Hey look! I'm blogging!

Another item on the list of things I thought I’d never say: Welcome to my blog. I have never been a particularly tech-savvy person. In elementary school I was dragged kicking and screaming every week into the computer lab where I assured my teacher time and time again that I was NEVER going to use computers EVER and I should probably just not waste any more of her time or mine going through the tedium of “All the Right Type”. Needless to say, my avoidance of technology has been wholly unsuccessful, and I must admit that I am glad to be getting some exposure to the world of blogging, which has been completely foreign to me until now.

To me, one of the most exciting and important aspects of ELA in elementary school is the opportunity that it affords students to bring their own stories into the classroom. When kids create their own stories, poems, pictures or performances, they are sharing their own ideas, beliefs and experiences with the classroom community. This means that the students themselves are the experts, and we as teachers are asking them “what do you know?” rather than telling them “know this!”

I see my ELA classroom as being somewhere where students can find everything from classics to comic books, and where the secret code of language is unlocked for them and they are empowered by this new knowledge. In my classroom I hope that students can play and create and share in as many different mediums as we can think of, and in doing so our shared stories will help us all learn about each other and about the world.