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Elementary education is so important as it provides the basics upon which all other education builds. Without these basics, children will struggle throughout their school education, causing unhappiness, stress, and perhaps behavior problems. This means that elementary school teachers need to help all their students as much as possible with these basic topics.

Elementary education is something we have all gone through, and it is something that may have shaped our lives forever. We all expand our horizons through education, starting with the elementary education program.

So how does elementary education shape a child’s life? When a child attends elementary school, the world of the child changes. Having depended on their parents from birth, suddenly they have someone else in their lives, their class teacher. This teacher holds the future of that child in their hands to some extent, because how the child reacts to that teacher, and vice versa, can influence the child, his or her ability to learn, and his or her love of learning.

When children attend kindergarten, their learning begins in earnest, with learning the basics like the alphabet and the number system, and the learning continues at a fast pace for most of the children. However, if there is a dislike between the child and his teacher, then this may result in the child not learning as well as he should.

Knowing as we do that education is a like a tower of building blocks, we know how important those first few blocks are. The rest of the education of each child is built on the first few years, and how the child handles learning and how to deal with mistakes really can affect him well into his future.

The role of teachers of the early grades is so important. There has to be plenty of encouragement with all aspects of learning, and the children have to learn that mistakes are often made by most people, but they can be corrected, and can learn from them. The very basics that are taught there need to be learned thoroughly in the first grades, so that they can be built on effectively. For instance, the value of learning to read early in life is huge, and children that struggle with this do have a harder time in school, because so much of school life is spent reading and writing.

And of course the value of knowing the number system, and being able to use numbers correctly is also of great importance, since these are used more and more as the children grow older. For children to progress, they need to understand the basics, and without this, they can become a problem in the classroom as they get bored and are unable to accomplish tasks set for them.

This makes the job of the elementary school teacher extremely important, and that in turn means that the training of these teachers has to be thorough, giving student teachers the skills they need to cope with the ever changing classroom dynamics. At one time, the life of a teacher was easier, in that all the children in a class spoke the same language, but nowadays, any one classroom can have children who speak a different language at home, so not only are they having to learn to read and write in the elementary classroom, but they also have to learn another language, one that is not necessarily used at home.

For English as a second language students, the teacher has to be able to encourage their use of English at school, and somehow, find the time to give them individual attention. For children struggling with any of the basics, the classroom teacher needs to spend extra time to help these children understand the topics as much as possible.

The result of all of this is that the elementary teachers have a great deal of responsibility for getting their class successfully through the necessary curriculum, so that the following year, the next teacher can do the same, building on the knowledge of the previous year. Should any child fall behind, through sickness, or any other reason, then every effort has to be made by the teacher to help that child catch up and understand the lessons that have been missed.

But the life of an elementary school teacher is not all about imparting knowledge. Elementary education also involves helping children become good citizens, which requires the elementary school teacher to spend time helping students with this important aspect of education. This means that the elementary teacher has a great deal of responsibility, an enormous task, and a task that is not always appreciated by others who consider the life of a teacher to be a very easy job. A teacher’s life can be very stressful, dealing with children from widely differing backgrounds, helping them with language difficulties, and helping the parents too understand what is happening in their child’s life at school. Of course with language difficulties, this becomes even more of a challenge for the elementary teachers.

As you can see, elementary education is full of challenges, for the school teachers as well as the students, but they are challenges that are eagerly faced by teachers and students alike.

Educational technology is becoming more and more common in schools and this is a great thing. School officials, parents, principles and teachers all know that educational technology helps a student to learn more, learn faster and become more organized students. The limits are endless what a student can learn by successfully integrating educational technology into their studies. If they are taught in school how to use the Internet and educational technology to better their education, then they will be very prosperous in school. It’s important for teachers to incorporate educational technology into classrooms not only because of the educational benefits that come from becoming very familiar with using technology as an educational tool, but because students respond well to technology.

Children now are run more by technology than ever, their wish lists went from bikes, baseballs and basketball hoops to Nintendo’s, cell phones and laptops. Children love technology and the unlimited opportunities of entertainment it gives them, so why not add it into schools to keep kids excited and wanting to learn? Technology helps a lot to organize students, whether it be on the computer, saving documents to different folders, creating organized and clearly written essays or utilizing any of Microsoft’s programs to enhance their document skills, educational technology helps children to become more organized. Since children love technology so much and use it so frequently a nonprofit group, Netday wanted to compose a survey to all school aged kids about technology and how it would influence them in their schooling. The survey was only supposed to last one day, it was called Speak Up Day, but because of the tremendous response they extended the survey to one week.

Officials were not surprised that children love technology and would like to see more of it, they already knew that when introducing technology into the classrooms in the past, it always caught the student’s attention and got them interested. These days it requires a lot ore to be able to get students to focus and be interested in a classroom setting because of the immense amount of technological distractions that could b taking place, whether it is them texting on their cell phone, playing games on their cell phone, using handheld video game devices, listening to an iPod, or even other students doing any of these things, it causes distractions in the classroom and they don’t get everything they should be out of the lesson that is being taught. By introducing the educational technology, students will put their handheld entertainment devices away and be interested to learn and see what the new technological devices can do.

In the survey what surprised school officials and the non-profit organization, Netday, who organized the survey, was that students not only wanted more educational technology, but also were coming up with ways to earn the money for the schools being able to equip their classrooms with more technology. This was surprising to the school officials because students not only wanted the technology but that wanted to help raise money by doing fundraisers to financially help equip their schools. This shows how important technology is to our students and children, we need to start giving them incentives to raise money for technology and help the schools to become more technologically equipped.