Dear Blogger friends,
I finished another school year. Wow. It is amazing and thrilling to know that I have been teaching for 11 years! It is a relief to know that I feel so passionate about teaching and learning as I did when I started. I learned so many things every year, from my students, from my friends, and now from this blogging world. I love this life and I wouldn't change it at all. Every year I send a thank you letter to all my dear ESL families thanking them for another great year and their unconditional support in their child's education. This year I added a little extra to the thank you letter. As many of my friends know, I love to take pictures. I always, always carry my camera in my purse. Throughout the year, I take tons of pictures of my students engaged in all the different learning and fun experiences in their ESL class. This year I thought I would put all the pictures I have taken of my students into a DVD for the students to take home. I learned how to use iDVD and iMovie on my Mac, so over the course of one weekend, I created a movie with the pictures, set background music and burned over 70 DVD copies in the course of a weekend. I can't tell you how personal satisfaction I felt during the course of this project. I learned to do something new AND most important I knew that those dear ESL families would get to keep a little treasure, a peek into their child's life at school through that DVD. Don't you love the possibilities that technology can offer to our students? I do!
3 comments:
What a great idea. My daughter's teacher made a DVD that she played at their kindergarten graduation and then burned a copy for all of the students. I loved it! I also thought about sending my families a thank you too late because the year was already out. I will keep your idea of a letter/DVD in mind for next year.
This year, the dvd I burned even had a couple of video clips in it -- one of the kids yell-singing around the campfire at camp, and another one of an amazing domino knock-down that I taped at the end of an indoor recess. The last couple of years, I have only broken the law with ONE copyrighted song -- all the rest of the music, the kids create on GarageBand!!
It is such a good feeling to do something new (and keep up with technology)! Hooray for you and I know your kids are thrilled to have access to memories.
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