Amy Currioman

Guest post by Sandra Ouellette

I think that it is absolutely amazing how much technology has changed just in my own lifetime!  When I was in high school, personal computers were a thing of the future, and the Internet was probably still a gleam in some genius’s eye.  When I was looking at going to college, my parents refused to let me go to the college of my choice – they wanted me to live at home.  The college I wanted to go to was a five hour commute, one way!  Back then a girl needed her parent’s consent to go to college!  Needless to say, I didn’t get to go to the college I wanted to go to, and could not get the degree I wanted.

Oh, how things have changed since then!  Anyone can get access to many different University Degrees Online without any fear of commuting, or whether they have to live at home or on campus!  My fifty-year-old brother-in-law just got his Master of Public Health degree last spring, getting the degree from WaldenU.edu,  I’m proud of him for continuing his education on into his middle aged years!

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.