Thing 1

                Well, here goes nothing.  I have never blogged, and I have to admit that I am approaching this project with a bit of trepidation.  As I read through the 7 ½ habits, I found that habit one: begin with the end in mind was the easiest of the habits for me and one that I see in my daily life.  I have always been a very goal-oriented person.  I like to make lists and feel accomplished when I am able to cross things off of my lists.  It makes me uncomfortable when I do not have a goal or some sort of sense of direction.  I do not like the unknown.  I have always set high goals for myself and held myself to high standards.  When I graduated from college with what I learned was a useless bachelor’s degree, I found myself without a goal for the first time in my life.  It was a hard time, and I felt like I was floundering a bit without having any sense of direction.  I decided to take a year off from everything to take some time to think, so I moved to Spain for a year to teach English.  I had previously studied abroad for a semester and was hoping to find a way to go back for a longer period of time to improve my Spanish and travel more.  This year abroad afforded me the opportunity to improve my Spanish, travel extensively throughout Europe, and open my eyes to my future profession: teaching.  I had always resisted the idea of teaching and took this job more because of location than what the job actually was.  The job was merely a way to get me back to Europe so I could travel more.  When I came home from Spain, it was like that year had never happened: I still couldn’t find a job and still wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do.  What I did know was that I needed to figure it out and I needed to do so quickly.  I needed a goal as soon as possible.  I had really enjoyed my year abroad.  I found that I enjoyed teaching much more than I thought I would.  Finally, I decided to go back to school and I had an attainable goal once again. 

                I think the hardest of the habits for me would be habit six: use technology to your advantage.  I’m no technological genius.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m in no way computer illiterate, but I don’t know or care to know how to do everything on a computer.  In middle school, when MySpace was all the rage, I resisted getting one.   I finally caved in college and got Facebook.  I’ve since resisted Twitter and Instagram simply because I don’t care to read anyone’s running stream of consciousness and I don’t need any more distractions keeping me from doing what I need to do.  I’m sure these things have a lot to offer, but I haven’t found them yet.  I think this is a habit I need to work on to ensure that my future students’ experiences with technology in the classroom are not as limited as mine were.  Technology in my classrooms as a student consisted of the teacher rolling in a cart with a tv and vcr on it.  The teacher would then spend about half of the class period trying to get a video to play while the students continued to grow more and more frustrated and restless.  When I was a student, I remember enjoying anytime we used technology in the classroom.  When I was in Spain, the students loved whenever we would watch videos or listen to music or anything else involving technology.  I think technology has so much to offer and can provide a memorable way for students to really connect with what they are learning.  There are so many ways technology can be incorporated into the classroom, and I hope to learn to better use it in my future classroom.  I’m currently working in an elementary school.  Since I’m younger than all of the teachers, any time they have a technological issue, they come to me.  Usually I can fix it through trial and error, but I’d like to learn more so I knew what I was doing instead of just jiggling wires and pressing buttons.  Hopefully this class will improve my technological abilities.