C4T #3

Denise Krebs is a K-8 certified teacher for several different areas in America, like Arizona, Iowa, and California. She has been teaching for almost twenty years, but has recently settled in a small town in the center of America and teaches at a Catholic school. Mrs. Krebs uses her blog to reflect on her learnings about 21st century education. She believes that schools should be reinvented and use more collaboration, creativity, and communication, that of which I completely agree. Mrs. Krebs also has four other webpages including a class bog, a blog for sharing what she is learning and writing in school, a blog to share children's literature, and a class photo blog that allows her students to share a photo everyday. I like the idea of having a class photo blog, because having students post pictures of things that they are learning, is just another technological learning tool to be used in the classroom setting.

The first post I commented on, was about failure. Mrs. Krebs was asked, "where do you think failure fits in an educational context? Do you use it with your students?" Mrs. Krebs almost immediately came to the conclusion that there was a difference between failing and failure. She said that she can fail to post something, but that does not make her a failure. Mrs. Krebs explained that a "fail" was a first attempt in learning.

I truly enjoyed reading her post about failure and commented by saying:

"I LOVE this post! The quote about "I can fail to post something, doesn't make me a failure" is spot on and very true. I really like the acronym pictures describing failure, especially the one that says First Attempt In Learning!! I cannot wait to come back and continue reading your blog!!"

The second post I commented on was about the top ten reasons of why Mrs. Krebs is a teacher. Mrs. Krebs ten reasons for teaching includes, learning perks, to be and to have role models, to seek forgiveness for her mistakes, and the one that stood out to me the most was, to give children a safe place to be. Mrs. Krebs' reasons are spot on and seem to come from the heart. (You can tell she doesn't teach to get summers off!) My comment to her post was:

"The question you asked, "Why do I teach?" has been asked of me plenty of times! I too, have deeply pondered the answer(s), I seek! I love your answers, but the one answer that stood out to me the most, was your number one: to give students a safe place to go. We, as teachers, do not know what really happens at home, so if the eight hours a day at school is freedom to a child, then they should be able to enjoy it. No child should ever dread going to school, and no child should ever be afraid of going to school."

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Mrs. Krebs' blog and she has given me many ideas to use in my future classroom, like the class photo blog. Mrs. Krebs is well organized and I will go back to her blog to see what else she has "up her sleeve!"