1st week student teaching

Well the first week is done and I survived! Anyway there was not much to write about on a day to day basis so I thought that I would just write about the week in general. One thing I do like about CCMS is that they are very rule orientated and they stick with them. I like this because you know what is expected of you, what you need to do in a situation, and also that you are going to be supported just as long as you are following the guidelines set up. The principle at CCMS is Stacy Smith this is his first year in this role, he had been the V.P. until Rocky Miner went to the high school. My co-op teacher Jennifer O'Gorman is in her 12th year of teaching, but I am her first student teacher she has worked with. She is really wonderful to work with. She has shown me books, and websites, and many other things to get ideas from for teaching lessons. One lesson she did was called "We didn't start the fire" the song by Billy Joel, and we are in the process of discussing this song and how it relates to history, the present, and possibly the future.
Jennifer has a focus group first, then followed by 4 periods of 8th grade social studies, and then prep, and last period is call menotoring/buddy reading. And eventually we will go to the grade school and read to 2 of the first grade classes there.
One thing to note, on the very first day of school that all of the kids were there, one was taken away in handcuffs for assulting a teacher. Scary deal.

After 3 periods of the same thing over and over I decided to take a break on thursday and I kinda did sit in on another teachers class informally (I wanted to know what they were doing to make all of the noises they were making) it was nice to get another perspective on the first week activities of getting to know one another. Mr. Waite played a game of moving the desks to the outside of the room in a big circle then one had to be in the middle and asked if you knew your neighbors names, (not sure what happened if you didn't I am thinking that they had to go to the middle then) if everyone knew the names then you had to ask a generic quesiton and then everyone who said yes to this question had to move to a different seat. It was fun to watch them.

I am looking forward to the upcoming year and working with Jennifer, I think I am going to learn a lot from here and the other teachers at the middle school. This about sums up my week.

New Happenings 8-19-09

Lets see, I found out who my cooperating teacher is and that instead of being placed at the high school I will be at the middle school. My 1st co-op teacher is Jennifer O'Gorman, who is someone I am proud to say is a friend. I look at this as a blessing and as a detriment. It is a blessing, because I am going into a class with someone I am familiar with. It is a detriment because sometimes it is hard to take negative feedback from a friend, yet at times it is easier, so I guess I am torn.

They changed the start date of the school here from the 31 to the 8th of September, so a bit later then originally planned. They also have changed the school year from a tri-mester setting to semesters. I think this was a very good plan. I was talking with my son and a couple of his friends about it and they were torn. Ethan didn't like it, but his friends did. I told them that I think once everything is worked out that they will like it better because the classes will be shorter and they won't burn out as quickly in the class as they did in the longer classes. They are also worried about the budget cuts and not having electives. I know the art teacher left the high school, but I don't know anyone else in the electives category. Ethan and his friends are at the high school.

I think that is about all of the new updates I have for the moment. Oh was assigned my universtiy supervisor so I will be calling him today sometime.

Changes to calendar for school year

I went onto the schools website today and wow have they made changes. First the school is now going to start September 8th instead of in August. The other major change is that they are going back to semesters instead of trimesters. I think this is a really good change myself. I was never wild about the trimester scenerio, but it was not my call. I understood why they changed said it was to help the kids be better prepaired for college, bit I don't think it was good for the kids as the classes were to long especially for the younger ones.

Blog with picture

Well here we go. I am so computer illiterate that I have no idea if I will be doing this correctly. I start all of these wonderful things, but have no idea how to use them, My Space, Facebook, I started this blog when I was at OSU. Thank goodness Sharon is going to show us how. Hey it worked! Yeah

New to EOU

Hello! Well this is the first time I have blogged since 2007. As you can tell by this I don't do this very often. Kinda like my Facebook account. I started it when it first started and never used it so guess that is where I am at with this as well.

Question

Many of the traits that will be needed is the ability to communicate with everyone. How not to show bias. Possible even foreign languages. It will be important to know and stay as close to causght up on the computer world. College can better prepare us, by giving out the information that it is logical for us to think will be happening in the future, yet to stick witht he basics. Without the basics nothing is possible. It won't matter if we have the mos high teck gadget inthe world if we do not have the basic knowledge on how to work it. It is scary to think that in just a few years that a computer will be able to out think the human brain. Where does this leave the human race? Will we be like the movies and the robot will take over?