Legal Issues Facing Teachers

When trying to come up with a legal issue to write about for this post, I happened upon an article online that discusses the use of Facebook and its interference with the freedom of speech of teachers.  Sometimes teachers have lost their jobs because of things they have posted on Facebook that had to do with students, school events, or otherwise "unacceptable" comments or photos.  Some teachers find this to be a violation of their freedom of speech because the things they say may have been acceptable if they had chosen a different career.  However, as teachers, there is a lot of legal involvement in their jobs and they have to be really careful about the things they say on a social networking site.  I found this to be particularly interesting because I had never really thought about how a simple Facebook comment could ultimately make someone lose their job.

To read the article I found, click HERE.

Portfolios

Portfolios are very valuable for my future students because they show all of the different things we have had to do in order to become teachers.  Also, all of the different things we are putting into the portfolio can be used as learning tools for the students, such as the videos, presentations, etc. Also, portfolios are useful for people who want to see what kinds of things we do in school that help prepare us to become teachers.

Presentations

When I am teaching, I want my students to enjoy my class.  Because of this, presentation methods are extremely important.  That being said, I plan on being a presenter that keeps the students interested in what I am presenting, while teaching them to learn at the same time.  After seeing all the different kinds of presentation methods in class the other day, it is easy to see that there are numerous different methods and ways of presenting information that can help students learn and have a visual of what they are learning.  Because I will be teaching French, I definitely plan on using a lot of videos, songs, and other forms of media in my lessons, and with new methods like Prezi, it is really easy to put all the information into one program that can include text, videos, pictures, or anything you want it to in an organized manner.  It is definitely a step up from PowerPoint, and it will help keep me organized and my students entertained at the same time! C'est parfait!

Evaluating Textbooks

Textbooks are a great resource for students to use when learning material about a class… or are they? Having the ability to evaluate textbooks is extremely beneficial when picking out a textbook to use in the classroom.  It is really important to be sure that the book is at an appropriate level for the students who are going to be using it… For instance, in my classroom, I would not give a college level French book to people who are just looking at the french language for the first time.  It would be next to impossible for a student with no background in French to learn it from a textbook that has no English in it whatsoever.  Also, in French textbooks used in schools, one of the really nice aspects of them is that there are often pictures in the book.  A lot of people are visual learners, so it helps them to see a visual of what they are learning, and it will be more likely to stick in their head.

For example, here is a labeled picture that similar to something that is likely to be found in a French textbook when talking about how to say the parts of the face: