Blog Post #1

My name is Heather Perrin and I am 20 years-old. I am originally from Birmingham, Alabama. I moved to Foley, Alabama with my family when I was six-years-old. We moved down here for my dad's job, and we stayed for the sweet tea. I have 2 older siblings, one brother, and one sister. I am also blessed enough to still have both of my parents, as well as my black lab puppy named Mo.
       I am double majoring in Secondary Education and English. I hope to teach in high school. I am a third year member of the Jaguar Marching Band Color Guard, and I marched all four years of high school. I currently have two jobs in Retail at Skechers and Van Heusen, in the Tanger Outlet mall. I've been at Skechers for two and a half years. In exciting news, I just got a promotion offer to be an assistant manager at Skechers. I also teach color guard at Mary G. Montgomery High School. I have just completed my first season there and I still really enjoy it. I have been teaching at my old high school for two and a half years. 


My Future Classroom:
      I hope to teach Secondary Education, with a focus in English.
      As I walk into my classroom each morning, I will turn on my computer, and my Smartboard. I'll use it to write the daily objectives, and write notes on for the students. Instead of my students taking notes and doodling on paper, I will share my notes (from the Smartboard) with them with Google Docs. I will also share assignments, and open up a discussion forum on a social network such as facebook. Something that all my students will have, and they will check often. This way they can effectively work together to complete assignments.
      My goal as a teacher is to give my students skills. So with my assignments, I will make sure the class understands WHY they are doing the work, as well as what skill they are going to (or supposed to) learn from their classwork. So they will understand that diagramming sentences helps them to better learn, and separate the parts of speech. That type of exercise is to help them understand writing sentences.
    My students will walk into class and sit down at their desk, which will consist of a Macbook. Since they will receive the recapped notes from Google Drive, they will listen to my short and concise lesson, and immediately begin their assignment. They will learn to blog, and will upload all of their writing assignments to their own blogger. This will let me, classmates, and everyone else edit their work and offer suggestions to the students.
         With the tools and processes mentioned above, I believe my classroom will help to better teach my subject. I can prepare my students for the next level.


Randy Pausch on Time Management
         Pausch says that Americans in general are really bad with time management, and I agree. I know I am personally terrible with my time. My favorite thing he said was, "If you have to eat a frog, don't spend too much time looking at it first." Basically I procrastinate and that has gotten me into trouble with school work. Dr. Pausch sets up good ways to proactively adjust my time management skills.