Hello!
First of all, let me introduce myself! My name is Keshia Seitz and I am your child's social studies teacher at McGary Middle School. I graduated from Indiana University-Bloomington in 2009 with a Bachelor's Degree in Secondary Education: Social Studies. I earned my Master's Degree in Secondary Education with a Focus on Technology from IUPUI in December 2011. I am currently a doctoral student at Indiana University - Bloomington, pursuing an Ed.D in Educational Leadership with an anticipated graduation date of May 2015. Before being hired at McGary Middle School, I worked at Mount Vernon High School and Ivy Tech Community College. On a personal level, I am married and have three children. As many of you already know, I was hired to work at McGary Middle School mid-semester (October) due to a teacher vacancy. I eagerly accepted the position because my heart is devoted to K-12 education. I have enjoyed getting to know and work with your students over the course of the last three months. I look forward to getting to know them better and know you as well!
I decided to set up this blog to help improve my communication with each of you regarding your students and the work that they are doing in my class! This is the first time that I have used blogging to communicate with parents, and I am personally very excited about the potential for increased parent-teacher communication. Many of you have jobs or life experiences that could deeply enrich the learning experiences of our students and I would LOVE to know about those resources. Parental input is highly valued in my classroom! :)
Furthermore, the world that our students are growing up in (and eventually will be expected to work in) is constantly requiring students to learn and interact with each other on a more digital and global level. This is precisely the reason that I have decided to "re-vamp" the learning format in my classroom. At McGary Middle School, we are focused on "Developing 21st Century Thinkers and Problem-Solvers" and I truly want to embrace this goal! Over the course of this semester, I will be asking your students to try to use a lot of new and unfamiliar Web 2.0 Tools (all of which are free, by the way!). This will be a challenging endeavor for them, but it will be extremely beneficial to them as they move to the high school setting next year. (And we'll be with them every step of the way!) Let's put those netbooks to good use! :)
One new aspect of the course will be "TIPS" Assignments. TIPS stands for "Teachers Involving Parents in Schoolwork". Each week (starting the week of January 9, 2012, your students will be given a TIPS assignment to complete sometime during the week with you. Typically, these assignments should take 15 minutes and are assigned on Mondays. They will be due the following Monday. These TIPS assignments will be posted on your child's ANGEL account (as will all of their homework, starting 1/9/2012). The purpose of TIPS assignments is to facilitate conversations between students and their parents about the content that they are learning in the classroom. How many of you have asked your students "What did you do at school today?" and have them respond with "nothing"?
It is my intention to use this blog to keep you updated on the content that we are studying in class and to solicit parent feedback and suggestions. I am a firm believer in transparency in education and I want you to be aware of the learning opportunities that your students are participating in! I also want to use this blog to post examples of exemplary student work so that I can brag on our awesome Pioneers! However, I want this communication to be a two-way exchange ... I need your feedback and suggestions to help improve the learning experiences for your children (and future classes)!
Thank-you for all that you do to help make your children successful!
Keshia Seitz
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