Hurricane Sandy

My Personal Thoughts on this Experience 

& How it Relates to Being a Future Educator

Hurricane Sandy did not personally effect me very much. I was fortunate to have power the whole time and there was little damage to my home. With that being said, I feel empathy for those who were more effected and was (and still am) concerned about those around me. I have had time to reflect on this experience for awhile now, and can see how this disaster has effected my fellow students, teachers, etc.

Most of my assignments have been pushed back with new due dates. I see that this is one way teachers have handled the situation, and I agree that many of these assignments needed extra time. I began thinking about this on a more personal level. What would I do as a teacher? 

I believe I have taken a lot of my own experiences in school and that these experiences will shape me into the teacher I want to be. For example, some teachers failed to email or contact their students during Hurricane Sandy, even afterwards, and this really bothered me. Therefore, I know as a teacher, if I was in the same position, that I would try everything in my power to contact my students. I felt unsure as to what was really due, or if we had class, or if the assignment due the next week was actually due. I had many concerns that were not answered through technology--something we take for granted on a daily basis.

Communication is now based largely around technology. Whether it's through an email or text message, we rely on these technologies every day. Hurricane Sandy was therefore extremely rough for some people who are attached to these forms of communication. I can admit that I am one of them. The experience of Hurricane Sandy has helped me realize that when I am a teacher, I have to be sensitive to my students and their attachment or how they rely on technology as well. This includes being easily reachable, and open to the problems with technology (such as loss of power, loss of saved work, a crashed computer, 
etc).

I still wonder to myself why some of my teachers were not able to reach out before, during, or after the storm. It impacted my own personal learning because I was worrying. I felt as though I had no support. I do not want my own students to feel this way, whether it's because of a storm, or something else. As a teacher, I must remember that technology, though useful, can also cause problems. 

I have brainstormed some ideas to common technological problems I may experience in the classroom and some possible solutions:
1.) power outages: handwritten assignments and/or new due dates
2.) crashed computer: reinforce the idea to "save many times while you're writing" if they are working inside the classroom, be easy to contact through email or phone number so that students may contact me when it happens, extend due date to specific circumstances, assess the student in some other way (ex: orally) 
3.) No access to computer or the specific technology: find or create open computer lab hours, offer local library locations, time during class, groupwork/collaboration, or assess each individual students accessibility to the technology first-- if not enough students have the technology or way to use it, do not assign the specific project or tweak it.
4.) Students who are upset with the loss of their work: Be supportive, offer another option, be easy to reach, reach out first, be flexible