Starting Business

Yesterday we got our final inventory in and within minutes we had our first customer calling to tell us they needed their mats, towels, and aprons asap! Nothing like preparing and preparing for everything to go smoothly and then comes chaos. Thankfully Shane and I were able to get everything together and delivered to Chops by 5pm when their doors opened. Check us out at www.peachmatservice.com. It feels so good to finally have our business up and going after months and months of working to get everything together.

Soon to be Mrs. Bridges...

So I have been engaged since March and we have finally decided on a wedding date but we can't book the event place until October 21st. I am counting down the days til I can book the pavilion. I will feel much at ease once this is done. I have been planning most of the details already and I am so grateful for the Internet: I have found several great ideas on how to save money and create an Eco-friendly wedding. Shane and I are very Eco-friendly conscious and we want to be able to show this at our reception. We are going to create our own invitations and wedding favors. We are going to leave our reception in a very unique way:) 
A huge plus for Shane and I is my mom already has a business that creates flower arrangements for weddings!!!! And her friends will be a huge help in creating this unique wedding. Also one of my close friends will be helping me with some of the plans: Casey Lavender Mims with Modern Events; check out her website~ modernevents.biz
I think theknot.com is an incredibly helpful website and I wish I would have created it:) My main concern at this point is the wedding dress. For the first time in this planning I do not know what I want- I have looked and tried on several different dresses but have not found the one yet: I like too many different things.

Corporate World

Today, I have been contemplating the corporate world. As I mentioned in my last blog I have started a business. It is a floor mat rental and dust control company called Peach Mat Service. We have started this business in Milledgeville, GA because there is not a local company that offers this type of service. However there are several national companies that currently service the Milledgeville area. We have landed the hospital and three other restaurants and are super excited to start this new adventure. In our few days of selling we have encountered problems with trying to get corporate businesses to use a local service. A lot of the corporate chain restaurant managers are not allowed to make the decision on what vendors they want to use. I could understand this when it comes to the food product considering that they want all the restaurants to have the same food quality but when it comes to servicing floor mats and dust control products you would think these corporate businesses would allow general managers to use a local business if they wanted to. In this struggling economy it is important to shop local and help support local businesses.
 

Beginning Blogging Again...

The first blog that I created was for an Education class that I had in the Spring. I have decided to go back to blogging but instead of writing about school I will be writing about my everyday life! I have a lot going on in my life: engaged and planning a wedding, starting a new business, searching for a family who needs a nanny, working for my family's dry cleaners, and more!
To begin, I am engaged to the most incredible man, Shane Bridges. To describe him I will sum it up with his favorite quote: "Do not speak-unless it improves on silence"~Buddhist Saying. Shane and I met in Lake Oconee and started a wonderful relationship. We are planning on getting married October 2011 in Lake Oconee where it all began. We are both ready to be married and travel through this life's journey together.

The End

I am so glad that the end is here! I enjoyed my student teaching but I am worn out...
This semester has definitely been an "eye-opener" to a lot of things. For the most part I had a wonderful group of students. My main concern was the absences and the suspensions. I constantly had students not coming to school or being suspended repeatedly. This makes it difficult trying to keep up with make-up work and moving on to the next lessons. My students enjoyed my literacy engagements and action research which both were of the same. My students made connections to other classes they were taking or had already taken in order to determine definitions to new words or phrases. Also my students had computers everyday in the classroom so if someone didn't know the definition of the word we would have contest to see who could look up the word and find the definition the quickest!!! Most of my students enjoyed this activity. It kept the students on their "toes".
Readicide has taught me a lot and i recommend this book to all teachers and parents! I have been able to implement Gallagher's instructions but it was a slow process and of course not enough time during my student teaching. However with this experience I will be ready and willing to put the effort into my first year of teaching and there after! I have realized some of the strategies that worked and some of the strategies that did not work or needed twicking.
Now on to all the papers and graduation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Student Teaching

My student teaching is going great! I am constantly engrossed in content literacy with my students. My action research involves students reading business content news articles and working through the text in jigsaw groups. I have taught the students different reading strategies and vocabulary techniques. Through reading Readicide I have followed along Gallagher with the Article of the Week. After watching him actually implement this technique/strategy I have been able to similarly carry out the same strategies within my business classroom.
My students are currently learning about Cyber Ethics and have been extremely receptive to reading articles that relate to their lives directly. I am now stuck with the problem of getting the students to stop discussing one subject topic and move to the next!(good and bad). Through this experience I have realized I need to set time limits for the students when reading the articles (but at the same time be cautious that all the students do not read as quickly as others) and when each group is discussing their particular article.
To be honest I have not done anymore research for reading class but thankfully my action research and my literacy research go hand in hand! So Sunday Funday will now be Research day, GSTEP day, and TWS day...
See everyone in class Monday!

Student Teaching and Readicide

My student teaching is going great!! I taught my first lesson yesterday and was observed by my supervisor. Everything went great and I got some good feedback. I also had one of my students tell me that I was going to be a great teacher!:)
I implemented my first literacy engagement last week. The school that I am at as Silent Reading 2 days out of the month at the start of each period. I had my students use the knowledge chart that I found in the More Tools for Content Literacy book!! I had a good response from most of students and I was suprised how many students actually brought in their own personal books to read during Silent Reading. Through this activity I was able to see the different kinds of books that my students like to read and also see how they react to doing activities that peratin to reading.
My action research is directly related to content literacy involoving reading comprehension through business articles. I did my first lesson yesterday involving cooperative groups and reading. My students did a great job working together and talking through the text. They were able to better understnad the material that directly related tho the lesson.
I have finished reading Chapter 3 in Readicide and this is thus far my favorite chapter because it has perninent information for my action research!!
I hope everyone else is having a great time student teaching. See everyone Monday!

Readicide

Prompt: My response to Readicide

WOW! So Chapter 2 was long but full of information. Gallagher discusses how his students who were ninth graders did not know who the Vice President of the United States was in 2007 and his 12th graders did not know who al Qaeda was after the U.S. being in war for almost 5 years.

I discussed this Chapter with a former teacher who is an avid reader and he mentioned knowing "too many" kids who did not know anything about our government and our society. He told me similar situations that he had in the classroom and he discussed all the people he knew that did not read books at all for fun. He said that too many people use the excuse that they do not have time to read. As I finished my discussion about Readicide with this man I began to feel sad.

Before now I have not ever read for fun but I know who the VP is and about the war in Iraq. So where is the gap? Gallagher talked about different students having different experiences growing up. He discussed how students in Wyoming knew what a farrier was but students in California did not recognize the word. The two sets of students had different prior knowledge growing up in different states.

Also Gallagher discusses that lower socioeconomic students have less access to books and to extensive vocabulary. Because of this teachers need to give the students as much access to BOOKS as possible.

I discussed in class the other day how at my high school I will be student teaching at soon, they are pulling students out of electives and social studies in order to give them more practice at math so they can pass a standardized test. This is so unfortunate and leads to the problem of our students not knowing who al Qaeda is or who the VP of the U.S. is!!

I like the idea of having an Article of the Week even if it doesn't link to the content. Chapter 2 was extremely helpful to me because I am going to do my Action Research project on reading comprehension by having students work with business articles throughout the week. I am excited about being able to bring in what is going on in the world around us and our students! I hope that I will find by giving the students different strategies in reading they will in turn begin to enjoy reading and be interested in what is going on in the real world!!

Readicide

Prompt: Response to Readicide. What is the message? What is your reaction? What are your connections to school experiences? What are ways you now understand will help students read more effectively in your discipline?

Gallagher's message is to inform us how schools are killing reading and what we can do about it. He lets us know his views on the current school system and that he believes schools are only teaching students how to be good test takers. Gallagher also believes that schools are limiting authentic reading experiences and working against developing independent readers. In chapter 1 he discusses 2 ways that harm young readers by emphasizing test preparation: 1) a curriculum steeped in multiple choice test preparation drives shallow teaching and learning 2)rather than lift up struggling readers, an emphasis on multiple choice test preparation ensures that struggling readers will continue to struggle (test preparation reading plays a large part in maintaining "apartheid schools"

My first reaction to the introduction and first chapter of Readicide was WOW! I could tell how strongly Gallagher fought about students and reading. He bluntly says that he does not agree with the way schools are teaching our students how to only be good test takers. He mentioned many statistics that were mind blogging such as the achievement gap and the progress (or lack there of) of NCLB. I think Gallagher does a great job of demonstrating how the Paige Paradox is hurting our students and is at the forefront of the readicide movement.

I have mentioned before that I experienced some struggle with vocabulary with my students but I have limited experience with reading comprehension within my content. I am currently learning strategies that will hopefully help me in my future experience as a teacher.
I have changed my research topic to include how to use graphic organizers to help students with vocabulary and in turn help build on their reading comprehension. Through reading Readicide and researching strategies on how to help students improve their reading comprehension I hope that I will have a better understanding of what is going on in the "typical" classroom and how to incorporate the "standards" plus literacy!

Literacy Research Project

Prompts: What are your initial thoughts and ideas about your inquiry topic? What are your beginning ideas about your contribution to the inquiry project? How are you now understanding reading in your discipline?

For my research project I want to look into how teaching vocabulary can improve student's reading comprehension. Before now I did not know how to teach vocabulary to students. Now that I have been reading different articles and textbooks on adolescent literacy I am particularly interested in learning strategies to implement into my classroom that will help my students improve in literacy.

Last semester I had a difficult time teaching my students not only content vocabulary but even general vocabulary. I constantly had to stop and explain meanings of words throughout my lesson. I used BINGO and crossword puzzles to help the students learn the content terminology needed in order to understand what I was trying to teach them in the business classroom. At the time that was an effective way to grab the students' attention and let them know what words were important to know for their success in business content. Unfortunately these strategies were only a quick and easy way to get the students to memorize the meanings of certain words, not commit them to memory.

I believe that it is very important to teach my students content vocabulary and by doing this research project I hope that I will find successful strategies to use in my classroom no matter what content I am teaching. I feel that especially in the business content the terminology directly connects to the real-world and everyday language used on the news, in newspapers, the internet, and by business employees. I want my students to understand and get familiar with business terminology in order to help them in the future as they move on to get a job and be successful!

Content Literacy

Here goes with my first blog...

PROMPTS:
What are your perceptions of content literacy and the adolescent reader? What are your experiences involving content literacy? What are your initial observations of effective reading in your discipline?

Before entering into my first day of this course (The Teaching of Reading), I thought we were going to learn how to teach students to read, which of course scared me a little. Before this class I had not really heard the term "content literacy". I now understand the meaning and the strategies that help students apply reading and writing throughout content areas. English class is not the only place that students need to read and write!
Throughout my years as a student I do not recall my teachers using content literacy strategies. For the most part we were told to read a chapter in the provided textbook for homework then the next day the teacher would lecture to us while we took notes. I also have had many teachers ask me to read a chapter or an article and then never discuss the readings or use the information from the readings (this is called "busy work"). These strategies of course were not motivation for me to read.
My content area is Business Education and I am excited about using different content literacy strategies in my classroom. I plan to not only use textbooks but also newspapers, trade books, and the Internet for students to explore their interests in the business world! I am going to get to know my students and try to understand what motivates them about business to help promote content literacy. I will implement several strategies mentioned in the article "Effective Literacy Istruction for Adolescents".
Today students are bombarded with information that they get from TV, cell phones, and computers. I want to be able to use this technology especially the internet to open the students to learn about real life business. I want to teach the students how to read, interpret, and write about the information being taught in my Business Education classroom. My ultimate goal would be to find out what MOTIVATES students to want to learn and discover more about business education.