Starting Part 2, feeling good about my Part 1, I was thinking it was going to be a walk in the park with all of the information I had already gathered. For "Remediating an Argument," we were asked to use the same argument we repurposed in our first project. Basically we were taking the same argument and the same audience but presenting it in a different medium. My first medium being a child narrative, I was really unsure at first as to where I was going with that. Being a future teacher, the only thing I could think of was creating a lesson plan on self-esteem that could be used by teachers (like my future self) in order to prevent low self-esteem and enforce a safe and accepting classroom. But, was one lesson plan enough? Like my original repurposing of only two narratives, I thought this was nothing. With a weekend full of some detailed thought, I came up with a last minute Plan B. Next thing I know I'm proposing my idea of an ENTIRE website for teachers to my class. A website, what was I thinking?? I can barely work my computer, who was going to tell me that trying to be this technologically intelligent would probably be asking for agonizingly long hours of work?

 

My start was rough. I think a lot of it was challenging mainly because I didn't know how to use Wix, or any website creator for that matter. I was clicking all sorts of things and changing fonts and colors and movements, etc. I was so overwhelmed. I remember the day before my Mock Up was due, I was sitting there stressing out over whether or not my layout was okay, if my colors were too general, or if my content seemed to be lacking. You can look over my Mock Up here. Let's just say at that point in the process, I was definitely right about those things. Another thing I never really thought about was how I mentioned I would include a few lesson plans for teacher reference, but had never really created that many lesson plans before. Yikes did I have a lot to do. Stress levels began to set in and when it came to actually executing the rest of the website, I was dreading it, particularly before I had full class workshop on my "first draft." I spent an entire night making things look how I thought I would want them on a website titled, "Teachers Help the Teachers," a spinoff of one of my favorite songs, "People Help the People," by Birdy. I attached one lesson plan for everyone to reference. Let me tell you, once my workshop came, I had some amazing feedback from my classmates and professor. I mean, they were brilliant. Having that many eyes checking out my work and wanting to help me make it my best, I was able to absorb not only constructive criticism, but also some praise. 

 

It seems like forever ago now that I really started going ham on the website. I started getting really into picking out how the website would work, from animation, to font, to whether or not something should be in bold or not to emphasize the background. I changed my background from a gradient image to a chalkboard texture, and really starting accumulating research and lesson plan ideas in terms of self-esteem in middle school, particularly the sixth graders. I gained a lot of insight on how to structure a proper lesson plan for a teacher, which lessons seemed to be the most effective, and how I would create teacher involvement on my website. I renamed the site based off of a laptop sticker I had ordered, "Teaching is a Work of Heart." I tabbed everything into three sections: "The What," "The Why," and "The How." The What is a collection of important information relating back to unhealthy self-esteem and how to build it. The Why is the reasoning behind wanting to act upon this issue, including my repurposing project for reference, "Child Narratives." The How was where all the action was. I had three lesson plans made for teachers to use in their sixth grade classrooms in order to address the issues of self-esteem. One was created for each part of the year: beginning, middle, and end. The last part of this website was the hardest. I really wanted my website to be something that could be interactive for teachers, so I created an open forum from an an online application as well as an account to post from. I welcomed teachers to not only post their thoughts and stories, but their own lesson plans for sharing as well! This experience of working through the trouble of making a whole website by myself has been one I never imagined myself having. Now seeing from an Education lecture that a lot of teachers have their own websites, the skills I learned from doing this as well as the content included in it will be useful in my future. You can see the finished product, the one I texted my entire family and friend group the link to, here.