Hey, Where the Heck Have You Been?

OK, so I haven't written for about three days. Sorry. I last wrote on Monday, after my student "shadowing" at CLPJH. Tuesday, if you remember, is my crappy day, with classes from 8:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. (including Methods from 3:00 p.m. until 6:00 p.m.) On Tuesday, we started out with Barb McWhorter giving a guest lecture regarding "Multiple Intelligences." Barb is a past director of Project Promise and was a good lecturer, with a couple of good exercises thrown in. Multiple Intelligences reflect the varied "specialties" for learning that people tend to have, such as mathematical/logical, linguistic, musical, and so forth. An exercise reinforced the idea that I specialize in linguistic learning, but I was a little surprised to find that my second best "intelligence" is musical. Although I stink at music, I do enjoy the pattern discovery and varieties of pitch and tone that are associated with music.

In the afternoon, we did some "Success" stuff with Mauricio and Ali, mostly discussing "facades," the tendency of people to hide behind false fronts, not exposing their true selves to others. OK.

In our Methods class, we talked alot about upcoming projects and did some more online stuff in the computer lab. To be honest, I don't remember a whole lot of it.

On Wednesday, we have "Independent Study," time for us to get library or computer work done on various projects, or complete reading (which I am sorely behind on.) However, Shannon had a project that she had to get done ASAP, so I stayed home with the kids until lunch time while she worked. I had intended to spend the morning completing my write-up of my "Adolescent Theorist" for our Jigsaw group (instead of doing individual work on 8 different development theorists, a number of us have banded together to divide the labor. My portion of the research is a number of days late.) I got to the PP room just as we were starting Ali's "Tools." This was a short little discussion of "Learning Centers," different tables or areas set up around a classroom for students to learn things, then move on to another area. Ali set up 4 stations, and we circulated in these stations for the rest of the afternoon, then we were dismissed. We reviewed "Crisis management," "Emotional Intelligence," "Student Facades," and "Qualities of a Good Teacher." As an example of these stations, the "Student Facades" area had us watching the first 20 minutes of the movie "The Breakfast Club," then discussing the varied student facades and how to "reach" them. OK. Some of these "fluff" activities get old after awhile.

We finished our Stations at 3:30 p.m. I dashed up to the computer lab to compile my Adolescent Theorist information. I was reviewing Carol Gilligan, one of the first theorists to notice that girls develop differently than boys. I see her point, I suppose. I got this write-up done by 5:00 p.m.

I then dashed home to watch the kids until bedtime, then I got to work developing my Mini-lesson for Wednesday morning. This took me until almost midnight. I didn't really get to sleep until 1:00 a.m., then I got up at 4:00 a.m., rehearsing my lesson in my head. Argh.