First Day of School! Again...

Hi everybody!

Ok, so there was a request for a school blog. So here we go!

For those of you who don't know, I finished my first Master's in August. That one was in Women's Studies at George Washington University. That University sucks, so don't send your children there. This is my opinion based on a truly subpar education and an atrociously awful administrative staff. Somebody else may tell you differently, but that's that on my experience.

Now onto better. I'm getting my second Master's in Teaching at USC. As I'm still in Maryland... I'm doing it online. It's SUPER neat and uber helpful.

First of all, what I love about USC's program is that they concentrate on how to develop teachers for high-needs, underserved areas. I.e. areas that need excellent teachers, but often don't get them or don't keep them. Being in a high-needs, underserved area themselves, these professors have done much work in their community and work with the most current materials available. Old-school ways of teaching won't always work, so they work to find out what will.

What else makes this one so interesting? It's not like most online programs where everything is done by writing, including interacting with classmates. They have a special video format platform where you "go to class." You just do it online and at a certain time. So, with the use of a web cam and microphone (or phone depending on the preference of the professor,) I attend class and can't just do it all online just in writing.

So today was my first class. Understanding the Social Context of Urban Schools. Today was mostly a fix technology, introduce ourselves and chat a teensy bit about the material we were to read and watch by today. I need to re-read the material as I may or may not have speed read it... and I did promise myself I'd read EVERYTHING for once, so yah. I'll get back to it...

I'll have more to share on the class once it gets rolling, but for the moment, there are 12 students (maybe 13???) and all seem super interested and interesting. I think we'll have a rockin' year! At least I hope so... I have to remember to call the school I was placed at for appointments with x-amount of people tomorrow... Guess I'd better add that to my list of things to do...