Watching the video 'is anyone listening' on youtube really made me appreciate all the things I was fortunite enough to have as a child. There were times when I would hear my parents talking about being concerned about bills, but for the most part we had everything we needed. Both of my parents worked so we spent quite a bit of time with my grandma and at after school programs, but we made the best of it. It is so sad when children are stressed out about not knowing if they will have a place to live anymore, or having to drop out of school to help pay bills. Some of these children have had to grow up way to fast and deal with adult problems they should not be faced with. From what it sounds like most of the parents encourage their kids to focus on school, but the reality is they have to be able to eat and have a place to live. I think instead of focusing on other countries and how poor and starving they may be we should look at our own backyard and help people in our own country that are in serious need.
Our school system is headed in a very bad direction financially. Not only are students starving and dropping out to get jobs, but they are cutting the school budgets so bad, especially in California. In the next couple months, just in Apple Valley, we are closing two middle schools because of lack of funding. All of these students are going to be crammed into other middle schools that already have huge classrooms. How can a teacher have any one on one time with a classroom of 40 students? The state is also cutting funding of preschools all together, where are all these kids going to go? How are these young kids suppose to get a head start in learning without having a preschool to attend. How are these parents going to pay for daycare so they can go to work? There are so many financial problems in our school system right now, on top of everyone else's personal financial burdens.
I enjoyed all of the new things that we learned in this class. This class was a real eye opener about the potential for using technology in the class. Not only can it improve learning but it can make our lives as teachers a lot less complicated being able to integrate technology in our classrooms. I think my favorite thing that I learned was google docs, I love being able to work on a project and being able to open it on any computer. And being able to share those documents and have other people edit them is a huge time and paper saver! I believe the thing I learned in this class will come in handy time and time again!
