Mrs. O's Classroom
A wonderful ten hour experience
Technology Uses
Mrs. O says that she is lucky to be in a school that supports her students as they can, the school recently moved to one to one technology. When ordering they came to her asking what would be best suited for her students and she felt they would be better able to manipulate tablets, so each of her students have an iPad to use in the classroom. She says that she doesn't have a favorite piece of technology that she uses but she uses her projector the most frequently.
Room for Group Work
Struggles with Technology
Classroom Fun
International Pancake Race
International Pancake Day
Mardi Gras
About Mrs. O
On a normal day there are a couple students that go out and deliver news papers to classrooms and others wash the cafeteria tables. When they arrive back to class second hour they do calendar and weather along with talking about their evenings who they spent it with what they did and what they ate. Then they split into groups half go and work on life skills and the other half work on academics. Followed by group story time usually read by Mrs. O but she said sometimes she will pull up a book read on YouTube. Then it is time for lunch and after that PE. When they return from PE they swap and the ones that were doing life skills are now doing acedemics.
Mrs. O try's to teach here students the skills they need to live calling them life skills. She try's to take them out into the community once or twice a month they go grocery shopping, out to lunch, to the zoo, ect. She uses the Internet in order to help the student find items in the grocery store by printing them a picture so they know exactly what they need to find. When they are going to lunch they look up the menu and decide what each individual student is going to eat. Mrs. O expressed the need to give her students a face and a voice. She referred to them as invisible children and encourages the public to acknowledge them when they are out in the community.
I asked what advice she would give to someone looking at this profession. Mrs. O said to make sure your heart is in it and you are invested. Be prepared to fight the biggest battles of your life, you will have successes and you will have failures. You are the advocate for your students, you will have conflicts with parents, and for parents to do what is best for your students. There are language barriers that you will have to over come. She said the one thing she struggles with the most is knowing when you have done all you can.