Friday and Everything After

We had a Planning session with Terry on Friday afternoon. She invited in a guest speaker, Jane Nicolet, who went over some very solid information regarding Lesson Planning. So far, lesson planning in our Project Promise and Methods coursework has been alot of stabbing and guessing. Jane did an excellent job of really laying out some nuts and bolts of Lesson Planning, based up on the Direct Instruction method of teaching, mostly borrowed from the work of Madeline Hunter. After alot of confusion and mixed signals, Jane's approach and templates were very straight-forward and useful.

After class, a number of us got into a discussion with Terry about the appeal of Jane's approach and how it was quite divergent from the approaches that we have been exposed to in other areas. We continued on to discuss the concerns that a number of us had regarding our impending Student Teaching, both in our Junior High School and at our Rural Experience in Caliche. We do not, at this point, feel properly prepared and we are feeling quite bogged down by peripheral assignments regarding behavior theorists and theories of learning. Terry promised that she would look into our concerns.

I got home from school about an hour late, to find that Shannon, my wife and Emma, my 4-year old daughter, were both violently sick and vomitting heavily. I spent the rest of the evening tending to the two of them. At 5:30 a.m., I awoke knowing that it was my time. From that time until 11:00, I lived with a large pot in the bed, needed for frequent puking sessions. For the rest of the day, I was feverish and ached like hell.

This morning (Sunday) I finally felt human again. I have spent most of the day working on my Methods Curriculum project. I think that I finally have it done. I have put about 8-10 hours into this project. Yikes.

Time to wrap up and go watch the football game...