Starting to Say "Goodbye."

Today was the last class period for all Odd Period classes for the semester. We will have the finals periods on Tuesday, but that's it. I have been telling each class "Goodbye."

I have been surprised by their reactions. Each class has let out a little gasp of "What!" Then, there generally follows "That's not fair!" or "Why won't you stay here?" I must have had 20 kids tell me that I need to come back here to teach next year.

I might, if I get the chance.

One kid said, "You can't leave, you are the only teacher in the school who doesn't hate me!"

I spent the last ten minutes of my Computer I class today having private "conferences" with each kid, telling them that I enjoyed working with them and giving them some sage advice. They are some great kids and I really like them. There are a couple that drive me nuts, because they won't stop moving, but on the whole, they have been a good group.

I saw Mr. Caddoo by himself in the teacher's lounge today and talked with him for a few minutes. I told him that I have really grown to love this school, the staff and especially the kids. I asked him to please keep me in mind if any positions open up for next year, as I would be happy to come here to teach.

I think that there might be a good chance that this happens. There are currently three first year teachers at the school teaching a hodge-podge of classes to fill in a full schedule. Ms. Francis teaches part time at CLP and part time at Wellington Jr. High School. She is a French teacher, but teaches one of the Computer I classes here. Ms. Kimball is a Social Studies teacher, but teaches a Computer class, as well as Discovery (Behavior Management classes) and some other stuff. Mr. Schauer is also a Social Studies teacher, but is currently teaching a class of Personal Economics and another in Leadership. If some of these teachers get jobs teaching their subject matter full time, that might mean there will be an opening for someone like me. I would strongly consider it. CLP is a really great school with an excellent staff that really cares about the kids.

Anyway, I am not feeling quite as bad about leaving the kids as I thought I might, although I will probably miss them a lot when the quarter is over.

A Tiny Thing That Happened Today...

E. is an 8th Grade girl in our 2nd Period Computer Graphics and Web Design class. She has a bit of an attitude. She gives Mr. Jewett grief frequently, which he accepts in good nature. She has occasionally been snotty to me and I sort of wrote it off.

She was in my 2nd Period class this morning, where I had all of the troubles with the Templates lecture. I wasn't thinking that the students in that class would have a really high opinion of my teaching skills after this morning.

E. had to come in to my 8th Period class to drop off something for another student. I was on the far side of the room. E. told one of the kids in the class as she was leaving, "You should listen to Mr. Burkhard, he is a really good teacher." She didn't know that I heard her.

Yeah!

That made a fairly lousy day much better.

I Bomb On Another Lesson...

It is now day two and a half of my unit with the 2nd Period Graphic Arts and Web Design Class. They are developing Art Museum websites. So far, their stuff has looked pretty good. Today, we moved on to the hard stuff.

Web developers use templates to create websites. A template is the backbone of the website and contains the parts of the webpage that will not change from page to page, such as the navigation menus, the web page banners, and so forth. When your website has a template, you can open the template and change one thing, add a new link, for instance, and all of your pages will automatically be updated. Without a template, one must open Page One, add the link, save the page, open Page Two, add the link, save the page, open Page Three, add the link, save the page, you get the idea.

Apparently, this is a tough concept for kids to grasp, though, as we really struggled to open the page that we had been making in class, save it as a template and then create new pages from the template. I had to describe the process about three different ways before the kids understood. Maybe it was me, maybe it was them, I am not sure.

Anyway, then we are creating all of our new pages, updating our links and putting content into the pages. Next class period, we are to be working on our "Art Galleries," also known as Web Albums.

A few kids start checking to see if their stuff is working right by previewing the pages on Internet Explorer. Links and pictures are broken all over the place. I look at a couple of kids' sites.

Oh.

Wow.

That stinks!

When Mr. Denise started this unit a month or so ago, one of the first things that he did was have the kids all define a new site. This tells the program that all of the stuff that we do on this website will come from the same place. The kids all have sites defined already, that is how they upload their webpages for grading when they complete a project. I seem to have overlooked the "create a new site" part of the unit plan. Oops.

What has happened is that the shiny new templates that the kids are creating are being saved in one part of their folders and the content pages appear to be saving in another part of their folders and half of their information is getting lost. I am hoping that I can figure out a way to fix this by Friday...

Part of the difficulty here is that Mr. Denise and Mr. Jewett both operate as teachers in "autopilot" mode. They have both been doing the same assignments and same units in Computer class for many years. They don't have lesson plans. They don't have project rubrics. While I did sit through Mr. Denise's presentation of the Art Museum project two months ago, I don't remember every little step in the process. Most of the time, I can improvise. If I leave out a little step, that's ok, as long as the kids are learning. However, it appears as if I left off a rather important small step in this lesson and things may be messed up for ever.

One thing that I have discovered about Junior High kids is that they generally do not have very good troubleshooting skills. If a problem arises with a computer program or project, they are much more likely to quit or start all over again than they are to try to fix what they have. This may mean trashing or starting the Museum project over again. We'll see.

Tuesday. 1, 3, 5.

On Tuesday, I have 1st Period, 3rd Period and 5th Period classes. It is an odd period day and I have 7th Period as a planning period, so I am done with classwork at about lunch time.

1st Period kids are working on either getting caught up in assignments or typing (they need to have 9 assignments completed by the end of the quarter) or they are working on a Microsoft PowerPoint commercial. This assignment came out of my "circle up" last week. The kids really seem to be enjoying it. It is a fun assignment and they get to look for pictures and music and sounds on the Internet. Even the kids that usually give me a hard time and disrupt class are all working hard and staying on task. Yeah!

3rd Period, the kids are completing their "Digital Me" projects. In "Digital Me," the kids put together a flash movie, complete with an introduction, links, scenes, graphics, etc. that outlines their life: their passion, their art, their pride, and so forth. The kids are doing some good work.

In 5th Period, the kids are either completing their Flash music video or are working on their "Spirit of Christmas at CLP" video. This is the one where all of the girls want to do stories about saving puppies and finding Santa Claus and the boys all want to do movies about "Ninja Santa" and "Gangstah Santa." For the most part, we have groups of kids scattered about the school filming stuff. Apparently, one group went running down the halls the afternoon on the far side of the building, disrupting classes and causing teachers to come running to Mr. Jewett and I to complain. We told them to behave and they got out of line. I wonder what the punishment will be???

Then, in my 7th Period, I spent time in Ms. Kimball's class, showing some of her kids how to do Flash games. Then, I graded late work until the bell.

Sometimes, I Just Don't Care About My Grades...

Monday.

My last real Monday as a student teacher at Cache La Poudre Junior High School. I will be here next week, but it will be finals. We will have finals next Monday and Tuesday and then I will be done.

Boy, that went fast!

It seems like just yesterday, I was sitting down in the media center on the first teacher orientation day hearing about Mr. Byrd's death. That was four months ago!

Anyway, on Mondays, we have each class. In some classes, we are typing, in some classes, we are trying to get caught up on stuff that should have been done long ago.

I continue to be surprised by the fact that there are lots and lots of students that don't really seem to care. They don't care if their assignments are turned in on time, they don't care if they have a decent grade, they don't care if they are learning at all. This is rather sad, in my opinion. There are a bunch of kids that don't have projects linked or completed or turned in and I will say to them: "Hey, get your project linked, so that I can grade it!" They rarely do. My guess is that next Monday, during finals week, I will probably have a ton of kids grabbing me in the lunch room, in the hall, etc., all telling me to recheck their stuff. Argh.