Blog Post #1

About ME

Hello everyone, my name is Yollette Battiste I am married to my best friend Cyrus Battiste and we have three children. We have two daughters and a son that keeps us very busy from sun up to sun down. I am an officer in the Alabama Army National Guard. I already have a BS in Geography from South Alabama but I have returned for my teacher’s certificate. My plan is to teach General Science at one of our inner city high schools here in Mobile County.
So far this semester has been a bit hectic because of my military training over lapped the first week of school. I’m feeling my way through the first few weeks and trying to play catch up and jump ahead at the same time. I look forward to being a student in this class because I find myself to be a bit behind on all the social media. I can navigate facebook ok but twittering and blogging will be my challenges.

My Future Classroom

When I grow up I want to be a General Science Teacher for secondary education. I want to teach in a high school that has a JROTC program because of my military back ground. I want to be able to bring the two things that I love to do together, and that is to teach and work with future military leaders. My method of teaching would be similar to how I teach some of my military classes. Tools that I would use in my classroom would be the power point; the smart board and something close to a clicker system to have students interact at certain points during class.
At the beginning of each class I would have my objectives on the power point and allow the students to read and acknowledge that they are aware of the day’s objectives. Then I would designate the first thirty minutes of class on a lecture type section. The second thirty minutes of class would be some type of hands on activity or group activity to have the students put the lecture portion of the class into action. And the final thirty minutes of class would be what the military calls “check on learning.” At that time I would put two questions on the smart board for the students to respond to, and depending on how the responses are would let me know if the class really met the learning objectives for that class session.

Time Management

Randy Pausch addresses time management as complex issues that can be broken down and categorized. He goes over setting goals, prioritizing them and planning to succeed not failing to plan. Pausch also makes a great point about doing things the right way and doing the right thing. In uniform I am always planning and prioritizing things and tasks that need to be done but I realized I have been in the process of crossing this application from my work environment to my everyday life. This video just pointed that out for me.

Time Management Exercise

The Penn State time management exercise was very informative. It seems to have quantified qualitative information that I already knew. In being a full time parent spouse and student and a part time but full time some of the time guards woman I have the uncanny ability to not only multitask but also multi-think. I am in a constant state of working an un-prioritized to do list and some things get pushed to the way side. The most important and big things are always in the for forefront and take precedence over most but it is never the big stuff that adds up it is all the little things. So I would have to say the biggest thing that I have taken from the time management exercise is concentrate on one thing at a time.