Blogging with Brenda

I wasn't shocked when I found out I have 168 reused passwords upon looking at my Google account's password checkup. I simply do not have the capacity to remember different passwords, and sure Google can save my passwords, but really, I can't even trust Google anymore as seen with my last blog post . So, I just silently resign and reuse my passwords to make my life easier. However, I was shocked to find out only one of my accounts was compromised while checking if I have been pwned and it was an account I barely use. My Canva account was found in the May 2019 breach, but I'm surprised that I've only been involved in one breach considering how little I have paid attention to online security. If I haven't paid much attention to my online security, I can only imagine how much my own students pay attention to theirs. Image Source: Twitter, @Maechez1 J Sterling Morton District 201, has policies when it comes to the acceptable use of technology. There are two sections...

Students can be the greatest teachers. I love learning new ideas from them. Sometimes though, what they share with me worries me. Teaching Civics gives me the opportunity to talk about the news and current events with my students pretty much on a daily basis. In those conversations, I get to find out what they listen to or read to find out about this information. After exploring the topic of algorithms this week, I started questioning my own understanding of how we get our information, especially those that are often on social media sites, myself included. Image Source: ABC News I listened to an episode of a podcast called  Factually! with Adam Conover on the biases of search engines, like Google, where he interviewed UCLA Professor Safiya Noble. In the episode, Noble mentions that Google became, "the people's public library." Anyone and everyone can access it at any given time, and for most, this has become the go-to site for finding information. "Just Google it,...

Within my Professional Learning Network (PLN) at work, I feel I have the most to learn and grow cognitively . Since I don't have as much experience as the others in my PLN with teaching, I definitely spend the most time asking questions on how to do things and listening to what has or hasn't worked. The PLN that I mostly work with is the one at my school, where it's three other teachers apart from myself that teach Civics and Economics. Our PLN was new starting last school year, and in my opinion, we grew close to one another because of the shared struggles of teaching a new class and for some of us, for the first time in the building. Looking at this infographic on where I think I fit within my PLN, I can confidently say we're all on Stage 7: Confidant . We've spent time outside of school together, we each lunch together on occasion, and we lean on each other for support both professionally and personally. The tough times we experienced together last year brought ...

Hi everyone! I am so excited to write my very first blog post and share it publically. I swear, I've attempted to create a blog before. It has never been successful, but this time is different! My name is Brenda Lo pez and I use she/her pronouns. I'm a second-year social science teacher at Morton East High School in Cicero, Illinois. Currently, I teach semester-long classes. I mainly teach Civics and Economics to seniors, and an elective for sophomores, juniors, and seniors titled Modern World History. I work at my alma mater and graduated from this school in 2015. Afterward, for my undergraduate degree, I attended the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and graduated in 2019. I am a co-sponsor for a club at Morton East called Operation Snowball, a club that I was a member of when I was a student at Morton. The club's mission itself is to have our students create healthy and positive relationships with each other, and most importantly within themselves. Everything in my...