La maestria

Although I am familiar with the use of social media, spending mindless hours watching and sending memes and reels on Instagram, I must admit I did struggle with my introduction into Twitter.  Personally, I have used Instagram and Facebook to stay in contact with friends I don’t see often, sharing funny content and every once in a while something meaningful. Entering the Twitter world I did not know anyone, other than my professor who assigned the assignment. It felt more intimidating entering this realm of social media, I was more selective with who I was following since they were not anyone I knew on a personal level. I paid more attention to their profile, their posts, and who they followed before I began to follow them or retweeted them. After a while I was able to more quickly vet profiles and focus on articles and posts that interested me in the educational field. The task of tweeting at least 120 meaningful tweets was daunting but once I got into the rhythm of tweeting, retweetin

Spanglish is a term that is used in the Hispanic community when a person is speaking and mixes both English and Spanish words, either creating new words like "troca" for truck or buy interchanging languages as they speak through out the same sentence. This is a term I am incredibly familiar with since it was a big no-no in my household growing up. Even now as a dual language teacher my mother will still regañarme when I do it, but sometimes it feels almost necessary. For example using the word "regañar" for me felt more familiar and accurate; I could have said "scold me" but it wouldn't have been as natural.  While of course there are times and places to use specific language over I agree with  Dr. José Medina's Twitter  post when he speaks of that when people, like my mother, have issues with the use of Spanglish they are linguistic oppressors when in reality it is higher cognitive skill to do so.  (Kim et al., 2021) The American school system see

While tweeting for my #EDUC502 class many tweets about began to show up on my feed about calm-down corners, here is one that served as inspiration for this blog. The use of calm-down corners seem to be popping up more and more in classrooms around my school building. The students' adjustment back to building from online learning has been accompanied by many behaviors. At all grade levels I have spoken with colleagues that have mentioned that they have noticed the increase of behaviors such as students being physical with one another and having outbursts during their class. I did not start the school year off with a calm-down corner in my classroom but hope to incorporate it by the start of the next marking period. After picking at many colleagues minds I have put together a few items and ideas I would like to include in mine. I have heard how successful these corners can be, although also it does bring up more questions on management. If you have a calm-down corner how do you use

Especially at the beginning of the school year when students may be feel extra anxious about grade level changes, new classmates, new teachers, and in some cases a brand new school; it is important to create a welcoming environment where students feel safe and part of a community.  I know this year alone, I have 2 students that spent their last academic year in the virtual academy, 1 student who was home schooled, and 2 students who moved from out of state. I think about how different this must be for them and what I can do to help transition into this new reality for them.  After watching a video titled, "Starting Each Class With a Warm Welcome" on Edutopia.com, I was able to reflect more on my own morning meeting and got ideas of what I can incorporate into them to help create a trusting relationship with my students. Here are a few take aways I took from the video. How have you been utilizing these strategies and are you maintaining them throughout the school year. Quick D