Back To School!

It is Monday, and I am back at CLP Junior High School again. It is so good to be back. After sitting in the classroom at CSU for 8-10 hours per day (as much as I love that) it is great to be back with the kids again. I will be here on Mondays for the next couple three weeks, then we go to our rural teaching experience for a week and then I will be here full time.

I had surprises in almost every class. The Seventh Grade Computer Skills class surprised me by not progressing nearly as much as I thought they would. They have completed their "Dream Vacation" project and have done some work with our Graphics program, but not much else in the last two weeks. Today, they worked on typing.

In most of the other classes, I was surprised at how much the kiddos (as Sara would call them) have gotten done. The Web Design Classes have been working on alot of graphics stuff over the last two weeks. First assignment was to bring in a magazine article and then reproduce it exactly in their graphics program. They are allowed to use Internet resources to find pictures, etc. Some of these really looked great. Next assignment is an "emulation." Kids were to find a graphic webpage and take a screenshot of the page. They are then to reproduce the look of the page as closely as they possibly can, using only materials that they create themselves in their graphics program. Some of the kids are doing awesome stuff here! They are reproducing whole webpages, down to the colors and fonts, all by creating them out of little circles and squares in their graphics program. Great stuff. Unfortunately, many of the kids are now way past my skill level with the graphics and I have a hard time answering their questions reliably.

In the Computer Applications classes, the kids have completed their PowerPoint commercials and are now working on an actual PowerPoint presentation, in which they will actually have to speak to the class. I got to grade all of the commercials, which was really neat, as I helped many of the kids find material or figure out techniques. Some of the commercials were very creative and funny. The commercial for "Visit China" made me laugh a number of times.

As we need to identify a student to "shadow" for our case study, I have arranged to spend the day with M., a student in two different classes of Mr. Jewett's, next Monday. The nice thing is that I will actually be able to be in Mr. Jewett's class twice during that day and M. is taking the "Personal Economics" class in which I have interest. It is the closest thing to a "business course" at the Junior High level, so I am interested in seeing what the class is all about. M. is a classic underachiever. From what I understand, he does work in Mr. Jewett's class because he likes computers and is on the football team. In all other classes, he tends to do nothing. It will be very interesting to see what his day is like.