Of Fishing and Moving Furniture

Today was the first day of our "Independent Study" mornings on Wednesday. As many people in the class are out Wednesday morning at their Social Studies Methods courses, the rest of us are set free to complete "Independent Study." As there was only one short article for us to read, Tim, Robert and I got together and began working on our Methods course project regarding Business course Curricula. We did some brainstorming and got out some good unit ideas for our three computer classes that we will be plotting and mapping to standards. Now, if we only understood the standards, we would be somewhere...

We started the classtime at 1:00 p.m., with Lee giving us a 15 minute review of his recent two week fishing trip to Alaska. He had lots of pictures, including a picture of the 27 inch Rainbow Trout that his son caught. Wow!

We then began the "E" part of our STEPS program, Environment. I think that this section will be of great interest to many in our cohort, as we will be discussing classroom management and discipline. Today, however, we talked mostly about the "physical plant" of our Junior High School classrooms and how we would change them if we could to create more inviting learning environments.

On the bureaucracy front, I spent some time at the office of the Dean of the Graduate School today. I need a signature from the Dean to complete my registration. A full load for a Graduate Student is supposed to be 15 credits. With my Project Promise coursework and the additional Methods class that I need to take, as it was not offered this summer, I will be carrying 22 credits. From what I gather, there is a new Dean of the Graduate School that started today. Being new, she seems to be interested in investigating any anomolies and oddities, like my schedule. I am hoping that the form will be ready in a couple of days.