Background and Experience

My name is Lindsay Williamson and I have just begun my seventh year of teaching.  Over the course of my career I have taught at many different levels and in many ways it feels like my first year of teaching.  As and undergraduate student at Boston College I studied secondary education and history before staying a fifth year for a Master’s in educational and developmental psychology.  While in the Master’s program I was a teacher’s assistant in a self-contained classroom for students with autism at a public elementary/middle school.  After completing my degree I returned to New York and taught high school history for three years at the Heritage School in East Harlem, NY.  Towards the end of the third year I realized that I wanted to live and work abroad and I decided to join the Peace Corps.  I was sent to Cape Verde, a small island nation in West Africa.  I taught English and teaching methodologies to aspiring teachers at the University of Cape Verde.  After traveling throughout Africa for a few months, I returned to New York and was accepted into the Peace Corps Fellows Program.  I am enrolled in the ID/Autism and plan to graduate after the fall 2013 semester.

Expectations

I am hoping that this course will help me to become more aware of the function and benefits of technology in the classroom and help me to feel more comfortable in my attempts to use it.  As an undergraduate I took a computer programming elective my senior year and felt overwhelmed by all of the information and code.  Whereas I had taken the course to increase my ability to use technology as a teacher, I fear it scared me a bit and I have been a relatively reluctant user since.  I expect my students to take risks and I want to push myself to take more risks in regards to technology.

Technology

I am reliant on my computer and phone.  I was hesitant to switch to a ‘smart’ phone, but once I did I realized just what I was missing out on.  I use my computer to e-mail, create documents, organize all of my lessons, materials, and information.  I try to keep a digital classroom, as I feel that it is more sustainable and easier that maintaining multiple filing cabinets.  I use technology to a limited extent in my classroom in that I often use the document camera and project information on the SMART Board, but I do no fully utilize the SMART Board to the extent that I would like to.  When using technology, I will try new programs or resources, but I tend to stick with what I know and am comfortable with.   I often think if I had more time I would take more risks.

Problem-Solving

Martinez’s article hit on many points that I feel I stress when working with my own students.  In the first two days of class we have already discussed the importance of learning from errors.  I want my students to internalize the idea that it’s okay to be confused, or even frustrated.  It’s what you do about those feelings that is important.  I was struck by Martinez’s insight that many times it’s that first step that is the most challenging.  I liked his ideas of breaking down a task into parts, and appreciated that he recognized that it would be difficult to remember and organize all of those step.  At PS 503 we use the Habits of Mind to encourage students to think about their thinking and to realize that it is important to think flexibly and to take risks.  I was really amazed at how many of these habits, Martinez spoke of in his article.  The article helps to pull everything into perspective in that in a time when students, teachers and administrators are under such intense pressure to be ‘successful‘ that the means are often dominated by the end and this article is a good reminder and provides a solid argument that the means are just as, if not more important to reaching the end goal.