Amy Currioman

Have you ever wanted to take a teaching course?  Not too long ago I was thinking about becoming a substitute teacher for the local school district.  After all they don’t even require a college degree in early education!  That was surprising to me!  Well, I decided to check it out as a possible course of employment but decided that the school system here did not have any kind of training course in place to help people to learn how to be substitute teachers.  So I passed on that – I didn’t think I would do a good job of it! I really think that the school systems should have a better system than to just hire anyone with a high school diploma to be a substitute teacher!

I love how the Internet has made so many of us “global citizens.”  I can remember when I had to work really hard to get information about things that were happening out of town!  If you wanted information on a particular town, you had to contact the local chamber of commerce and try to get copies of the local newspapers.  If you wanted to buy something specific to that town, like Georgia Dome tickets, or United Center Tickets or even Tournament of Roses Parade Tickets you had to use the long distance operator to try to help you find telephone numbers and then make a seemingly never-ending series of long distance telephone calls to try to find out how to get tickets!

But now, with the advent of the Internet, and the increasing access it has made possible to the consumer, you can get all of those things just with the click of a mouse and a credit card or paypal account!  The ease in which this can be done is almost unimaginable to those of us who were adults before the Internet was invented.  It truly is a modern marvel!

Have you ever needed a translator?  I took Spanish back in 1969 (yes, that WAS a long time ago) and 1970 in middle school.  I really enjoyed learning a foreign language.  I wanted to keep taking it, but the classes were full and I couldn’t get in.  There were a few times in the early ’70s that I actually used some of what I had learned in my job, but then I moved to New England where nobody spoke Spanish – it was mostly English and French.

I can remember when I was in high school I had a math teacher that hated girls.  The first day of class he announced that he felt that girls did not belong in his class and that he was going to flunk every girl.  He told us all to drop the class immediately!  I went to the school administration and complained, and their response was for me to drop the class!  That was over thirty years ago and I still get angry thinking about that!

Since that time, I’m pretty sure that schools don’t allow that kind of person to teach!  And since that time, I think that teachers have learned that girls can be just as good as math as boys are!  And in this day and age, any student can get Math Help fairly easily with Online Tutoring if they have Internet access!  The Guaranteach website offers Algebra Help and Math help for a low monthly fee of under $10.  If I had a student that needed help with math, I would certainly do everything I could to get him (or her) that help!  Math is vitally important in today’s world.

I’ve been resisting entering the modern age. I admit it. I’m technologically challenged! I prefer cassette tapes to CDs, I prefer VHS tapes to DVDs. And I have resisted getting an IPOD or MP3 player like crazy. I like my old “Walkman” cassette player; it works great! I just pop in a cassette tape and press play and I get to listen to my favorite tape! But I have to admit that the IPODs and MP3 players are smaller, and therefore easier to transport. And I can store hundreds of songs on them and don’t have to lug around a bunch of tapes to swap in and out of them. So I have finally ordered an MP3 player.

I asked my kids for help in picking one out, and they basically told me that they are pretty much all alike, and to buy a “cheap one.” So I think I ordered one where I can pick the song from a menu (I hope!) and not just have to put up with a random shuffle. It is supposed to be arriving in the mail shortly; I’m anxiously waiting for it so I can check it out!  Who knows, maybe I can start to embrace the “modern age” after all!  Just don’t ask me to text message anyone on my cell phone!