Not Enough Computers

Mr. Jewett and I talked with Mr. Williams, the principal, during our planning period today, asking about L.'s transfer out of our 17 student computer class into Miss Francis' 30 student class in a classroom with only 27 operable computers.

CLP is apparently a very "in-between" sized school, which can sometimes cause problems with student scheduling. At larger schools, there tends to be multiple sections of classes for each subject. In these schools, a kid very rarely has to take a particular class at only one time during the day, as L. is having to do with her Math class, taking her out of our 1st period Computer class.

Smaller schools have the opposite situation, in such schools, teachers are adept at teaching multiple subjects at once. Schools like this tend to have academic blocks and elective blocks in their scheduling, with teachers teaching during both blocks. This alleviates that problem, as electives are not in conflict with academic classes.

CLP is not large enough to have multiple sections of classes, such as L.'s math class. On the other hand, it is too big to have teachers each specializing in an academic area and an elective area.

Meanwhile, Miss Francis has 30 kids in a computer class with only 27 working computers. There is another computer lab, attached to the Media Center, that has 33 computers. This is the lab that tends to be used by teachers with classes that need computers and access to the Media Center for books, etc. Theoretically, Miss Francis could conduct her 4th Period class in the other lab, but it would close the lab to other classes during that time. In addition, there is not a computer projector in that lab, so the kids would not be able to see her computer on the big screen, as they do in our lab.

I am not sure what my point is in documenting this. Maybe I am just writing it down so that I can remember it later.

Happy and Sad

It is 4th Period and I am "planning." I don't really have a whole lot to work on at the moment, as I graded all of the completed projects yesterday.

Sad things that happened today: L., one of the very first students that I made a connection with, has been transferred to Miss Francis' Computer Class in 4th Period, instead of our class in 1st Period. Apparently, she is required to take a particular math class that is *only* available during 1st period, so she will be there 1st instead of with us. I will miss her, as she is a really good kid who works hard and showed appreciation when she got a little extra help.

Good things that happened today: J., the young lady that called me a "LOSER" during the first couple of days, has become one of my favorite students. She can be very "high maintenance" and likes to act like she can't get anything done by herself. However, with a little bit of encouragement, she is shows herself to be a very bright and capable kid.

I helped her complete her "two-tone" name graphic project today. She was very excited when she finally got it done. However, she told me that she didn't like the way it turned out because the colors were placed incorrectly. I said, "Well, you know how to do it now, make it again just the way you want it." I was expecting her to say that would take too long or be too hard, but she started right in and did it. It took her awhile, but she redid the whole project by herself, with no help. She was finishing as Mr. Jewett began his lecture on our web design. When she got it done, she looked for me at the back of the room and waved her arms, pointing to her work. She was very proud of it and wanted to share it with me.

J. is also in my Study Hall at the end of the day. As she was working on some homework, I quietly bent over and told her that I thought she did a great job on her "two tone" project. She blushed and mouthed "Thank you." I could tell that she was very happy about it.

I really like teaching.

Someone Loves Me!

Walking in between classes in the busy hall today, I almost bumped straight into one of my students, M. We kind of danced back and forth a little bit, trying to jockey around each other. I said, "Excuse me, M!" She was so excited. "You remembered my name! None of the other teachers remembered my name! I love you!" she said. Then she throws her arms around me and gives me a big hug. Made me feel pretty good!

Having a Great Day!

It is Thursday and I am in 7th Period Planning. I just finished grading all of the projects that our classes have turned in over the last couple of days. Kind of fun, in a laborious, working sort of way. Definitely makes you feel like a teacher, though.

All of our classes have been really moving along and getting stuff done today. Depending upon the class, kids were working on their "Media Tech" webpage, which includes their name, picture and links for all of the projects that they are doing. Kids are encouraged to make their site as "cool" as they can. They were coming up with some great stuff, using neat bubble, fade and drop shadow effects for their name, tiling neat graphics for their page background and making their pictures look like ghosts, paintings or drawings.

The other classes have been working on their Dream Vacation, wherein they take an imaginary 3000 dollars and plan a trip to a foreign city, such as St. Petersburg, London or Madrid. Kids are having alot of fun with this project. They have to find airfare, hotel, rental cars and plan activities for a 6 day trip. They also have to research local customs, foods, etc.

Our other class is now a couple of days into their Commercial in PowerPoint. They are doing extremely well. I see tons of creativity going into the ideas, the presentation and the graphics. We learned from Mr. Jewett how to import sound files. This was alot of fun and the kids are finding some great stuff. I was pleased to see that the kids that I had shown the "eliminate background color" trick the other day were all using the skill today. One student, A, is doing some great, detailed work on her Tide commercial, blocking out the entire background of a Tide picture so that she can show her own background.

Kids also spent alot of time looking for sound and music files on the Internet to play in their commercial. I was pretty surprised that a bunch of kids were looking for old Rock and Roll clips, from such bands as Steve Miller Band, Pink Floyd, Lynyrd Skynyrd, etc. That is the music that I grew up with! They all like it. Makes me feel not quite so old!

Finally Got That Started!

Well, it appears that CSU has processed all of my paperwork and that I am an official Graduate Student now. I was able to register by RAMWeb this evening. Of course, I was only able to register for 14 of the 23 credits that I need to take, as 15 credits is the Graduate load limit. I have the proper overload forms to turn in as soon as I get by the University again.

For some reason, the system would not let me schedule my Business Methods class, indicating that I was not the proper major to be taking the class. I am hoping that an overload form will fix this problem.

New Stuff I am Doing

Mr. Jewett gave me his password for the "Gradebook" program and had me do the attendance for all of the classes today. As soon as everyone has their Scavenger Hunts and starting Webpages done, I will grade them. According to the Teacher Handbook for CLP, student teachers are not supposed to grade student's work. I am not at all sure how this is supposed to operate when the student teacher is teaching the class and giving out the assignments. I may need to ask someone.

Mr. Jewett also had me run two of the classes today, which went pretty well. We continue to talk ahead as to what we will be doing tomorrow, next week, next month, etc. I keep having to remind Mr. Jewett that starting next week, I will only be in on Mondays for about 5 weeks. He always says, "Oh, yeah, I forgot." I think he is getting used to me being around. Nice to be wanted, anyway.

We worked with our Computer Skills class in 8th Period finishing up their Scavenger Hunt and starting the use of Microsoft Publisher. Mr. Jewett showed them how to open up a template for a flyer and how to change text, put in new pictures, change colors, etc. Each student was then to work on a flyer for a garage sale, changing text and adding one graphic from the internet and one piece of clipart.

I was surprised at how difficult this was for the class. We both thought it would be a 15 minute project at most, but alot of kids were struggling with saving pictures from the internet, copying files from one file to the other, etc. We barely got everything done in the 35 minutes that we had left in class.

This continues to be one of the problems that I see over and over again that I do not know exactly how to address, that of different ability levels in the same class and how to meet the needs of both the talented group and the struggling group.

A Vexing Problem

It is 4th Period, a planning period for Mr. Jewett and me. We had our 2nd Period Class earlier this morning. Mr. Jewett had me run the class. I sort of had a leg up on things, as we had the identical class yesterday. Things all went pretty well for the most part. We were working on Fireworks graphics. As this class is pretty advanced, we went right to the playingwithfire.com website, which has the listings of some neat graphics effects.

Most of the kids got our first two projects pretty easily, the Guilloche effect and the Spiralling grid. We then got to the project that will be posted on student's "media tech" page for credit. This is the two-tone name that we had started working on yesterday in the other class, but did not finish. One kid, H., managed to get the effect figured out, putting his name in red with a split of a Hummer in the background. It looked really good. Most of the rest of the class, though, was struggling. With some coaching, most kids started to get close. We decided to have H. walk the class through the procedure on the overhead computer.

Unfortunately, the overhead computer has the MX build, which is different from all of the other computers in the classroom. H. could not duplicate his feat. The background for his picture kept coming up inverted and transparent. We couldn't figure out the problem. The bell rang and I came to the media to try to figure out the problem. Working on it for over an hour, I still couldn't get it figured out. Later, during study hall, I tried again, with Mr. Jewett helping me. The image still inverted and went pale and we have no idea why. We will be talking with Mr. Denise, the old "computer guru," now History Teacher, to see what the problem is.

The good news is that the young lady, J., who was the one who long ago (last week) wrote "LOSER" on her screen after I prompted her to get back on task, is in this class. She was also struggling to get the project done and came up to me in study hall while I was working on it and said, "Mr. Burkhard, you can't get that done either? That was so hard!" She kind of commiserated with me for a second before running off to chat with her friends. She was very nice about it.

A few people, mostly newer kids or kids that had problems with their login password, were behind in the Scavenger Hunt Project. I had them come to the Lab for study hall to work on their project. I filled out all of the passes. Made me feel like a real teacher.

It's "Methods" Time!

As soon as our last period (study hall) let out this afternoon at 2:30 p.m., I had to run out to the car and drive up to CSU. Our "Business Methods" starts at 3:10 p.m. each Tuesday. Today was the first day of class. As I don't have a CSU parking permit and don't have time to drive home and ride the bike back to school, I parked at the Visitor's Center, up the way from the Education Building. I got to the building a little early, and stopped in to see if Ali or Terry were around. Nobody there. Do these people work when we aren't there? (Just kidding!)

Teresa Yohon is the instructor for Methods. Lynn, Tim, Robert and I are all there, as well as about 8 or so other students. One of them is TEAM and most of the rest appear to be Undergrad Seniors.

Teresa is the person to know regarding Business teaching in the State of Colorado. She has been the president of this group and the Researcher for that group, she has stuff published in the professional journals and is helping the state rewrite their Business Standards. Obviously, she has a lot to teach us. This being the case, she is not interested in wasting any time on such things as breaks in our 3 hour class. Oh, well.

Also, the room, 229 in the Education Building is pretty hot. I will no longer wear any Rayon shirts to class.

Teresa has alot of expectations regarding our performance. There are a number of small papers, a large project and some lesson and unit plans. In addition, we are to visit a Business classroom at a school outside of the Fort Collins/Loveland area, see what goes on and interview the teacher regarding their methods. We also are to attend an FBLA or DECA (student business and marketing organizations) competition and participate. Extra credit is available, 50 points for attending a Business Educators conference.

One nice thing about Teresa's class is that she is a business teacher, so all of her course materials are well integrated through the use of WebCT. She has posted readings, due date calendars, lecture outlines (complete with weblinks,) translation tables for all of the pertinent standards, etc. A great online resource for us Business Education types!

Alot of work. Hope we can fit it all in with the other PP stuff!

Starting to do Some Real Work

It is Tuesday, the first real day of work in the modified block schedule here at CLPJH. The different classes are all working on different projects. I am being the assistant, for the most part, but I am getting a chance to work with students and am making a couple of connections and learning names as I go.

Our Computer I and Computer Skills classes were all working on their Scavenger Hunts today, where they look for the answers to particular questions on the internet. Some kids are sailing right through it and others are having a hard time. I have found a couple of kids that just get stuck and sit and do nothing really quietly. If you don't check in on them, the whole 1 1/2 hour period could go by without them accomplishing a single thing. I noticed this with one student in Comp. I, M., 15 minutes into the class period, he did not have a single question answered on his Scavenger Hunt and didn't have any websites open on his computer. I came over and asked him how he was doing. He kind of mumbled, keeping his head down. I kind of took over and showed him how to open up the google.com website and what google.com did. I helped him find the answer to the first question on his Hunt and how to put the answer and the website link into his paper. I then let him go. About 15 minutes later, he was on the last question. Yeah!

In our Graphics class, we went over some Fireworks graphics, drawing lines and making them look weird, importing pictures and inverting the colors, etc. Then we worked on two projects from the playingwithfire.com website. This website shows step by step tons of really cool graphic effects that can be done with Fireworks. We worked on two of them. Some kids got stuck and wouldn't try without alot of encouragement. Others flew right through and completed some great stuff.

In our Computer Applications class (not really the name of the class, but I can't think of the name at the moment) we worked on our PowerPoint commercial. Students need to come up with an idea for a commercial for a product or service, real or imaginary. They then have to put together a PowerPoint presentation lasting 30 seconds, with at least 10 slides, automated movement, graphics and sound. Some of the kids came up with great ideas, such as a product that lets you change your pet into any animal you wish, a computer chip that get implanted in your head to make you really smart and attractive, a meditation video to calm your stress levels, etc. A number of kids are working on real products, such as Tide, Listerine, Yamaha Motorcycles, a China Tourism commercial (those aren't gangs, they're social clubs!), etc. In just a few minutes, the kids were putting together some great stuff, with flying graphics, sounds, the whole deal.

I helped a few kids figure out how to delete the backgrounds of images so that they are transparent on their presentations, blending in more easily to the background. They all were very happy with the effect and seemed excited that I showed them. Neat.

One problem that I have run into is that I am not very familiar with all of the programs with which we are working. A number of times, kids asked questions that I didn't not know the answer to and I looked silly. I need to brush up on my skills, which I will be doing right after this for the rest of my planning period.

Yeah!

I just read on my email that three of the four people waiting for Junior High School placements were placed today. Dave M. and Stephen were placed at Lincoln Jr. High and Wendee will be staying (I think) at Boltz with her Japanese Goth kids. It sounds like only Lynn still needs a placement. It also sounds like Terry is busting her ass to find placements for everyone.

In addition to this good news, I talked with Randi at the Education Grad School department. She says that all of my paperwork is in order and I have been approved to enter Grad School and that the packet is on its way over to Admissions. As soon as Admissions gets this information and passes it on to the Registrar, I can register for Fall Semester. (Which I have been doing for about two weeks now!)

Yeah!

First Week Thoughts

Mr. Jewett's Computer I classes are all one quarter long. This means that in 9 weeks or so, the class will be over and a new bunch of students will be coming in to learn Computer I. This will be about the same time that I am coming back to the classroom for full time teaching until Christmas.

Mr. Jewett has already indicated that I will be teaching these classes from the very beginning. This will be a unique opportunity, as I will be in charge of two whole classes from start to finish. I am starting to think of how I would like to conduct these classes.

I would like to try to put together abit more of an introduction than Mr. Jewett uses for his class. Mr. Jewett covers all of the lab rules, computer use rules and course objectives verbally, and in a fairly brief fashion. Being the "agenda" builder that I am, I would like to be able to put together a PowerPoint presentation for the first day or so that would cover all of these issues in order. I would also like to be able to do some demonstrations of the projects that the kids will be completing, so that they know what they will be in for during the quarter.

With regards to names, I am slowly starting to learn some. I am reluctant to push Mr. Jewett to give me alot of time to learn names, as he likes to push on with his projects and my "Learn the Name" games tend to take up a decent amount of time.

Mr. Jewett says that the software bundle that has all of the web design and graphics programs that we are teaching is available for purchase at an educator's discount. Unfortunately, the price is 180.00 for the suite and I can't afford that amount right now, being a student teacher and all. I will have to do all of my program "practicing" on the school's computer.

Going Pretty Fast In Class

It is Monday, the start of the first full week with students. Monday is our "every period" class, where we see each class for about 44 minutes or so. Not really enough time to get a lot done.

Today, we are making sure that everyone is logged in properly and Mr. Jewett is setting up email accounts for the students. A couple of kids are still having a hard time getting logged in, so I am logging them in on my account to let them follow along with the classes.

For the Computer I classes, Monday is "typing" day. They work on the typing tutor program the whole class period. They have to complete at least 8 of the typing lessons by the end of the quarter. Each lesson takes almost a whole period. The typing tutor program starts by having them work on home row keys, then moves them on to simple home row words and a "blast the aliens" typing game with home row words. The program keeps track of their speeds and slowly begins to increase the "words per minute" rate needed to move from one sub-lesson to the next. One girl, L., was progressing very well and got to a sub-lesson where she had to type a section at 43 wpm before she could move on to the next section (this was much faster than any of the other students in the class at the time.) She kept trying and trying, but coming up with scores of 41 or 42. She started getting a little discouraged. I kept checking in with her, trying to help keep her going. Finally, she got to 44 and was really pleased with herself. She looked around to find me and show me her score. Kind of neat, in a "very small moment" sort of way.

The next two classes were working on Fireworks Graphics and .html coding for basic website design. Mr. Jewett likes to give short little mini-lessons on how to do things in Fireworks. He will bring up a canvas, put in a figure, demonstrate a couple of effects and then have the student do the same on their computer. Unfortunately, Mr. Jewett's computer has a different program version (build) from the students, so his menus are completely different from everyone else's. This is very confusing. It should be fixed by Friday.

There tends to be a great deal of differentiation of abilities in our Graphics and our Web Design Classes. Some kids are pretty computer savvy and whip through Mr. Jewett's activities in a couple of minutes. Then, they like to try new things and experiment, which is ok, as that is generally the best way to learn computer programs. There are some students, however, that struggle to keep up and have a hard time "making the leap" from Mr. Jewett's samples to their own computer. It appears to be difficult to accomodate all speeds of learning within a single classroom without holding the faster kids back and without losing the struggling kids. I am helping out the "slower" group as best I can.

Mr. Jewett, as I stated before, likes to do a lot of "flying by the seat of the pants" instruction. This is a little less structured than I would like to do things. If I were running these classes, I would likely have a "mini-agenda" posted on the board at the start of each class to help give a little bit of clarity to the period.

Things I Have Learned My First Week

A short list of things that I have learned during my first week at Cache La Poudre Junior High School as a Student Teacher:

• If your school wants all teachers to be addressed by title and surname, don't spend alot of effort the first few days learning everyone's first names!
  
  
• Seventh graders are emotionally fragile. They might cry if they don't get their lockers open. Try to learn how to accomplish this simple task very early on so that you can prevent the tears.
  
  
• Pubescent boys that are popular really do punch each other alot. Don't take it too seriously.
  
  
• Try to say "hi" and introduce yourself to anyone you don't know, especially in the teacher's lounge.
  
  
• Sometimes Junior High School Girls say things that aren't very nice. Try not to take it personally.
  
  
• There are likely to be a couple of misfits in your class, such as new kids, overweight kids, unpopular kids, etc. Make an effort to notice them and be nice to them, but don't let anyone see you doing it.
  
  
• If you have to leave the building, let the Office Manager know.
  
  
• Your cooperating teacher is likely to be different from you. Try to learn anything you can anyway. If they need something, get it for them. If the phone rings during class, answer it for them. If they need help with the students, help them.
  
  
• One ill-timed fart can permanently affect your status as an effective teacher in the eyes of your students. Take steps to prevent this sort of thing, if necessary.
  
  
• If you have a great idea that you want to try in class, ask your cooperating teacher first what they think. If they don't like it, don't do it.
  
  
• Make sure your fly is always up after a trip to the restroom.
  
  
• Smile alot.
  
  
• Alot of times, questions that you ask the class are going to go unanswered. Be prepared with a backup plan.
  
  
• The kid wearing the black lipstick doesn't care if you exist. Take this as a personal challenge to get to know them better.
  
  
• If you get to school early enough, you will be able to find a good parking spot.
  
  
• Be prepared with a good generic retort to any rude comment that might be directed at you. Sticking your tongue out at the offending student is not likely to be the most appropriate response.
  
  
• Always take your key with you. It is very embarassing to get locked out of your own classroom.
  
  

That is all I can remember at the moment. Tomorrow, we start a new week!