How My Family Came to Be Mine

I am going to share with you all my story that really explains my family and some reasons why I am so open and understanding. To get started for those of you who didn't know I am adopted. I have what is called an open adoption which means that My biological mother and adoptive parents decided that they would keep contact with each other and share pictures occasionally while I was growing up. Every adoption is different and even open adoptions vary on what the parents agreed too.

My biological mom who I call Amanda or my birth mom, got pregnant with me when she was sixteen years old. She was living in arkansas and going to high school. My biological father was seventeen, and also in high school. when my birth mom found out she was pregnant she told my birth dad and her family. My birth dad wanted to get married and start a family while my birth mom wasn't sure what would be best.

My birth mom decided that she would move out to California to live with her aunt and uncle as well as their kids, so she could make a more clear decision about what was best. She considered abortion and even had an appointment but she couldn't go through with it. She left the doctors office knowing that abortion was not her answer. Then she began to consider adoption and she met with many families to try to find the right fit. It turned out that her aunt and uncle worked at a hospital with a couple who had already adopted a little girl and were looking to adopt another child. So amanda met with this couple and their daughter. They shared similar values and religious views and seemed like great parents, but what really sold her was their happy little girl. 

Waiting for me to arrive was a long haul. My parents (who adopted me) took my birth mom on walks all over trying to get my birth mom to go into labor because I was over a week late. One day, as my mom was on the elevator, finishing yet another long shift at the hospital the doors opened. As my mom looked up ready to step out she saw my birth mom standing there. It was time. 

I am luck to say that my parent where there when I was born and had a good relationship with my birth mom. Although I was "unplanned" I was always meant to be with my parents. I was always raised with love and taught about where I came from with great honesty and no shame. I was lucky enough to have such strong moms that could bare sharing there child with another because it was the best thing for me. 

If you have any questions don't be scared to ask. I am not ashamed or shy about my life. It is the reason I am the way I am. 

My mom and I

My birth mom and I

My older sister and I (think she stole my passy)

Social Networking

I have read two articles about social networking one is about the negative effects of social networking and the other is about 5 positive effects of social networking. The first article written by Brian Jung  has four major points. These points are false sense of connection, cyber bullying, decreased productivity, and privacy. He says that people focus so much time on these superficial relationships that our deeper connections with people will weaken. Yea I think that people do spend a lot of time on social networking sites trying to connect with people that don't really hold an important part of their lives and I can see how in some cases this could effect other relationships, but if your relationship with someone weakens because of another then I think that says something about your relationship and how much did it really mean to you in the first place.

Cyber bullying is something that everyone should be aware of and I do agree that it is a huge negative part of social networking, however there is often settings that allow a person to "block" someone from being able to leave comments or messages. I really think that to blame any type of bullying on something would be ignorant it is not social media that is the problem but rather some of the people who are using it. In fact prevention of bullying can be prevented much more easily then In really life because you can just make sure your page is private to only those who you trust.

Decreased Productivity is another negative that he talks about. Jung gives information from studies that say that companies had lost 2.2 billion a year to the social phenomenon. Again I agree that companies are loosing productivity because their employees are spending time on social networks instead of working. It could be hard to keep your employees from going onto their favorite social networking sight when they can even just press a button on their phone to get to it. On my phone it only take me four motions to get onto my Facebook.

Privacy is a big concern especially for someone like me who is going to become a teacher. A big negative is an employer being able to look up your social networking sight and see the things you put on there. My generations especially really loves to share everything on their social networking friends and some of that may come back to hunt you.

The positives are all things that many of us really benefit from and are the reasons why we have social networking. The first one that Harry Bhanot talks about is keeping in touch with others. This is an obvious one to me. Everyone is curious about how that popular girl or guy from high school turned out or who is dating who these days. This is also great for people like me who are far away from their friends and family. All I have to do is sign into my Social networking sight and I can see new pictures and updates about what everyone is up to. This is kind of linked to his second point which is a support group. I have my family as my friends on mine as well as friends who give me support when it is needed.

The next two are strengthening relationships and communities. These are really great plusses because with our economy doing so bad it really helps to be able to give a shout out to your favorite local business or post something about a local fundraiser. It is just so easy to get people involved.

His last point is another source of news. I am really skeptical about any news I read that I find on a social   networking sight because it is like a wiki where anyone can post anything. so unless you are double checking your information social networking is a sketchy place to get your news.

Over all I enjoy Social networking sites but it is a love hate relationship because I do miss having to take and extra effort to keep in touch with people I think that it is important that we  show effort in order to have good relationships. At the same time it is nice to just click a few buttons and see what everyone is up to.

"Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts" video response

I just watched a short video on YouTube called Harness Your Students' Digital Smarts. This video is about a teacher who is teaching at a school her students using mainly technology. This woman has a blog called the Cool Cat Teacher that won the Edublog award for best teacher blog. She also travels to share with people about what she is doing in her classroom. Her main focus over all is about teaching her students. She uses all kinds of technology in her classroom to teach her students.

Some of the things that I personally really liked that this teacher talked about is having her students learn somethings on their own. She talked about using words that her students don't know on purpose so that they can look them up on their own and learn for them selves. She also talked about teachers feeling the need to know everything before they teach but that she doesn't do that. She enjoys it when she gets to lean from her students. During the video she also had her students teach the class about things they had learned and I really liked that she was not the only one who was teaching the students. I   personally thing that children can learn a lot from each other.

This video really shows the future of what I think classrooms are going to look like. Technology is becoming more and more necessary to know how to use. We use some form of technology everyday. This shows why as a future teacher I have to take classes that teach me how to use technology in the classroom and why it is important as a teacher to stay current. I will defiantly use technology in the class room and allow my students to learn from each other as well as allow them to teach me a thing or two. If you are interested in checking out this video here is the link Harness your Students' Digital Smarts it is not very long.

My super cool cat

So here is a little video of my cat outlaw playing in the bathtub. I honestly wanted to test out uploading a video and well why not up load this cute video I took a while back. He was being a little camera shy for some reason he normally plays harder. Anyways Hope you think he is as cute as I do.

Hey Guys!

Hello to every one out there and welcome to my blog. Let me get started by telling you all a little about me. I Am a student at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia Arkansas and I am studying early childhood education. For all of you who don't know what that means I will end up doing, its teaching kids in preschool through fourth grade. I am originally from Northern California in a small town called Petaluma. To give you an Idea Its about an hour north of San Francisco.

I have a pretty good  sized family and a kind of confusing one at that. I have three brothers and three sisters. A mom and a dad as well as a birth, birth mom, step dad, and step mom. On top of that I have tons of extended family who are closer to me then most peoples extended families are. To help you make sense of this it would help to know that I am adopted and the family that raised me lives in Cali and my biological family lives in Arkansas. I will post some other time and get into more detail later but for now that sums up my family generally.

This is my two little brothers and me

 I have a cat who is pretty cool his name is outlaw and he is about three years old. He traveled with my mom and I from California when I moved out here, which may I say was not much fun for him. He is an indoor cat now but when I lived in California he was and outdoor cat. He has a pretty big personality and drives me crazy half the time but I still love him.

I have decided that I am going to blog about my life out here in Arkansas. Just new experiences, places, school, bonding with family, just things that go on in my life. You can check out my school website to get an idea of what the campus looks like Henderson State University and check out my new fb Page Meredith P's Face book page