Getting Ready for Rural.

It is Saturday afternoon, and I have a few minutes while the baby is sleeping, so I thought I would post regarding Friday.

We did not really do much on Friday, except meet with Terry and go over details for our upcoming trip to Caliche for our Rural experience. As my good friend Bob, who is now deceased, used to say, "It'll be a big old time!"

Terry will be stopping by the house at 5:00 a.m. on Monday morning to pick me up. We are meeting in a caravan at 5:10 a.m. at the Super WalMart, then we will hit the road. We need to be in Caliche by 7:45 a.m., as we already have assigned duties and tasks for the school day on Monday. We will be observing and shadowing teachers for the day on Monday and Tuesday, then we will start team teaching and doing lessons on Wednesday. Monday evening, there is a cultural fair in town (Sterling) that we will be attending. Tuesday evening, we will be eating out at a fine restaurant in Sterling (Pizza Hut) as a cohort. Wednesday, we are invited to a BBQ/Bonfire at "The Farmhouse," one of the places that alot of our cohort members are staying. This sounds like an outbuilding, with no furnishings, but with a microwave and cold running water. Most of the younger, more adventuresome cohort members will be staying there. Thursday, the Caliche JV Football team has a home game, so we will be attending that. Friday evening, we come home.

I normally do very poorly at this type of activity, as I do not usually do well away from my own bed, but I am taking a positive attitude and looking for exciting things from this week. I signed up as having no preferences for teaching grade levels, so I might be teaching kindergarten or 12th grade. We shall see.

I do not know how well I will be able to blog during the week, but I will do so if I can.

Thursday: Poverty, Colors and Lecturing.

I made it in to school this morning just as it was starting to pour rain, which it did most of the rest of the day. I rode my bike in, as usual, and was very close to getting soaked.

We met with Lee this morning and reviewed "Poverty." His information is based upon a book by Ruby Payne called "A Framework for Understanding Poverty." The point was that there are a number of different types of poverty besides financial, lack of relationships, lack of support, lack of spirituality, etc. We also discussed the idea that there are class rules and norms associated with the impoverished class, as well as the other classes, of course. This was pretty interesting, for the most part. It occurs to me that M., the kid that I spent the day with two Mondays ago, is likely impoverished, as he shows many of the symptoms of being from an impoverished family. This will make my case study more intestesting and focused.

We then met with Mauricio, who gave a presentation about "What are your True Colors." Please! Any google search will turn up 5-10 different analyses of personality types based upon "colors." Here is one such. So far, I have found out that that I was a Blue in one survey and a Purple in another. This system indicated that I am a Green. Whatever. It was all a bunch of bullshit if you ask me and I would rather have been doing something else.

After lunch, we all carpooled over to Webber Junior High School to meet with Mark Long, Ali's husband, a teacher there for 14 years. He gave us a lecture on giving lectures. I am reminded of the quote: "To define recursion, we must first define recursion." It was an interesting experience, though. Mark is obviously a very good speaker and teacher and kept things interesting on an otherwise dry subject. Ali followed this up with a lecture (of all things) regarding the Nuremburg Laws. Interesting, I suppose.

I then got a ride home from Stephen, which I much appreciated. He has a bicycle rack on the roof of his car, so we hauled my bike around in that fashion.

Why I Didn't Go to School on Tuesday and Wednesday.

It has been a strange week. I got up on Tuesday morning feeling sort of weird. I took Joshua to school because he was running late. Then I decided that I was really feeling weird. I laid down for abit, feeling sort of nauseated, with a tickle in my throat. I spent most of the rest of the day in bed. I'll bet that I slept 20 hours of the 24 hour day on Tuesday. It appears to have helped stave off a sickness, and I must have needed the sleep.

On Tuesday, we were not supposed to report to the PP classroom until 10:00 a.m., to meet with Ali. As it turns out, Ali was stuck in Florida on Tuesday morning because of the hurricane and there weren't really any classes for Project Promise that day either. I did miss our Business Methods class, where they talked about procedures for teaching Accounting and Business Law. I will try to make that up somewhere along the line.

On Wednesday morning, we usually have Independent Study time until lunch. I started working on my Adolescent project (displaying the theories of Adolescent Development in a tangible fashion) at a little before 8:00 a.m. I had already spent about 6-7 hours working on the project last week and on Monday afternoon after school at CLP. When I looked up, the time was almost 11:30 a.m. and I was a long way from completing the project. I knew that if I didn't put a ton of work into the project, I wouldn't get it done by Thursday morning, when it was due.

I worked straight through on the project until 11:00 p.m., taking about an hour off for dinner and getting the kids ready for bed. I finally got the work completed, but not to my entire satisfaction. After about 24 hours worth of work, I had completed a PowerPoint "Commercial," similar to the one that the kids on our 8th-9th grade Graphics and Web Design Class did a week or two ago.

The concept for my commercial was that the company offered "supplements" and "vitamins" that, when taken by teacher or student, offered the benefits espoused by the various Development Theorists. It is kind of a cute idea, not alot of depth to the analysis, but some nice graphics and so forth. I kind of struggled with the sound files, so that didn't work out the way I wanted, but overall, I thought it was ok.

So, I worked 15 hours on the project on Wednesday to get it done for Thurday and then Ali can't make it in until noon. Presentation of the projects has been suspended until two Tuesdays from now. (Next week, we are gone at Caliche for our rural experience.) I kind of wished I hadn't been diligent and worked my ass off to complete the project in time.

I have come to the conclusion that I work too hard on things in Project Promise. I learn to need to do "enough" instead of "everything." This would help my stress level.

Hey, Paul, Why Can't I See All Your Pictures?

It depends.

For the graphics that I have added to my blog postings, I essentially steal bandwidth from other websites, as I do not currently have access to an online website for storing files.

Because of this, there may be files or pictures that I have posted that are unavailable on your network. At Poudre School District, there are a number of sites that cannot be accessed, due to filtering restrictions. In particular, the small piece of artwork that I posted yesterday does not show up on the Poudre School District network. The network thinks that the site is an adult site. It isn't, but the network thinks it is. Unfortunately, alot of the graphic art sites that I have found recently cannot be accessed at CLP, as the network thinks that they are adult or chat-based, or what have you.

Monday at CLPJH

It is 7th Period and I am sitting at a computer in the Media Center at CLPJH. This is the second to the last day of my observation here. Next week, we will be in Caliche Junior/Senior High School in Iliff, Colorado for our Rural Experience. That will last from next Monday morning until Friday evening. Then I will be back at CLP the Monday after for one last observation day. The Tuesday after, I start here at CLP fulltime until Christmas. The first period 7th Grade Computer I class will be mine, as it starts anew the same day I start. Mr. Jewett has already said that I will be in charge of that class from start to finish. This means I need to get everything in order, soon.

Today, most of our classes are working on typing on MicroType Pro. This is the "automated" typing program that the school uses to teach kids how to type. The lessons are pretty much self-directed, so all we do is encourage kids during this time.

Some of the classes have been giving their PowerPoint presentations last week and this. I saw 10-12 presentations in class today. Most were pretty decent presentations, although Junior High kids like to use fonts, colors and backgrounds that look "cool," but are impossible to read.

I need to spend time after school today working on some of our Project Promise presentations. They are starting to come due and I do not have nearly as much done on them as I need.

Argh.