First postings make me nervous...

My name is Jessica. I'm a grad student at George Mason University working on my Master's of Education in Curriculum and Instruction. This blog is actually an assignment for a course on "Integrating Technology in Elementary Classrooms" with a focus on literacy. On our blogs we are supposed to post our thoughts on education and the teaching profession, including our thoughts on public opinion of the school system and our response to these opinions. I am going to have to do a bit more research in order to complete this assignment but I do know that society constantly demands that teachers improve student performance on standardized tests, assuming that teachers aren't doing their jobs or that the school systems today are flawed in some major way. I am not about to say that there aren't bad teachers out there, I am sure there are plenty, but I feel that teachers get a lot of unfair treatment and blame for things that a lot of people don't fully understand. People who have never taught cannot even begin to understand how complicated the profession is and unfortunately form opinions based on their experiences as students. I will start to do more research and post my findings and opinions on this blog as I go along...should be interesting.