Friday, January 18, 2013

Blog Assignment #1

About Me

Hello! My name is Ashley Showles, and I am nineteen years old. I am currently a sophomore at the University of South Alabama, and I am majoring in Secondary Education (Mathematics). My plan is to teach high school. I have always wanted to be a teacher, but my initial plan was to teach elementary school. After taking upper level math classes in high school, I realized my true passion was math. I love the challenge, and I hope to share my passion with my future students.

I live in Lucedale, Mississippi, which is about 35 minutes from South Alabama. I love my family. I have one brother who is a junior in high school. My dad is a CM controller for small capital projects for Mistras Asset Protection Solutions Service Division. My mom is a high school math teacher and part of my inspiration to become a math teacher myself. God has blessed me with a family who has always supported my career goals.

My Future Classroom

I would love for my classroom to be inspiring for my students. When they walk into my classroom, I want them to be ready to learn. I plan to make my classroom fun by decorating it with bulletin boards and posters that will encourage the students to do their very best.

I hope to incorporate technology into my classroom. I would love to have a Smart Board in my classroom because there are so many resources and activities available. This would make learning more hands-on. Students will hopefully enjoy learning if they get to be a part of the process, and activities on the Smart Board would help make that possible.

I realize when I have my future classroom that I need to be flexible. All students learn and progress at different rates. I want to be able to help my students learn at their level. I hope to incorporate projects along with the lesson so that a visual aid would be available and help my students grasp more difficult concepts.

I would love to teach high school students in upper level math courses. Two of my favorite math courses are trigonometry and calculus. I would love to teach these two courses. Students who typically take these courses are in the tenth, eleventh, or twelfth grade.

Randy Pausch on Time Management

Before watching his video, I had never heard of Randy Pausch. However, I found Randy Pausch's lecture on time management to be very interesting and helpful. Procrastination has always been a problem. I always complete my work, but I do not always do it in advance. His suggestion to make a "to-do" list seems practical because if I know how much I have to do, I will know how much time I need to set aside. He also made a good point about doing the ugliest thing first. If I do the hardest homework or project first, then I will probably be more motivated to quickly finish the remaining work.

2 comments:

  1. Hey Ashley! It takes a special person to love math! It just isn't my strong subject at all. My major is elementary education, and I have three kids of my own. So I'm very familiar with children. I plan to incorporate a lot of Smart Board activities in my lessons also, but I'm still not too up to date with all it's capabilities. Do you know any good resources? Time management is something that simply comes with age and maturity. I find myself constantly thinking about my assignments throughout the day, and this helps me be able to have more thought provoking things to write about. Always think of a "better" way to do things in order to make it easier on you! -Rebecca Stuart :)

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  2. We need math teachers (and teachers who can add, subtract, multiply and divide)!

    Well written. Welcome to EDM310!

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