Standards, it’s what we are driven by. In the last twenty years, standards have been dominating what we teach and they are not going away anytime soon. As the United States started to see that our students weren’t keeping up with students in other countries, they decided we needed a set state of standards that all students would adhere to and that is how we got our state standards. While this was a step in the right direction, with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) put in place by the Bush administration, some states were finding it hard to meet the standards and so then dummied them down so all students would be able to meet standards on their state test. In return students in the US were still, on average doing worse than students in other countries. Therefore we decided as a nation we still needed standards to teach and learn by, but they needed to be national standards. Now we have the Common Core Standards initiative just around the corner. These standards have been adopted by all states, except for Alaska and Texas, including, The Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and The District of Columbia. The standards are to ensure that when students graduating high school will be prepared to move on to college or the workforce. Here are a few websites to further look into the Common Core Standards Initiative. http://www.corestandards.org/ and http://www.ksde.org/Default.aspx?tabid=4754

Teaching with Diversity Learners with exceptionalities Cultural diversity

Teaching with Diversity cultural diversity The cultural diversity of our schools has changed immensely in the last 20 years. More than 40% of students in preschool-12th grade are of a cultural minority and in some states it is more than 60%. In the 10 years students who speak a native language has increased by 72% (Short & Echevarria, 2005) More than 450 Languages other than English are spoken in our schools. Spanish is the most common. (Abedi, et al,., 2004; Kindler, 2002)

Teaching with Diversity cultural diversity The changes in cultural diversity force us to change our teaching and interacting with in the classroom. We must understand the different beliefs of the cultures and abide by them within our classrooms. As teachers, we will have to become more creative with how we present the material and make sure all accomidations are in place for ELL students to get the best education possible.

Teaching with Diversity cultural diversity Diverse Learners and Classroom Organization - American College of Education Video -

Teaching with Diversity learners with exceptionalities Classrooms are not only changing with cultural diversity, but also with learners with exceptionalities. The two main times of exceptionalities we look at are: Development- the physical, social, and emotional changes that take place in students. Cognitive development- the changes in a student’s mind based on their experiences as they mature.

Teaching with Diversity learners with exceptionalities Learners with exceptionalities need special modifications to help reach the highest potential in education. Most of the students with exceptionalities have a learning disability which hinders them from learning the same way as others in their classroom. Most of the learning disablities are in reading and writing, but some to still struggle with math.

Technology and Teaching

Technology and Teaching Technology is forever changing, and so is our teaching because of it. We also have standards to follow in technology and how they should be used in the classroom. The following link is the standards or National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers. http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers.aspx

Technology and Teaching While technology can be an amazing thing and take many lessons to the next level, we also need to remember that sometimes teaching with the tools we already had can be more effective. Seeing demonstrations in person, (example in science), can be more effective than a computer generated simulation. Technology is a tool used to help students reach learning goals, using technology is not the goal itself, (Cenamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2010)

Bibliography Eggen, P. and Kauchak, D. a. (2012). Strategies and Models for Teachers. (K. Canton, Ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson education, Inc.