Melissa Crews Freeman

Pre K

Melissa Crews Freeman — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 14:55:27 +0000

It’s interesting… the more I teach pre K the more I love it. I never thought I would want the little kids. I always thought I wanted the older kids. I guess i was wrong. The little ones are just so captivated by the simplest things. It’s kind of refreshing not to have to try so hard to keep their attention.

Ahhh a new semester.

Melissa Crews Freeman — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 23:25:53 +0000

Well Spring semester has begun and with it new anxieties and fears. This semester I am with pre k and at the present moment I have only spent one day with them. Monday was a work day and Tuesday I was with them. Thursday and Friday I went to a conference with my teacher about planning meaningful instruction. First of all Pre K is young. They are 4 and 5 and really just beginning everything, even going to the bathroom. I have really only worked with older children so this is a brand new experience for me. My fear is teaching them the very simplest of concepts. Everything I have thought of so far has been too advanced for them. Needless to say this will be a great learning experience for me.

The conference I went to this week was very interesting. It was put on by GSU and Bright from the Start. The whole room was filled with lead teachers from pre k rooms all around GA. I learned a lot about the classroom just being with the teachers for two full days. The conference was great and conveniently enough they spoke a great deal about integrated instruction. We planned an entire unit that was fully integrated with our table, about bread. The conference was really a blessing because I feel like it gave me a good base of where the pre k kids are at. We also talked about how boys learn very differently from girls. They read an awesome book called, “Walter the Farting Dog.” It was so funny and it was targeted for silly boys. We also learned some great songs I can share if anyone is in the young grades and wants to look at them.

All and all I am excited about the semester. Not about all the work but I have a great mentor teacher and a good learning experience ahead of me.

“Divided No More” 10~12~08

Melissa Crews Freeman — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 13:30:36 +0000

I wanted to blog about the article “Divided No More”( Palmer, P.J. 1998). This reading really stirred up some emotions in me and it is probably because there have been so many times in my life that I have realized I can live divided no more. But some how I subtly get pushed back into it. I realized when I was about 20 that I was different than society expected me to be. I didn’t want to follow all the rules or norms that made you a good person. Because a lot of the glorified “good people” in the news I did not hold high respect for. I had achieved all the way up until step 2 from the article (community). I lived in Athens GA. and we were a community of artist ready to speak about how life could be different. We held 3 parties called Star Seed where we had music and art, live artist painting and booths about yoga, massage, meridians, percussion, Mayan Calendar, Composting, Alternative energy ideas and how to maintain enough in your own house to help the energy crisis. It felt like I was on a high and we were getting through. Then we all graduated and moved different ways. I would say in our own little ways we are all still contributing to a collective movement of living divided no more. But without the community you start to feel abandoned. One thing I recognized in the article is I believe we were stopped by fear. After we all graduated we had our parents pushing us, societal framework pushing on us and we were too easily swayed by the consumerist system of, work to make money so you can buy a house and be a happy person. I worked for 2 years and was very unhappy and unmotivated creatively. The only thing that kept me feeling whole was my work with the foster kids that I had in my life. When I found this program I was very revitalized. I had found a new community that allows the subtitles of conditioned thought of why we do the things we do as a society, begin to be questioned. I have found that being in the classroom gives me a power to make the youth think about why. I often tell them when they ask me why, “I don’t know why do you think it should be that way, there might be another way to think about it.” It makes me feel satisfied at this point to at least know I can influence the youth to think for themselves and hope that this ripples out to families and communities. I hope to do more ripples when I get into the classroom on my own, but for now, I already feel less divided one again.

1st Blog for Vera’s Class~

Melissa Crews Freeman — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:25:31 +0000

It is Friday and I am home from a long week! This week has been good. It has been the first week that I have not felt sick at all. Usually at least one day out of the week I just know I am sick, but this week I have felt really good. It is a very hectic schedule. I feel like I have no life outside of this program and I now have newly developed bags under my freshly 30 year old eyes ; ). I love my second grade class they are great and I cannot believe I will have to leave them in December. I think it will be very challenging to enter a new classroom in a new school when half the year has gone by. I see the importance of being in the class from day one. This week I was put with the lowest reading group, not with my mentor teacher, with another teacher in the school. There is no organization and the kids are treated really bad. On one hand I feel sorry for them because most of them don’t even know there letters, but also most of them have server behavior issues. I think most of that could be solved with some structure and routine to our reading hour but I am not the lead teacher so I have to sit by and watch as he exhaustingly yells for almost the entire hour that they should sit down, be quiet, listen up. I have to admit I am a little nervous about role reversal in the reading group because they have no system of behavior.

Well that is it for now, I must go and do some homework so I can attempt to have a life this weekend!

Melissa

Just blogging to blog

Melissa Crews Freeman — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:38:21 +0000

I have to say, this class has opened my eyes to so many things that I once ignored. It is amazing to be so aware of the many issues we have discussed and to see them in action all the time. I went to the beach this week and there was a gay couple by the water taking pictures of themselves, like any normal couple. Well I could see the entire population laying on the beach did not think this to be like any normal couple. I felt so bad that they have to endure such criticism for only loving a person. However, I can say for myself that this class has made me a better person, because I can challenge myself to look at situations that are discriminating to a person and find that at the root of us, we are all the same. And in that principle I can appreciate everyone, even if I don’t agree with what they are doing.

Group process

Melissa Crews Freeman — Fri, 23 May 2008 21:23:56 +0000

The census process we used this week was very interesting to me. It was seeming to work very well but at the end we still had people in the community who seemed upset. That makes me question if all the efforts were really worth it. We could have just gotten it down to 3 names and taken a vote, I feel as though the feelings would have been the same. Maybe I am wrong and it is possible that the outcome would have been totally different if we had taken a vote. I guess overall I felt frustrated that we put in so much effort and time and in the end there seemed to be people that were still very unsatisfied. I guess my point is, in society can we ever really achieve a happy ending for all?

Idlewood~

Melissa Crews Freeman — Fri, 23 May 2008 01:41:57 +0000

Today was a good day! It was fun to get into the classrooms and see what we would be working with, in terms of supplies, rooms and of most important students. It was very helpful to talk with previous GSU students of the program and get insight. The only thing that really had me wandering was how do those teachers know what to teach? I guess we will find all of this out as the year progresses? It made me realize how much I have to learn but also made me excited about what I am going into.

Censorship

Melissa Crews Freeman — Wed, 21 May 2008 22:49:10 +0000

I wanted to talk about this more because this is such a strong issue to me. It seems so unfair to me that books like Harry Potter can get banned from schools simply because they are a fairy tale book about wizards and magic. We read fairy tales to children all day, and that is okay. Where is the line drawn that Judy Bloom is too risky but Cinderella is perfectly okay. The story Cinderella is about a White woman who wants her prince and when she finds him and marries him life is perfect. That is a more toxic story to me than wizards and magic. Also why do Christians get to have so much pull in our education system? The political structures that serve our system I understand are predominately Christian, but most of the time no other views are relevant. I also believe that we are doing ourselves no justice when we begin to let the government dictate what we can teach children and what we cannot. This should be the job of the families in the community and the school system working together. The more power we give our government to “protect” us, the more we loose out on our own social power and knowledge.

Response to teaching after reading these articles.

Melissa Crews Freeman — Tue, 20 May 2008 23:49:05 +0000

Wow, is all I can say after reading the seven lessons of teaching as well as, Noguera. It is depressing and informative to read both of these. I do believe that education is extremely political. It is all a political statement and depends more on who is bribing who, than what is working for the students. Who is making money at the top of the pyramid, I feel are the people who’s great grandfathers wrote this system. I feel like they are taught the truth to how this system is working and then politically work to keep it that way. If this was not true, then we would have had a complete education reform years and years ago. Like the seven lesson article talks about, a complete educational reform would have been cheaper than the amount of money we have spent trying to put band aids on the system. I know that this huge fundamental paradox exist, but how do I still become an effective teacher? The only thing I can think of is to be just a subtle teaching the underlying truths as the system is at teaching the lies. It will take more creative teaching methods and conversation and certainly more time, but this is the only way I can truly feel effective.

Nobodies Trackin me~

Melissa Crews Freeman — Mon, 19 May 2008 22:03:11 +0000

I do remember being tracked as a child in school. In elementary school I was put into the slower groups, and was always given the easier work, never challenged. Then in middle school I was considered a pretty girl, not a smart, or intelligent girl. I was pushed by many teachers and my mom to be a cheerleader. I began cheering in 6th grade. I had a lot of fun and loved to be social so this was perfect for me. However, y grades weren’t good I was an average student with B’s and more often C’s. No teachers ever pushed me or got on to me, because I was pretty and I was a cheerleader. Looking back I guess my future, to the school, lied in marring a rich handsome man who was going to take care of me, because I certainly was not challenged or “smart”. By the time high school came around I was in all lower math classes and basic physical science and english. I did end up earning a college prep seal, but I had to start at Junior college because no University was going to take me. To me college is where we find our determination, if we make it there, to get out of the tracked system. I became a diligent student in college and ended up transferring to UGA and making the Dean’s List. There was not one teacher in high school who ever pushed me, taught me how to prepare for college, it was not important. I was tracked to possibly attend a junior college, and maybe get a associates in nursing or a two year certification in dental hygiene. In fact that was what my counselor suggested, because I was social and pretty those would be good fields. Well I found my determination and I was determined to graduate and take a different path, ain’t nobody trackin me!!!