I love to read.
I love to learn.
I love to teach.
What I love most is learning how to be a better teacher of reading and writing.
My hope is that this site will be a place for us to collect and communicate ideas.
I have been teaching for almost 20 years, when my only technology was an overhead projector and mounted TV with a VCR player attached. It was a huge deal that the TV was mounted on the wall and not on a portable rolling cart. I was the transparency queen as I embraced the technology I was given. Not too long ago I decided I needed to do a big clean out of my materials. What teacher doesn’t hoard materials? In seeing what I had, I became sad. It occurred to me that what I had been storing was no longer relevant. I no longer even had an overhead projector and all of that work was now null and void. Years of transparencies went into the trash. I realized in that moment of tossing them that I have been in this profession for a very long time, but I didn’t feel the need to hold on to the past. We are only moving forward after all. Nothing in those drawers would be something I’d even be able to use. Our technology has changed, the standards have changed. I have changed. That was extremely freeing. I now look at my interactive whiteboard, my document camera, the computer, and I wonder how I ever taught before. What amazes me is that I did. I think about my former students from so many years ago and wonder what their lessons would’ve been like if they had the teacher I am today, the teacher who is still trying to embrace the technology she’s been given.
Education is changing at a rapid pace and so must we. Integration of technology without losing pure sensory experiences like writing with a pencil or pen has become a balancing act. Finding that balance is extremely important to me.
It will be here that we chronicle our adventures in finding that balance.
-Josie
Teaching In BeTween 