Thank You!

Early this morning, Stephen and Carolyn went over to the Student Center to get some breakfast goodies and coffee. I mentioned that I would love something like that, but lamented that I did not have any money.

Upon return, Carolyn brought me a Latte! It tasted wonderful.

The generosity of the members of our cohort never ceases to surprise me.

An Early Morning Posting

It is 8:15 a.m. on Friday and I am in Mauricio's Computer Lab. We will be having our Technology class starting at 8:45 a.m., so I have an extra few minutes to put up a blog entry.

I awoke this morning at 4:00 a.m., with lesson plan ideas running through my head. This slightly manic episode robbed me of a couple of hours of sleep, but I think that I actually came up with some good ideas for an amazing Web Site Design class. I even came up with some ideas for a first day "ritual" to start out a course. More about these later, as they crystalize in my mind.

Unfortunately, I forgot a ton of stuff this morning. We were supposed to bring markers for our Planning class and a content area textbook for our Technology course. I couldn't find my textbook and forgot all about the markers. I proceeded to "borrow" some from the PP room downstairs. I hope nobody notices.

I have to start some work on a PowerPoint presentation for Mauricio's class, so I will be going for now.

Socrates and Differential Appreciation...

A quick rundown of the day, as I am way past sleepy. The day started out rough, as my allergies kicked in last night around 10:00 p.m. and I could barely breathe for sneezing. I finally got to sleep at around 12:30 or so. Because of this, I didn't get up until 7:00, having let my alarm ring on snooze for one hour and twenty minutes. I made a quick sandwich, took a shower and headed for school.

For our first session this morning, Students, we read an article regarding Dropouts and the possible causes for this action. The article tried to make the point that school are partly to blame and that white kids tend to blame themselves for their failings and black kids tend to blame the schools and nobody listens to any of them. There were a number of "off the cuff" remarks from a survey about how, "Teachers all hated me." Nothing very compelling, in my book.

(The painting is "The Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David, 1787, one of my favorite Neo-classical painters, although I much prefer the more energetic work of the Romantics to David's austere stylizations.)

We followed up the reading with a Socratic Discussion. Sitting in a circle, we offered positions regarding a topic question. Lots of anecdotal evidence flowed forth. To be honest, I am not much of a fan of Socratic Seminars. I much prefer an old-fashioned argument. We got through it, though.

Then, we met with Lee to review "Problem Solving." It sounds like Lee had a last minute Guest Speaker cancellation for the day and we sort of did some tap-dancing for our time together. He presented us with a couple of problems, one involving moving trains and cars around a circular track and the other a series of tangram problems. I am particularly lousy at the train/car problem. Even after having the answer shown to me, I still don't think that I could replicate it. I really struggle in solving spatial problems. Problems involving concepts and relationships I do pretty well, moving traincars problems, not at all. Lee, being the mathematical wonk that he is, has a deep appreciation of such spacial conundrums. Me, not so much.

In the afternoon, we met with Ali again and reviewed a couple more "Tools."

Then I came home.

Now I am tired.

Good night.

What Happened on Wednesday.

This morning, we had an orientation at 8:00 a.m. in the Library, going over all of the online library and reference tools that are available at CSU. There is truly a ton of information at our fingertips nowadays, from any computer in the world. I remember doing the same thing years and years ago when I started my undergrad. work at CSU, they showed us how to use the card catalog and how to find the microfiche reader. I guess that dates me a little bit...

Working at the Library was very frustrating, however, as we did not have access to our network drive to save files and text. Apparently, we can only get there from the computers in the Education building (and other CAHS computers.) I quickly gave up and went to the 220 lab in the Ed. Building. You can access all of the library's materials there and save things, as well.

Tim, Robert and I spent a good deal of time at the lab (almost 2 hours) working on our Methods project. We are mapping standards to an outline of a high school business course. This is very tedious. First approach was to develop a course unit, then try to seek and capture all of the different standards that would apply to the unit. Then repeat 9 times for an 18 week, semester long course. This is almost impossible to do.

I came up with what I think is a better idea, I have my basic course concept in my head. I went to all of the applicable standards for business and Colorado Model Content and am cutting and pasting any standard that I think might be appropriate for any part of the course. I have completed this. Now, I will use this as a template, recopying my entire list of standards for each unit I create and going back and deleting the standards that are not appropriate to the unit. This will get the job done much more quickly, I feel, as deleting standards that are there already is much easier than hunting and finding the standards new each time.

In the afternoon, we had our "Environment" class with Lee. We talked about Rules, Discipline, Procedures, etc.

After class, I talked with Terry about my registration, which was still showing me as short one class. She is an absolute hero, in my mind. She immediately jumped on the phone to the Dean of the Graduate School (today is the last day that classes can be added to registration.) Within five minutes, she had taken care of my registration problem on the phone.

I am so glad that Terry is part of Project Promise. She is a true fighter and a great ally for the program.

OK, I'll Write Something....

Well, it is Wednesday and I haven't written anything in my blog since Monday, Labor Day. As you remember, Tuesdays are my longest days of the week, as I have class at CSU from 8:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. for Project Promise and then I have my Business Methods class from 3:10 p.m. until 6:00 p.m. When I got home yesterday, I had dinner, we went shopping for awhile and I went to bed.

We did have a decent day, though, as Tuesdays go. We all were a little overwhelmed in the morning when Ali gave us our "Building the Adolescent" project, in which we need to review 6-8 of the more prominent Theorists of Learning and present them in a project aimed at the adolescent in the learning environment. It is starting to occur to us that we are all cramming about 12-14 credits worth of Graduate level coursework (a full semester's load for any normal Graduate Students) into about 5 weeks in the classroom. The projects really seem to be piling up and the deadlines are not all that far away.

We had a Guest Speaker, Natalie Kees, from the Education Department, reviewing a concept called "The Circle of Goodness." This was a rather simple depiction of the framework of counselling, from what I could see. Starting with basic character traits, the student is influenced by life circumstances, mistreatments and perceptions, which bring about a "Plan of Survival," which influences behavior. I guess that the message was that "all students are worthwhile." OK. Not much new there.

For our Methods class, we met up in the computer lab. Teresa helped us crystalize our "Curriculm Map" project that is due next week. I think I finally get the hang of where all of the standards originate and where they are to go on her map. We also talked a little bit about lesson planning. Then Teresa showed us some of the neat links and resources that she has posted for us on WebCT, as well as the resources available on CTTEC. We spent the last hour and a half or so investigating online resources, which was relaxing and useful.

I particularly like the idea of "Backflip," from backflip.com. This is an online service which lets you track your website favorite links from anywhere on the web. I have signed up for the service and am using it alot.

A Much Needed Three Day Weekend

Well, if you notice, I haven't posted anything to this blog since last Thursday and it is now Monday (Labor Day.) It was a long and exhausting week and I haven't felt much like thinking about school since we got out of class on Friday. Thus, no blog entries.

On Friday, we had our first "Technology" class with Mauricio in his computer lab. This has been our first extended experience with Mauricio, the fourth member of our instruction group for PP. He is an enjoyable teacher and I enjoy his accent. I particularly like the way that many Hispanic speakers alter the accented syllables in words. It makes them sound much more musical, in a way.

Anyway, back to Technology class. Our textbooks for the class were apparently delivered to a hallway in the Education Building somewhere, where another Technology class scooped them up. We are working off of the online textbooks until the next shipment comes in. We spent much of the first class period learning how to open our student folders online and how to create and copy files. This is the same thing that we covered with my 7th grade Computer Skills class a couple of weeks ago, so I have the skills down pretty well.

Mauricio introduced us to our first assignment, the production of a course outline, which addresses units, essential questions and unit questions. This is very similar to the assignment in our "Methods" class and I am hoping to be able to combine the two assignments into one grand production.

I did manage to learn some great things in Mauricio's class, however. First, I learned that I was inputting the incorrect password into the computer to open my account on campus. I had to type in "newuser" as my password to be able to get onto the system. Before, I could not get on the CSU computers, now I can. Second, I learned that the dorms at CSU offer meals to all students, not just dorm residents. Cost is 5.50 for lunch. All you can eat, plus you can take out food if you like. This is much more reasonable than the food court over at the student center. Third, I learned how to connect to the CSU computer system from my computer at home. With the download of a simple client program, I can log on to the CSU system and have full access to my files and the CSU programs. Unfortunately, my modem is a dial-up, so the connection can be very slow.

In the afternoon, we attended Terry's "Planning" class. In this class, we will again be talking about plotting a course (literally and figuratively.) There will be another assignment for this class, this time a "Teacher Work Sample." This will be an example of our work as a teacher which will go into our employment portfolio and impress the hell out of some principal someday.

The day did not quite end quickly enough. On this long Labor Day weekend, I slept for 4 hours on Saturday afternoon and did nothing but play games on Sunday. Today, however, I have had to get back to work. I have already completed my deliverable for my "Methods" class, a short paper regarding our Vocational Education philosophy. Now, I must spend some time working on my units plans....

I'm..... Almost....... Registered......

Well, Terry came back from her discussion with the new Dean of the Graduate School with good news. She explained the Project Promise program and why some of us in the cohort have to register for more credits than the Graduate School load dictates. In my situation, I need to register for the 18 credits worth of Project Promise coursework, as well as 4 credits worth of my "Business Methods" course. This class is usually offered during the summer and PP students are supposed to complete this before teaching courses in their content area at the high school level. This year, however, the class was not offered in the summer. As I need it before I go into the high school in the spring, I must take it in the fall. Not my fault. I don't want to, but I have to. Apparently, Terry has explained this sufficiently to the Dean that they will allow the credit overload on my registration.

I received an email from the Dean's office indicating that they had taken my overload form to the Registrar personally and had registered me for my classes. Unfortunately, when I checked my Registration online at RAMWeb, it lists me as only having 20 credits. One class has been left off the list. I am not exactly sure what to do, but will follow up this week.