EDUC-5353 Week 1 Blog

 

EDCU -5353 Week 1 Blog

 

I am Trecia Genius, a fifth-grade Language Arts teacher in New Jersey. One of my goals as an educator is to collaborate with parents and other stakeholders to impact holistically on each student’s growth and development, thus enabling them to achieve academic excellence and be functional in society. As a change agent, I also strive to provide a nurturing learning environment where students can feel comfortable exploring, discovering new ideas, and enhancing their leadership roles in the capacities that they serve.

This is my third year working in the Hillside Public School District. Its population consists of different ethnicities, predominantly serving k-12 African American and Hispanic students. The majority of these students are from low to medium socio-economic backgrounds; hence, equitable access to home internet and technologies is one of the barriers that impact the students' academic performances as it relates to completing assignments consistently, reinforcement of concepts, and doing self-directed learning through research or inquiry-based learning.

Information garnered throughout this course will be valuable and further empower me to transfer knowledge to the district technology coordinator to implement plans and to partner with other social, private, and business entities to alleviate the barriers that impact the students to have equal access to home technology and internet connection. Overcoming the digital divide among students of different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds will definitely improve their learning experiences so that learning can be continuous and extended beyond the classroom. This will also enhance the channel through which students’ families can be active stakeholders in their children’s education.

The Hillside community is located in Union County of New Jersey, with a population of about twenty-one thousand nine hundred and ninety-one people. The median household income of the people living in Hillside, New Jersey is about ninety-eight thousand five hundred and fifty-eight dollars, which is relatively less than other neighboring cities of Union County which median household income can range from over one hundred thousand dollars ("Income by Zipcode," n.d.).

One historical feature of Hillside, New Jersey, is the Woodruff House and Eaton Store Museum, which was built in the seventeenth century that housed valuable artifacts and information of that era to highlight the community’s history. The various departments of the township also work collaboratively with the school district and are often involved in schoolwide and district-level activities.

I am optimistic that the diverse dynamic of people from this community is one in which will collaborate to ensure that equal access to home technological tools and internet availability is met in phases to stem the barriers that exist in order to improve academic performances.

References

Income by Zipcode. (n.d.). Retrieved from: https://www.incomebyzipcode.com/

NCES. (2021). Students' Access to Internet and Digital Devices at Home. National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved from: https://nces.ed.gov/blogs/nces/post/students-access-to-the-internet-and-digital-devices-at-homeLinks to an external site.

Office of Educational Technology. (2024). National Education Technology Plan: A Call to Action for Closing the Digital Access, Design, and Use Divides. US Department of Education. Retrieved from: https://tech.ed.gov/netp/

 

United States Census Bureau. (n.d.). Retrieved from:

https://data.census.gov/table/DECENNIALDPSF42000.DP1?q=hillside%20new%20jersey%20population

Union County Township. (n.d.). Retrieved from: https://ucnj.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Hillside.pdf

Hillside Historical Society. (n.d.). Retrieved from:

https://hillsidehistoricalsociety.org › history