I Meet with PSD.

Today, after school, I had an interview scheduled with Ed Smith, the Personnel Director at Poudre School District. Apparently, PSD has decided to do "pre-service" interviews with each of their student teachers this year, so that when hiring time comes in the spring and summer, they are ready with background information.

I dressed up, like for any interview, in a suit and tie. All day my kids wanted to know why I was all dressed up. Even Mr. Williams, the principal of CLP, asked what I was doing in the suit. When I told him about my interview, he gave me some pointers on what to say and what to be ready for, that was nice.

I met with Ed for about an hour. He asked a bunch of questions that I suppose would be standard for such an occassion, "What do you want to teach and at what grade level?" "What is your teaching style?" "How do you handle discipline in your classroom?" Stuff like that. When asked about how I "differentiated" my instruction in the classroom, I told about my efforts with "H." who I have had changed to a Pass/Fail in my classes and who has been trying to work on individualized assignments. He seemed impressed. He tried to appear optimistic about my chances of finding work next year at Poudre School District. I feel pretty good about it. We'll see when the time comes.

Thursday. Graphic Arts Day.

The Period Three kids worked on Graphic Art stuff today. I did some demonstrations of some Graphic effects that I have picked up for cutting images out of backgrounds, changing image colors, etc. The kids spent the rest of the class working. It was almost dead silent, except for kids asking how to do stuff or exclaiming that their neighbor's work was cool.

They really seem to be getting into the project. Mr. Jewett says that I must have touched something inside them, as he has rarely seen them work so hard for so long.

Yeah!

Where Am I Going? How Am I Getting There?

I met with Terry for awhile yesterday afternoon. Terry is the Director of Project Promise. She indicates that I have been referred to Berthoud High School for my Spring placement. Berthoud is a little town south of Loveland, Colorado, about 25-30 miles south of Fort Collins. The teacher that would like me to work with him is a Project Promise alumnus. It sounds like he primarily teaches Computer, though, not business, and that there might be another student teacher there from another college working with their "Business Teacher."

I am happy that somebody would like to work with me, but I am a little distressed that I have been referred to a school where I will not likely be able to actually teach Business, my area of specialty. However, I am not surprised that this is messed up. Terry indicates that she called down to talk to the teacher yesterday and that he said he would like to have my packet sent down to him for review. All other Student Teacher candidates (except for Business) have had their packets sent out months ago. Mine has been sitting on a shelf, as Dr. Yohon has not sent it out anywhere. I will be lucky to get into any school at this point.

I have tried to do some online research about Berthoud High School and I can find nothing more than the one page cover sheet on the District Web Site. This is a little disappointing. It is hard to believe that in this day and age, a High School would not have an Internet presence.

I will be visiting the school for an interview shortly after Thanksgiving.

Because of the distance, I expressed great concern to Terry that I might not be able to afford gas for the drive. Shannon and I figured it out and gas there and back five times a week in the winter will likely cost 150.00 dollars per month or so. This is prohibitive. The truck pictured is not really mine, but it's close. It gets about 10 miles to the gallon. We used to have a deisel VW Beetle that got 55 miles to the gallon, but with me student teaching, we could no longer afford it and I have to drive my mother-in-law's old beat up pickup truck.

Terry has come up with what might be a great solution. Her Graduate Research Assistant will be leaving after this semester at CSU. She would like me to be her GRA. I would be working about 10 flexible hours per week or so. She would like me to rebuild the Project Promise Website, which currently sucks and is way out of date. As I have some skills in this area and I love Terry, I am excited for the opportunity. This is planning stages only, though, so I will let more out later.

Wednesday. The Second Graphic Arts Lecture

In 2nd Period today (Even Numbered Classes on Wednesday) I gave my Graphic Arts presentation to the other Graphic Arts and Web Design Class. It didn't go over nearly as well, I thought. The kids just weren't as interested in the subject as the day before. I don't know why.

One kid, C., came in with a really poor attitude. I think that he has been mad at me for a week or so. He sits near the front of the room with J. J. is very good at computers and can crank out any project pretty quickly, because he is extremely computer savvy. C. tries to "hang" with J. in his projects, but just can't. A week ago, the two of them were goofing around, looking at other kids websites and making fun of them. They were to be working on their "Digital Me" project, which is a flash movie about their life, their interests and their passions. J. had actually managed to complete his project. C. hadn't. I tried to redirect them from goofing around. I asked them if they were ready to have their projects graded. J. was. His was complete and linked. C. tried to keep up, saying in a smart tone that his was ready too, but it really wasn't.

I stopped everything and graded their projects. J.'s was done and pretty good, he got a 190 out of 200, a week before the assignment was due. C. didn't have his finished or even linked. He got a 0. This made him mad. I told him at the time that if he completed the assignment, I would regrade it with the rest of the class. He's been mad ever since.

I probably shouldn't have pulled such a maneuver, but they were mouthing off. J. had the product to be able to mouth off, C. didn't.

Anyway, C. was showing attitude during my lecture. He was being very vocal, saying, "This is stupid! I don't want to do this!" I stopped the lecture and told him that he didn't have to do it if he didn't want to. He continued to mouth up. Mr. Jewett, who was sitting in on the class, booted him out to ISS for being disruptive.

That kind of put a damper on the lecture.

We will see how the projects go. Some of the kids seemed excited about the work. Others didn't.

I am amused by how two classes reacted so differently to the same lecture.

A Meeting for M.

This morning, I attended a meeting for M., a student in my 1st Period Computer I class. Apparently, he is failing lots of his classes and has gotten into a bit of trouble recently. The meeting was with a number of his teachers, his guardians, the school psychologist, etc.

M. is a pretty quiet kid in my class. He usually wears a huge winter coat to the classroom. He then sits in his chair and sort of curls up in the coat. It is very easy to overlook him, as he tries to be invisible.

I try to interact with him, but have not really given him any extra attention. It looks like he might actually need the extra attention. He seems to be doing the "invisible thing" in a lot of his classes and has not been participating or turning in any work. Thus the Fs.

One story that I picked up at the meeting, though, when a history teacher was out a couple of weeks back, M. tortured the substitute. Somehow, he found the remote for the classroom TV and kept turning the TV on and off when the teacher wasn't looking. He got in trouble for that. Apparently, he also picked a number of fights in football this fall and got kicked off of the team.

M. is a rather small kid and history indicates that at his elementary school, he was picked on a lot by bigger kids. In addition, his mother does not seem to be part of the picture and he lives with his grandparents, along with lots of other grandkids in a small house.

Fortunately, the "team" decided not to give him an "Emotional Disability" label, even though the psychologist is pretty convinced that M. is depressed.

I agreed to meet with M. after school on Tuesdays to help him complete some of his Computer Assignments. I will be paying more attention to him in the future, even if he is trying to be invisible.

We Finally Start Our Graphics Project.

Third Period, Ali Shore, my teacher is here to observe me. I talked with her ahead of time in the hallway. I am preparing to do my Graphic Art introductory lecture. I was worried. I had a feeling that the kids wouldn't be willing to follow along and that everything would go straight downhill.

I started the class with a song. I had put together a PowerPoint presentation that started with the song "The Eye of the Hurricane," by David Wilcox. I have liked this song for a long time. It is pretty emotional, being about a young woman who hides from her lousy life by riding a rocket bike really fast, especially in the rain. One night, as she speeds along, a truck pulls out in front of her. She tries to swerve away, but hits the truck and dies. The song was written as an analogy for addiction and I think that it works very well. But I wasn't sure about the class.

They listened. They understood.

We talked about the song for about 20 minutes or so. We talked about the woman and her life. We talked about riding to forget. We talked about getting away and being depressed. We talked about dying.

Then we talked about painting a picture of the song.

What colors would the painting be? What elements would be included in the picture? What feelings would the painting show?

The kids did a wonderful job of analyzing the song. I was proud of them.

Then, I told them about our Graphics Project. They are to use our Graphics program, Fireworks, to illustrate a song, remake an album cover or a movie poster, or anything else that inspires them. When I told them that their completed projects would be used to make a new "Computer Graphic Art Gallery" in our Computer Lab, they were excited.

We then spent the rest of the class going over a gallery of Computer Graphic Art that I had assembled from the Internet. The kids were great, analyzing, critiquing, commenting. It went really well.

Tomorrow, I give the same lecture for the 2nd Period class. I will be interested to see how it goes in that class.

On Thursday, we start our project.

Yeah!

First Period Presentations and Graphics

Tuesday.

Odd Period Classes.

In my 1st Period class, we finally had the "Presentation" portion of the Computer Terminology PowerPoint presentation that we started quite awhile back. Out of a class of 15 kids, 9 had turned in their presentations. I had put together a little number board that had all of the kids slides and definitions, then we randomly choose numbers, the slide would come up and the kids would give their presentation. The class would then take notes on their "Notes" page.

It went pretty well. The kids came up with some good slides and seemed to know their terminology fairly well.

Then, we went over some of the information that Mr. Jewett expects the kids to know for their final in the class in 4 weeks. (Yes, there are only four weeks left in my Junior High Placement! :( ) We need to know about PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, Search Engines, the Internet, Computer Terminology, Fireworks and Web Design Software. Some of this we have done, but we need to get cracking on Fireworks and Web Design.

We started Fireworks during the second half of class. Most of the kids got the hang of things, doing a nice little graphic of their name and putting on some effects. Some kids got lost. It really seems like there are some 7th graders that struggle with directions.

H. had a hard time in class today, as it wasn't very structured. He was disruptive over and over again and I had to finally put him in a chair in the hallway so that I could teach the class. After about 5 minutes, he agreed to come back in a work. Next class period, he got kicked out of his English class and had to spend the rest of the day in the office and tomorrow in ISS. I don't know why he was having such a hard time today. He didn't know either, I asked him.

On Monday, We Had Lots of Fun... Sort Of.

It was Monday. The weekend had gone by without incident. I did very little school stuff over the weekend. I worked for a little while learning some new Graphic techniques in Fireworks, but otherwise, nothing.

I am liking this arrangement, where I don't have to work my butt off all weekend for school. It is nice.

Anyway, as I said, it is Monday. 45 minutes per class. You really can't get much done at all in that timeframe. Yuck.

For the most part, the introductory classes worked on Typing today. Other classes worked on getting stuff cleaned up, finishing off old assignments, relinking pages, cleaning up their sites, etc.

I tried to get the 8th Period class to insert "buttons" into their Flash movies today. They have been working on Flash introductions for their website. This means that the websites for the kids will have neat little movies at the start. Kind of fun, but the movies need little buttons in them so that the teacher can get into the websites without having to watch movies over and over and over again.

The button procedure takes about 7 steps, logically completed one after another. Yeah, silly me, trying to complete 7 logical steps with a roomful of 7th Graders. It didn't work very well. A couple of kids got through the procedure, most of the them couldn't. They just have a really hard time following instructions. Even when I walk them through one step at a time, it doesn't work very well.

I will try again on Wednesday.

Tomorrow, I start doing Graphic Art stuff with a bunch of the classes.