Sometimes, when I think of all the things going on, and the little time I have to write them down to look back on later, I get all bummed out. When I look through my blog from a couple years ago, I LOVE being able to see in such detail what life was like then. It's so hard to find time to blog now, but it's still so important to me to keep track of these things. So two years from now and I can look back and remember all the stuff happening. Especially since this is our first year of marriage- I definitely want to remember this year.
In light of this, I'm going to start trying something new. I'm going to try to get on here for at least five minutes a day, just to give a run down of anything cool that happened, thoughts I had, whatever. It won't be pretty. It might not even be coherent. But at least it'll be there.
So today:
We took our kids on a field trip today to the Chula Vista Nature Center. Pretty cool place. The most exciting thing for almost all of us was seeing a bald eagle up close and personal. Those guys are huge. They also like to stare you down. I kept thinking of that bit Jeff Dunham (he's they comedian with the puppets, right?) does where one of his puppets says, "I keeeeeeeel you!" (Now that I think about it, isn't that bit a little racist? Oh well.) Anyway, the bald eagle was totally looking at us like, "I keeeeeeel you!" The kids also got to touch sting rays (after being assured the stingers were gone), and those rays seriously liked to splash some water all over us. Especially me, and my camera, and the kids laughed everytime a stingray passed me and purposely splashed the water on me.
We had a fast lunch back at school, while most of our kids went out together to walk to McDonald's. I scarfed down my cheeseburger so I could use my lunch time to finish grading my geometry class' homework. Bad news: most of them totally bombed the homework. I lamented to the others about the trials of kids coming in late, missing class all together, rushing through homework, blah, blah, blah. The kids at our school are just so ridiculously unmotivated, and it makes me want to lower my expectations of them just so they can at least sort of reach them. Luckily, I found this article today on a blog I read, and it helped remind me that the kids are perfectly capable of doing the things I want them to do. Whether they're being lazy or whatever is there problem, but I can't keep enabling their non-productivity.
That said, today's lessons seemed to go well. My Geometry kids were working on area and perimeter. I don't want them to know that area = length times width. I want them to know what area means, that their are squares invovled, and why you multiply length times width. The why was a big struggle for them, and I'm not sure how I could have made it any easier. I mean, I punched out 1 inch squares last night for them to use as models... I think they get the area-means-count-up-the-squares concept, but not why you can simply count the squares up and the squares across to figure it out. Big sigh. The Algebra kids were a bit better. We were learning adding and subtracting real numbers today, and I showed them exactly how negative numbers factor in to that. They seemed to get it after I drew a huge number line on the board.
When I got home from work, I immediately set to planning my lessons for tomorrow- my student teaching advisor comes to observe Geometry tomorrow, so I needed a stellar lesson. Chris went out on a man date with Ryan right after work... it's midnight, and he's just now getting home. Crazy college (kind of) kids.
Okay, husband's home. Finally. Time to go to bed and start it all over again tomorrow.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Math Lessons
Thank goodness for random Friday holidays. (Okay, so I hear it's someone's birthday weekend, but it's not like anyone knows who, right? So. Random Friday holiday.)
Crazy events transpired this week: I started student teaching.
Let me backtrack to explain my student teaching, in contrast to almost everyone else's student teaching. If you're almost everyone else, when you go in for student teaching, you basically have to quit any day job you have to be assigned to any classroom in San Diego. You then work there for free, while gaining hands-on teaching experience. In the beginning, you have a master teacher who actually owns the class, who you watch for awhile, and slowly begin teaching lessons for as the months go by.
I was lucky enough to not have to quit my job, because my advisor already knew the charter school I work for, and it's nontraditional setup, and was completely okay from the start with letting me do my student teaching there. Excellent! Didn't have to quit my job, just had to work extra hours in the afternoon.
So we set up "classes" for me to teach. Normally, the school is 100% independent study. The kids go through one or two classes at a time, in the pace of about a month each (theoretically), and everyone's on different classes, and at different parts of the classes at any one time. When I tutor in math, I've usually got a variety of kids from Algebra, Geometry, and my fave student who just so happens to be the only student at our site who's in Intermediate Algebra. Some are in the beginning of these classes, some in the middle, some are reteaching lesson six ten times. The point is, they are never all on the same schedule. Until now.
Two classes. One room the size of our dining room. 30 students who don't want to be there. (We're working on that.)
The first few days weren't bad, to be fair. Geometry so far, which consists of the students I'm most familiar with, since most of them are mine and Michelle's students, is by far the more interesting and interactive. The younger kids in Algebra are quiet... which is good... but it's also bad. I had to start them a day late though, and then we had to cancel their second class, due to last minute interview scheduling from our higher-ups (more on that later).
What I've learned so far:
It's going to be a lot harder than I thought to get them in their seats each day. Our students are already notorious for missing their scheduled days, leaving early, and not showing up for weeks on end. Sheesh.
It's really hard to gage how everyone is understanding. I look around the room and see one of four faces: 1) Nodding and clearly understanding, 2) Pretending to understand, 3) Looking confused, and 4)... well, I can't see 4's face, because he's trying to fall asleep on the desk. Punk. The problem is, they mix and match these faces, so sometimes 3 is the one who's actually getting it, and 1 just thinks they get it and then checks out.
Teaching is draining. When the Algebra kids scamper out at 4:15, all I can think is McDonald's 99cent coke, and nap. One of the teachers pointed out the problem is that you are performing for hours on end. Ri-diculous. You're trying to stay energized, you're trying to energize them, you're trying to keep them from talking to each other, you're trying to stay positive when you call on a kid and they totally bomb the question, you're trying to figure out a way to get kid 4 to get his face off the desk and participate. It's tiring.
Positively, I think the kids are starting to dig the class. One of my more sullen students seemed to perk up around day two and has been the one volunteering to come to the board to solve problems. The one student I thought I'd have the biggest problem with (she's pretty mouthy, and made it very known she did not want to be in the class) has actually been one of the best to have in the class, because she's one of the few confident enough to spout out answers, even if they're wrong. And one of my quietest kids has been doing great on her homework and has been giving answers out loud (albeit quietly so only I can hear) in class.
It's a lot of hard work. I want so badly for all the kids to succeed, and although it's only been a week so far, I might have to realize the hard fact that not all of my kids are going to try. And I really can't do much past them not trying for themselves. It bums me out, though.
In other news! The higher ups found money in the budget to hire on five CAs to full time positions. Those of us nominated from our sites went in for interviews on Thursday afternoon (which is why I had to cancel the Algebra class that day). I'm a bit concerned that the powers that be will look over me since they're already getting me and my extra 15 hours for free from student teaching, but I'm also the only one who interviewed from one of the largest sites in the South County, finishing up my math credential, and expressing interest in working at the school as a teacher, so I'm hoping those facts will overpower the desire to save some bucks.
Crazy events transpired this week: I started student teaching.
Let me backtrack to explain my student teaching, in contrast to almost everyone else's student teaching. If you're almost everyone else, when you go in for student teaching, you basically have to quit any day job you have to be assigned to any classroom in San Diego. You then work there for free, while gaining hands-on teaching experience. In the beginning, you have a master teacher who actually owns the class, who you watch for awhile, and slowly begin teaching lessons for as the months go by.
I was lucky enough to not have to quit my job, because my advisor already knew the charter school I work for, and it's nontraditional setup, and was completely okay from the start with letting me do my student teaching there. Excellent! Didn't have to quit my job, just had to work extra hours in the afternoon.
So we set up "classes" for me to teach. Normally, the school is 100% independent study. The kids go through one or two classes at a time, in the pace of about a month each (theoretically), and everyone's on different classes, and at different parts of the classes at any one time. When I tutor in math, I've usually got a variety of kids from Algebra, Geometry, and my fave student who just so happens to be the only student at our site who's in Intermediate Algebra. Some are in the beginning of these classes, some in the middle, some are reteaching lesson six ten times. The point is, they are never all on the same schedule. Until now.
Two classes. One room the size of our dining room. 30 students who don't want to be there. (We're working on that.)
The first few days weren't bad, to be fair. Geometry so far, which consists of the students I'm most familiar with, since most of them are mine and Michelle's students, is by far the more interesting and interactive. The younger kids in Algebra are quiet... which is good... but it's also bad. I had to start them a day late though, and then we had to cancel their second class, due to last minute interview scheduling from our higher-ups (more on that later).
What I've learned so far:
It's going to be a lot harder than I thought to get them in their seats each day. Our students are already notorious for missing their scheduled days, leaving early, and not showing up for weeks on end. Sheesh.
It's really hard to gage how everyone is understanding. I look around the room and see one of four faces: 1) Nodding and clearly understanding, 2) Pretending to understand, 3) Looking confused, and 4)... well, I can't see 4's face, because he's trying to fall asleep on the desk. Punk. The problem is, they mix and match these faces, so sometimes 3 is the one who's actually getting it, and 1 just thinks they get it and then checks out.
Teaching is draining. When the Algebra kids scamper out at 4:15, all I can think is McDonald's 99cent coke, and nap. One of the teachers pointed out the problem is that you are performing for hours on end. Ri-diculous. You're trying to stay energized, you're trying to energize them, you're trying to keep them from talking to each other, you're trying to stay positive when you call on a kid and they totally bomb the question, you're trying to figure out a way to get kid 4 to get his face off the desk and participate. It's tiring.
Positively, I think the kids are starting to dig the class. One of my more sullen students seemed to perk up around day two and has been the one volunteering to come to the board to solve problems. The one student I thought I'd have the biggest problem with (she's pretty mouthy, and made it very known she did not want to be in the class) has actually been one of the best to have in the class, because she's one of the few confident enough to spout out answers, even if they're wrong. And one of my quietest kids has been doing great on her homework and has been giving answers out loud (albeit quietly so only I can hear) in class.
It's a lot of hard work. I want so badly for all the kids to succeed, and although it's only been a week so far, I might have to realize the hard fact that not all of my kids are going to try. And I really can't do much past them not trying for themselves. It bums me out, though.
In other news! The higher ups found money in the budget to hire on five CAs to full time positions. Those of us nominated from our sites went in for interviews on Thursday afternoon (which is why I had to cancel the Algebra class that day). I'm a bit concerned that the powers that be will look over me since they're already getting me and my extra 15 hours for free from student teaching, but I'm also the only one who interviewed from one of the largest sites in the South County, finishing up my math credential, and expressing interest in working at the school as a teacher, so I'm hoping those facts will overpower the desire to save some bucks.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Yipes!
I am literally about to start teaching my first math class. Like, in 15 minutes. Wish me good luck, and that the kids don't try to mutiny! (That's really my biggest concern.)
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
New Year.
Chris and I started out the new year doing a newborn photo shoot for one of his best friends (yes, one of the infamous Ch(K)rises) and his wife, and his wife's sister and husband, who had their baby on the same day. Yes, these cousins were born on the exact same day, isn't that wild? I can't post many, because Chris will be mad that he didn't get to post them first (you know it's a little true, babe!), but here are just a microscopic sampling of my favorites! I'm thrilled we got so many good ones, considering a certain newborn was SO NOT in the mood for pictures on that day. But in between the shrieking and sleeping and feeding, we managed to have a pretty awesome day of photography. :)
Monday, January 31, 2011
sick day.
Today I'm taking a sick day. The last two days have consisted of the most miserable cold I've ever had. I'm just thankful the cold waited it out until the weekend to really get me.
And all last week I thought, "Hmmmm... this cold ain't that bad. Maybe my body's just doing a really great job of keeping the symptoms at bay."
And the whole time my cold was thinking, "Ha. This is just the pre-cold, sucker. You just wait till Friday night."
I barely slept on Friday night, since I could barely breathe from my mouth (dry scratchy throat) or nose (stuffed up). Woke up at 6am on Saturday morning, lay in bed for an hour being very sad that I wasn't sleeping in, took a really long shower, and went to lay down on the couch and watch Netflix. I wanted to let Chris enjoy his Saturday morning sleep-in, even if I couldn't enjoy mine.
While I slept on the couch later that day, Chris took to the stores to get me all sorts of drugs to try out. He even called Sarah (who used to work in a pharmacy) to get her input, and when he came home he had throat spray, drugs to help my headache, sore throat, and congestion, loads of soup, Sprite, and the cookies I'd requested. :) He immediately got to making me a hot bowl of soup, before going on to clean and organize the house.
LOVE that guy.
I felt and looked gross all weekend. I kind of wanted to hide from Chris every time he came into the room. Don't look at me! I wanted to yell. I'm so ugly and gross right now! And he'd just laugh and say whatever... though he did have me switch from using toilet paper for blowing my nose to some moisturized Kleenex he happened to have in his car... because he did notice that I was beginning to look like the ring leader of a very well-known pack of flying deer.
On that note, I've blown my nose so many times these last two days, that it is raw. When I took a shower last night, my face burned when I went to wash it. Ow.
Okay, enough about being sick. I'm starting to feel a lot better today, so I'm ready to put this thing behind me. Today I'm focusing on getting some stuff done.
On the agenda today:
Clean up the office.
Prepare our bills for a discussion with Chris tonight.
Pick up stuff around the house, since Beth is coming over later to cut Chris' hair.
Cook some chicken so I can eat up the leftover rice from last week, and have something more substantial for lunch than soup.
Work on my lesson plans some more.
Go through my computer files and do a backup.
I plan to do a lot of the paper and research stuff from bed, while I watch season one of How I Met Your Mother. (Yes, we now have a TV in our room- it's just like our days at the old condo, when we had roommates and never left our room! Except... now we do leave our room. So really the only thing that's the same is that we can watch DVDs from bed again...)
I've already been slightly productive today; after Chris left for work, I turned on my laptop, caught up on some blogs, and got super excited by Ali Edwards' recent post on digital scrapbooking. So I made up a page during the first few episodes of HIMYM:
I'd been playing with making my own paper and elements a while back, and this patterned paper and the butterflies were some of the more recent creations. I wanted to finally start working on some wedding pages, and I just started with one of the first images we got from our photographers, the dress shot. Looking forward to having time to keep working on this project (and the bazillion others I want to do). :)
And all last week I thought, "Hmmmm... this cold ain't that bad. Maybe my body's just doing a really great job of keeping the symptoms at bay."
And the whole time my cold was thinking, "Ha. This is just the pre-cold, sucker. You just wait till Friday night."
I barely slept on Friday night, since I could barely breathe from my mouth (dry scratchy throat) or nose (stuffed up). Woke up at 6am on Saturday morning, lay in bed for an hour being very sad that I wasn't sleeping in, took a really long shower, and went to lay down on the couch and watch Netflix. I wanted to let Chris enjoy his Saturday morning sleep-in, even if I couldn't enjoy mine.
While I slept on the couch later that day, Chris took to the stores to get me all sorts of drugs to try out. He even called Sarah (who used to work in a pharmacy) to get her input, and when he came home he had throat spray, drugs to help my headache, sore throat, and congestion, loads of soup, Sprite, and the cookies I'd requested. :) He immediately got to making me a hot bowl of soup, before going on to clean and organize the house.
LOVE that guy.
I felt and looked gross all weekend. I kind of wanted to hide from Chris every time he came into the room. Don't look at me! I wanted to yell. I'm so ugly and gross right now! And he'd just laugh and say whatever... though he did have me switch from using toilet paper for blowing my nose to some moisturized Kleenex he happened to have in his car... because he did notice that I was beginning to look like the ring leader of a very well-known pack of flying deer.
On that note, I've blown my nose so many times these last two days, that it is raw. When I took a shower last night, my face burned when I went to wash it. Ow.
Okay, enough about being sick. I'm starting to feel a lot better today, so I'm ready to put this thing behind me. Today I'm focusing on getting some stuff done.
On the agenda today:
Clean up the office.
Prepare our bills for a discussion with Chris tonight.
Pick up stuff around the house, since Beth is coming over later to cut Chris' hair.
Cook some chicken so I can eat up the leftover rice from last week, and have something more substantial for lunch than soup.
Work on my lesson plans some more.
Go through my computer files and do a backup.
I plan to do a lot of the paper and research stuff from bed, while I watch season one of How I Met Your Mother. (Yes, we now have a TV in our room- it's just like our days at the old condo, when we had roommates and never left our room! Except... now we do leave our room. So really the only thing that's the same is that we can watch DVDs from bed again...)
I've already been slightly productive today; after Chris left for work, I turned on my laptop, caught up on some blogs, and got super excited by Ali Edwards' recent post on digital scrapbooking. So I made up a page during the first few episodes of HIMYM:
I'd been playing with making my own paper and elements a while back, and this patterned paper and the butterflies were some of the more recent creations. I wanted to finally start working on some wedding pages, and I just started with one of the first images we got from our photographers, the dress shot. Looking forward to having time to keep working on this project (and the bazillion others I want to do). :)
Saturday, January 29, 2011
life
So I pretty much couldn't sleep all last night due to lack of breathing from being sick. Yeah. My big plans for the Saturday following my last week of two crazy classes were changed from sleeping in as late as I possibly can to finally giving up around 6am to take a very hot, very long shower and take my pillow and blanket to the couch so I don't infect my sleeping in husband, who is able to breathe just fine.
So now I have a dilemma. Do I:
a) Check up on our accounting and update our ledgers, start relinking all our bill payments to our new joint checking account, etc.
b) Figure out why my doctor when I was on Blue Cross thinks it's okay to charge me for an office visit from April of last year, because Blue Cross told them I terminated my coverage... in May. I don't see the reasoning here, either.
c) Start writing up about our wedding and honeymoon (I know, finally, right?)
d) Watch season six of the Office, the latter half of which I've never seen (because let's face it, the Office started taking a dive in season five, and became unworthy of a weekly spot on TV Thursday).
Hmmmmm... I need option e): Convince my husband to go get me some soup and orange juice. And some cold soda for my sore throat. So I can breathe again.
Husband....
So now I have a dilemma. Do I:
a) Check up on our accounting and update our ledgers, start relinking all our bill payments to our new joint checking account, etc.
b) Figure out why my doctor when I was on Blue Cross thinks it's okay to charge me for an office visit from April of last year, because Blue Cross told them I terminated my coverage... in May. I don't see the reasoning here, either.
c) Start writing up about our wedding and honeymoon (I know, finally, right?)
d) Watch season six of the Office, the latter half of which I've never seen (because let's face it, the Office started taking a dive in season five, and became unworthy of a weekly spot on TV Thursday).
Hmmmmm... I need option e): Convince my husband to go get me some soup and orange juice. And some cold soda for my sore throat. So I can breathe again.
Husband....
Thursday, January 27, 2011
The Haps
It's Thursday, ya'll! Only two more days of my dual classes and then I'm free! (Kind of.)
We have a photography name picked out... details to come soon!
I am sick. Dislike button. And you know what? It's not fun sharing a bed with someone when you're sick. Said someone will demand that you face the wall and not breathe your gross germs all over him.
Said someone's been working from home a lot. Difficult time for him at work- too many projects, not enough Chrises!
I'm about to begin lesson planning for an entire two classes! Excited and nervous about these classes every other second! I also need to figure out how to fit 15 kids into a spare classroom that is the size of our guest bedroom....
I really want to cook something. Sadly, I made too much of other somethings last weekend, and we've had leftovers up to wazoo all week. Dislike button again. I want something new!
My new somethings, when I'm allowed to cook them, are Chinese fried rice and orange chicken. Excited to see what that stuff tastes like homemade and, you know, not from the Lucky Chinese place.
And that's the haps.
We have a photography name picked out... details to come soon!
I am sick. Dislike button. And you know what? It's not fun sharing a bed with someone when you're sick. Said someone will demand that you face the wall and not breathe your gross germs all over him.
Said someone's been working from home a lot. Difficult time for him at work- too many projects, not enough Chrises!
I'm about to begin lesson planning for an entire two classes! Excited and nervous about these classes every other second! I also need to figure out how to fit 15 kids into a spare classroom that is the size of our guest bedroom....
I really want to cook something. Sadly, I made too much of other somethings last weekend, and we've had leftovers up to wazoo all week. Dislike button again. I want something new!
My new somethings, when I'm allowed to cook them, are Chinese fried rice and orange chicken. Excited to see what that stuff tastes like homemade and, you know, not from the Lucky Chinese place.
And that's the haps.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)