521 Blog Post #4

Blog Post #4: Project Tomorrow

The Project Tomorrow report Connecting in the 21st Century: Parents and Administrators Speak Up about Effective School to Home Communications involves examining the "vehicles" that parents and administrators use to communicate with one another. School to home communication is crucial from a student support standpoint because administrators and other school staff can work together with parents to best support the needs of each student. The report found that personal emails are currently the most used method of communication, followed by face to face meetings and the school portal. The report shows that ideally, however, parents would like to see the school portal be upgraded to support daily access to student grades, attendance, and overall performance. This communication would allow parents easier access to their child's academic school performance.

In Speak Up in Learning to Change, Changing to Learn, education is ranked the lowest in terms of technology use, which both surprises and frustrates me. With the abundance of technology available today, education should be highest on the technology use list, especially considering that most students are heavily tech-savvy. Technology in education is under-represented mostly because of resources but I also believe it is due to teachers and staff who are not willing to change with modern times. I already know of some teachers and administrators at my school site who always take a stance against technology and change; they would rather use older methods of instruction like lecturing rather than incorporating technology into the classroom for an interactive experience. In my teaching practice I plan to embrace technology because it is the future of education and how we use technology will determine how successful we are as a state and as a country.

Starting such a program at my school site would involve a meeting with administrators and supporting teachers to work out the details of the program including purpose, benefits, meeting times, cost, liabilities, etc. The benefits of starting a "Future Teachers" club will help students to see the value in the profession of teaching and become interested in educating others. Students will also become more interested in school subjects that they may have not been interested in before they joined the club. During meetings students will learn to work as a team to collaborate and present to other classes and school staff on what they have learned. Students will also gain community service hours through their teaching in the organization.