Teacher Professional Development: I need a MacBook Pro computer to share student work, model my writing, and reflect on my teaching practice on an educational blog. <profdevpilot>
As a writing teacher, it is my responsibility to become become digitally literate. I share a blog with a colleague called, "Blended Voices" and try to stay up-to-date with publishing in the digital sphere. An important part of my teaching practice is modeling my own writing to my students.
For the past fourteen years I have taught high school English in a rural area in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
We are a high poverty school district with 73 percent of the students eligible for free and reduced lunch. Over the past few years our school board has grappled with painful budget cuts that have led to building closures and layoffs. Despite the challenges, however, we teachers continue to support our students and to provide the best education that we can. Instead of allowing financial crisis to be a set-up, I try to use it as an opportunity to be resourceful and creative and teach my students skills that will help them be successful. I am a teacher consultant with the National Writing Project and on the leadership team of the Northern Shores Writing Project at Northern Michigan University. The NWP has helped mentor my belief that teachers should be writers and I love to blog and bring my writing into my classroom to share with my young writers.
My Project
My students come to me with an eagerness to write that can be broadcast with the key strokes of a computer. I am amazed how they can turn a poem or auto-biography into a stunning work of art by adding images, music, and voice to convert their writing into a digital story. Digital writing turns our classroom into a multi-media experience. This enables them to share their pieces with friends and family on social networks.
Supporting this project will help give me the opportunity to create blog posts and digital stories that I can model to my students in my classroom. It will allow me to show them positive and safe applications for social networks.
The Macbook will help me create a blog for my creative writing students and I will be able to post student digital writing samples and lesson plans on my professional blog to share with other educators. It is my dream to attend a blogging conference for professional development and a new computer brings me one step closer to that goal.
Placing a MacBook Pro into my hands will provide me with a tool that my school district and personal budget cannot finance.
It will help amplify my students' work to the world and help me add layers of meaning to our classroom lessons. I will be able to easily share work on my educational blog and connect and network with students, teachers, and educators. A new computer would be a priceless professional opportunity that will continue to help transport my teaching practice into the digital age.
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