I am from Columbus, Indiana. My community has a pretty good partnership with the schools. The school corporation has an organization that is called the Bartholomew Consolidated School Foundation. The mission of the Bartholomew Consolidated School Foundation is to promote and support our community’s commitment to educational excellence for all learners. They help partner businesses and other people in the community with schools to put on programs, help financially, and help in the classroom. I think that one thing the community could do better is be in the schools more. People from the community do not really go into the schools to talk or help, and I think that it would make lessons more real if they had someone to talk about it that was involved with it. A way that I can help make the partnership better is to talk about it and to get people involved.

Parent Teacher Conference

I enjoyed doing the mock parent teacher conference. I feel that I learned a lot while doing it. I had to go through and figure out how to run one, and then actually run one. I also liked that you had a have a difficult parent because when we are in the schools all parents are not going to be easy to work with. I thank you for the opportunity to do this because I feel better prepared to do a parent teacher conference.

Drug and Alcohol Families

This would be a hard thing to deal with in the classroom. It would be a hard thing if it was the parents, but an even harder thing to deal with if the student was doing it. If it is the student that does meth than you have to worry about them bringing it to class with them. You also have to worry about the child selling it or giving it away to other children.
If it is the parents that do it, than you have to worry about what kind of environment the child goes home to. You also have to be looking for signs of abuse, because you never know how the parents will treat the child.

Poverty In America

1. It is a big problem because it causes kids to have to put school work and their social lives on the back burner. When a child lives in poverty, they worry about what they are going to eat for dinner or how they are going to buy necessities. One of the last things that they think about is grades and how they are doing in school. When children are in poverty, they are usually surrounded by people who didn't get a good education or don't really care about education. If children have that influence in their life, then their views on education will not be good.
2. I will work with the students to help them through the hard times. I will also help the students get a positive outlook on school and education. I will send something home to the parents to make sure that they know that I am here for their family to help in any way possible. I will also make sure that no other students are making them feel bad or treating them differently.

Reflection #1

My fifth grade teacher made learning really fun. He did very interactive activities that made you learn the information in a fun way. When we talked about the civil war, we split the class into two and played out the civil war. I remember the civil war better than any other war and remember some of the activities that we did. He really showed me what interactive activities can do for a student. I really enjoyed it and have remembered it for all these years. It was fun and made the students remember things about the civil war. By remembering that, I know that I want to do interactive activities with big ideas because I think that the students will enjoy it and will get a lot out of it.