Class Review

Throughout this course, I have totally learned alot.  This class was a bit challenging but also interesting.  I never seen myself creating a blog nor wanting to do more blogging but this course taught me this.  I have learned interested facts for the business side of the internet and the proper and appropriate features needed throughout the history of the world wide web, lol. 

I not only hope I completed this course successfully but I too hope my classmates have completed the course successfully too. 

In Health Care Data Technology I will truly need all that I have learned in the field I'm interested in.  This is just the beginning of a beautiful career for each and everyone of my classmate. 

I would totally give this class and teacher 2 thumbs up!

21st Century

What does this mean?  My mom has come home several times stressed about the fact that their school is going to “common core standards” full time for the next school year.  She has been in training for this big event for over a year.  She was selected as a PLC (Professional Learning Committee) facilitator for West Lowndes Elementary School and has been dealing with this new wave of education for the future.

To my understanding,” the Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy” as written by the State Department of Education for Mississippi and 45 other states.  In other words these standards are being developed in every state so that if you decide to move from one state to another any children that you may have in school will be taught the same things and same way.  They will not have to adjust to new teaching styles and a new curriculum.

The idealism behind this method sounds good because kids seems to fall behind in a new school setting and teaching environment sometime which could permanently hinder their progress and growth.  But are the teachers prepared for the change?  Will colleges and universities prepare our future teachers for this change also?  Will the college graduating classes in Education this May be prepared to take on Common Core when they are searching for employment for the upcoming school year?  Will they be denied jobs because they are not familiar with common core or have not been introduced and/or trained in common core standards?  Are daycare centers and headstart programs incorporating common core?  My son is 4 years old and will be entering kindergarten next year, will his teacher be prepared to teach him common core standards and will he have been introduced to any of those standards before hand?

As a concerned parent, who do I seek out to give me the answers that I need to know about my child’s education?  My mom has done a good job explaining a lot of the teaching strategies to me which has helped me understand what is involved in common core.  The new MCT2 (Mississippi Curriculum Test, Second Edition) test will be eliminated when the new standards take effect by the year 2014. This school year was the pilot year for grades K-2 and next year will be the pilot year for grades 3-12 and from my understanding it was successful at my mom’s school. The teachers made the adjustment and children grasped the style and level of understanding.  The testing and grading scale for this particular set of standards have not been finalized but by the beginning of the new school year everything should be in place.

 Education is a profession that I am interested in as a permanent career.  Will I be prepared for the 21^st Century in Education?

Social networking ... should it be restricted to children under the age of 18 and blocked to unfit adults?

“A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social relations among people, who, for example, share interests and/or activities and people with similar or somewhat similar interests. Most social network services are web-based and provide means for users to interact over the Internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging. This is because unlike most high schools, colleges, or workplaces, the Internet is filled with millions of individuals who are looking to meet other people, to gather and share first-hand information and experiences about cooking, golfing, gardening,  developing friendships or professional alliances, finding employment, business-to-business marketing.  Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks” according to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Facebook, one of the most popular sites for social networking has been taken out of context by the majority of its younger users and some of its adult users as well according to the original definition of social networking.  Too many people are using this service for bullying, disrespecting, stalking and slandering other people. This type of behavior has spilled over into our schools and everyday lives.  Arguments and fights have ensued from messages on facebook.

Should facebook be restricted and blocked to all children under the age of 18 and to any adults that uses vulgar and sexually exploited language?  That is a million dollar question that need to be addressed by the founder and its associates. 

I enjoy face book because I get to share special moments in my life and that of my family and play games with my friends and family, not to belittle people and tell every intimate detail of my life.  Whatever you write on facebook is viewed by millions of other people that you are not aware of.  Criminals, businesses and law enforcement agencies may also have access to what you are putting in print.  In order to rid the site of all these unfit characters, I think that if there was a sign-up fee and a yearly charge many of these individuals would shut down their page.  What do you think?

Children are BLESSINGS!

I have 2 adorable babies, a son, 4 years old and a daughter, 5 months old.  They are, in my opinion, very intelligent and developed for their age groups.

From the time of my daughter’s birth she has been doing things that a “normal’ baby could not do until they were between 5 and 6 months old.  Only after an hour of her birth, she was able to hold her head up to be photographed in the hospital nursery. She started teething at 2 months and has learned how to get down out of her chair. 

At 4 months, it has been said that a baby can understand the basic sounds that make up language and  will develop the ability to make some vocal sounds, which is very true, but my little one started making those sounds when she was 2 ½ months old which made  hearing them  exciting and astounding. She enjoys conversations with me and her father for hours at a time and if you are not willing to participate, she becomes very upset and let you know that she is not happy.  Most babies would nurse and sleep but my child is quite the opposite.  She sleeps well and eats well but when it time to talk, it’s time to talk.

Now my son, he is quite awesome himself.  He is a very picky eater and sleeper.  He is very active and into sports and games. At an early age, he began monitoring various things surrounding him and watching what other people do. He learned how to walk up his grandmother’s staircase without falling by watching us go up and down.  Most children would have tried to crawl up and down the stairs but not him; he wanted to walk like everyone else.  He loves to watch SpongeBob, the cartoon, and can mimic every show with the dialect and movements.  He can really put on a show for you. If there is any cartoon that he enjoys watching, he can perform it live for you.  

At the age of 2, he learned and recognizes his alphabets, 5 basic colors and numbers up to 20. My mom and I work with him on a daily basis trying to prepare him for school.  He has learned how to play video games on his own, Mario, Madden, etc. He can operate the equipment (PSP2, Wii and joy sticks) on his own, operates his TV and DVD player without any assistance from us.  He watches and learns by doing. He knows the fundamentals of baseball, basketball, football and golf (not all the terminology and details of the sports) but enough information to play. It is amazing to sit and watch him as he engages in these activities.  He is also good at the computer and loves to plays games on it as well.

Watching them grow has been a joy in my life as well as others and with the things that they have accomplished in such a short time, I am simply overwhelmed.  I hope their growth development continues as they grow older in a most prosperous and positive way.

“Childhood Memories to Lifetime Blessings”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2yzrAXhLyw

My best memories of the younger days are those that begin when I was in high school and discovered the love of my life.  I was fifteen at the time and in the 10^th grade when I was introduced to Terrell Hendrix, my future husband at that time.  My sister introduced us because he was a relative of the man she was dating and she thought he was a good person.

I agree, after meeting him and spending time with him, I discovered that he was genuinely a good person.  He is warm and loving, respectful and trustworthy.  I sought of encountered a problem during the initial courtship with my mom.  My mom is “old school” and she thought that I was too young to date outright.  We discussed the situation and she told me that when I turned 16 that I could receive company on a supervised basis.

On my 16^th birthday, my mom gave me a surprise birthday party and to my surprise Terrell was my surprise guest.  I had no idea of the party and that he would be there.  I was overjoyed.  The party was wonderful and my mom got the chance to spend some time with Terrell and observe his behavior and interaction with others.  He passed with flying colors.  The following week, she asked me if I wanted him to come over to the house for a couple of hours and you know my answer was YES!  She called his parents and introduced herself and asked them if it was alright for him to come spend a couple of hours at our house and she would be responsible for picking him up and dropping him back off at home.  They agreed and that was the doorway of a lasting relationship.

We enjoyed many occasions together during school and summer vacation.  Our parents were very involved in our lives, they set the rules and we all agreed to the terms.  Terrell was an athlete in high school, football and baseball were his favorite sports, and his parents were more involved in that area than my mom.  They made sure that I attended all his athletic events.  He excelled in both during high school and received a baseball scholarship for college. 

Since I am 8 months older than he is, I graduated in 2005 from high school but he had another year of school to complete. Nothing changed between us after graduation, I continued to support him and attend all his athletic events although I was a freshman in college.  The bond we shared strengthened with each passing day.  From childhood memories to blessings, we are still together and have been happily married for 4 years.

I wished I lived...

Once upon a time, there was a young girl named Brittani, who always wished that she was a princess that lives in a beautiful castle or a rich kid that live in a mansion.  But as the story goes there was a lesson to be learned.  The lesson that I learned is that there is quite a bit of difference between fantasy and reality.  As I grew older, I learned an even greater lesson that if you challenge a fantasy to become a dream you have options to make that dream come true. 

From my many travels to other cities and states, there is one placed that I wished I lived.  During my middle school days, I was fortunate to visit New York and New Jersey.  With all the “hype” about the “Big Apple” and its neighboring state, I was not impressed.  Although the trip in itself was very enjoyable and entertaining I did not want to live in either place.  Later on in high school, I was a member of the “Blue and Gray” marching band and we were invited to perform in Washington, DC.  Now this is an impressive state with lots of historic monuments, the capital of the United States, the Supreme Court building, Bush Gardens and many, many other places to visit and things to do.

I have an uncle that lives in nearby Fredericksburg and his neighborhood is somewhat similar to the neighborhood where I live in Starkville.  You can socialize with your neighbors, leave home without fear of home invasion and it’s a good place to raise a family.  Now Washington, DC or Fredericksburg is a place where I wished I lived.  It has a lot of opportunities for education, employment and happiness for family life. 

I will have another opportunity to return to DC this summer for our family reunion but this time I will be taking my family with me to see if my husband feels as I do about moving to Washington.  After he has had the experience of touring and observing what it has to offer we will discuss the idea of making this dream become a reality.

A SONG can tell so much!

SECRET LOVERS by ATLANTIC STAR

I don’t really have a favorite song that I sing all the time, except maybe the songs on the cartoons that my son watches on Nick Jr.  Secret Lovers is really more about my mom and dad and how they met and fell in love.

My mom told me about this years ago when I was younger and I have always like the way the story about their romance and this being both their favorite songs.  My mom and dad were both involved with other people when they first discovered that they were romantically interested in each other.  They were classmates in high school and never had any interest in each other except for friends.  Several years after they graduated, about 10 or more, my mom divorced her first husband and moved into the same neighborhood as my dad.  Not knowing that he lived there until the day she was moving in and he offered to help her get all her stuff upstairs in the apartment complex. 

After she got back in the game of dating, she was involved in another relationship with one of his friends and he, at that time, was married to one of her friends, she began to see my father in a different perspective.  I guess because they were socializing as couples which made the difference. 

I guess one thing lead to another and the relationship started to grow and they started seeing each other “undercover” as you would say.  The first two stanzas of that song described their relationship exactly. [click here Song...Secret Lovers to hear/see the song]

Here we are, the two of us together
Taking this crazy chance to be all alone
We both know that we should not be together
'Cause if they found out, it could mess up
Both our happy homes

I hate to think about us all meeting up together
'Cause soon as I looked at you, it would show on my face, yeah
Then they'll know that we've been loving each other
We can never no, no, no, no, we can't leave a trace

How could something so wrong be so right?
I wish we didn't have to keep our love out of sight, yeah
Living two lives, just ain't easy at all
But we gotta hang on and after fall

Secret lovers, yeah that's what we are
Trying so hard to hide the way we feel
'Cause we both belong to someone else
But we can't let it go 'cause what we feel
Is, oh so real, so real, so real

Secret lovers, yeah, that's what we are
We shouldn't be together but we can't let it go
'Cause what we feel is, oh so real
So real, so real, so real, so rea

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I have often heard of couples having favorite songs to express their love but nothing as extreme as this but from this song came me which is the best thing of all but the relationship did not last, my parents are now going in different directions.  My mom is single again and loving it and my dad has remarried but he is not very happy.