing a tree, we cannot and should not compare or rank all students based on their performance in completing the same learning tasks. In the classroom, this could be addressed by teachers' intimate awareness of each student's unique ways of thinking. This would necessitate differentiated instruction and regular communication with parents to celebrate student successes and work on areas of difficulty. If you yourself are neurodivergent or have worked with neurodiversity firsthand, leave a comment as I would like to hear more experiences!