A Shift

Since August of 2010, I have been working on a shift in my career path. This shift included going back to school to become a teacher. I did so by attending an alternative licensure program called TILA. Through the program, I attended classes, workshops, read, and wrote thousands of pages on educational pedagogies and methodologies. Anyone who's been a first year teacher knows that it comes with a lot of challenges:  writing your first set of lesson plans for a section of a class, learning classroom management, and handling behavior problems. Did I mention learning how to cope when things aren't going as you planned and how to professionally respond to people and situations that are not always professional towards you? So combined with the challenges of the first year of teaching, I was juggling the ins and outs of TILA's graduate program. Needless to say, I did not have much time for anything else:  blogging especially.

Now that I have completed the program and my work is under review for my license, I am happy to say the desire to blog has returned! To have some connectivity between now and my last post, I will include a link to the website I built compiling my work from this past year's TILA experience:  my Final Portfolio. When I look back on this year, I am happy and thankful to say--it's DONE, I met a lot of amazing people who are working hard to educate our youth, I learned A LOT, and seriously...IT IS DONE!!

This year was seriously like trying to drink from a fire hydrant without drowning!

In an effort to retain some of the information and resources I learned about over the past 11 months, I have created several tabs on this blog. There is some overlap between the resources tabs (CREATIVE! and EDUCATION!) considering I am always looking for things in the "real world" to bring into my classroom. Which reminds me, I did not mention what I got my endorsement in:  K-12 Visual Art. The classes I teach at The Academy Charter School  are all technology-based Visual Arts courses (Junior High level Visual Presentations, Graphic Design, etc.). Therefore, a lot of my education resources are connected to either art or technology--or some combination of the two. I have also taken a huge interest in helping to stop cyberbullying among teens.

Other new things on this blog include my Twitter Feed, Facebook link, and YouTube Feed. I am especially proud of several of the videos I created this year for my school as well as for projects during TILA. If you have some time, and are interested, I suggest you check them out! I hope to add a lot more to the third tab on this page highlighting the places I've been, and things I've done over my lifetime. I want to add images and interactive components to that page, but it is still under construction.

As far as topics I will be blogging on in the future, I hope to share my upcoming traveling adventures to Central America (July 2011) and to Spain and France (March 2012). Although I've been to Central America on several occasions, I will be visiting some new places that I've missed on past trips. The Spain and France trip will be a totally new experience for me, and I am really looking forward to traveling with my school!

I am looking forward to returning to blogging! Thanks for reading and browsing through the new features of this blog!