Jillian's EDU 3650 Blog

  This week, we got into the topic of home and school connections. This is a super important topic to be spoken about. A lot of families are not enough connected to their child's teacher and school in general, and it’s unfortunate. Having parents and guardians communicating with teachers and staff can benefit their child more than you would think. There are too many instances where parents are not aware of what is happening with their child in school due to a lack of communication.  From looking at the article on the website Edutopia, “Family Engagement: Resource Roundup,” there are so many helpful resources to improve on that home and school connection. The first resource I looked at was “The Beginners’ Guide to Connecting Home and School.” This was a great read in my opinion. Some of the different strategies or methods put out there by this resource would consist of having students ask their caregivers more in depth questions such as who their friends were when they were k...

  Is social media completely bad? Well depending on who you ask, you will probably never get a straight answer. For me personally, I do not see how it is completely bad, but just like anything else in the world, there are upsides and downsides to social media. When I look at some general downsides of social media, the first few things that come to mind are the fact that social media only shows what people want to show about their lives and themselves, giving others the idea that they live a “perfect life” with the nicest clothes, happy attitude and other positives. Yes, this doesn’t sound bad but when you think more about it, it sort of is. When someone sees a post like this, they may begin to wonder, “why don’t I look like that? Why isnt my life as perfect as theirs?” and so many other things. This can take a huge toll on mental health in not only children and teens, but adults as well. Social media is not real, and this is something that people do not realize. Another downside ...

  This week's topic was about addictions and drug use, including vaping. The issue of addiction and drug use has been an ongoing issue for decades, but now we have e-cigarettes and vaping to add into the equation. The vaping and e-cigarette issue has been going on for a number of years now, but unfortunately it hasn’t been getting much better. With rules and laws being put in place to try to prevent vaping, it is still a huge issue because teens are still finding ways to get a hold of these products. In general, addiction, drug use and vaping is a really important topic to be educated on for teachers no matter what age.  After watching the short video, “Vaping in Schools. ‘Juuling Is Popular Among Teens Despite Health Risks,'' I can honestly say that nothing came as a shock to me. Being that I went through middle and high school knowing so many people that used vapes, I wasn’t too shocked about what I was hearing when looking at the school in Millford, Connecticut. The te...

This week in class, we went into the topic of social-emotional learning and mindfulness. This is a super interesting topic that I personally feel that we do not hear of often enough. There are so many different benefits to mindfulness whether it is in or out of the classroom, and I think it definitely needs to be recognized much more in the world. We watched a film called Room to Breathe, read articles about mindfulness and also had the opportunity to choose a mindfulness app to work with, talk about and review.  The film that we were assigned to watch this week was called; “Room to Breathe.” The film started off by showing us a classroom with a ton of behavioral issues and other struggles. This San Francisco middle school was very lucky to have a mindfulness teacher come in once a week to somewhat implement a few mindfulness based learning techniques such as meditations. You are able to tell that in the beginning, it was pretty difficult to get it started. But eventually, there w...

In class this week, we educated ourselves on the topic of poverty and homelessness. This topic can definitely be hard for some to read, and it really is heart-breaking to read about. For this week's assignment, we had to watch the documentary, “The Homestretch” as well as read two other articles. There are a couple of things that I learned from this topic. One, for the most part, I think most people are aware of poverty and homelessness being an issue in the United States, but I do not think that people understand the severity of the issue. Poverty and homelessness not only affects adults, but it most definitely affects children as well. We as future teachers need to be educated when it comes to poverty and homelessness, but we also need to be able to accommodate and support our students going through situations like that. While poverty and homelessness can be a topic that you cannot fully understand unless you’ve experienced it, we need to put ourselves in the shoes of others to b...

    In class this week, we read multiple articles and learned more about mental health. Mental health is an extremely important topic and being aware of the signs of mental illness and or mental health disorders is something all teachers should consider educating themselves in. Reading the slideshow called A Silent Epidemic, I learned a lot more about how schools are struggling to help students with mental illness. According to A Silent Epidemic slideshow, every 1 in 5 students struggles with mental health disorders or shows signs of it. The problem is that schools have hundreds of students, and not enough school psychologists or social workers. There are not enough people within schools to support students in need of counseling; "  About one in five children in the United States shows signs of a mental health disorder — anything from ADHD to eating disorders to suicide.  And yet, as we've been reporting this month, many schools aren't prepa...