Well, after a lengthy drive home with a few very relaxing stops, I made it home on Sunday evening around 9pm. I only drove the 2 hours to Chicago (which, thanks to Friday afternoon rush hour traffic in Chicago actually took 4 hours). That night, I had planned to spend the evening at a comedy club (The Second City) with a buddy and his girlfriend. One of the freshmen from my dorm last year randomly texted my buddy and said he was going to be in Chicago as well, so we added him to our party. The Second City is absolutely hilarious, and has produced some of the best (and most-well-known) comedians of the past decades. Adam Sandler, Dan Akeroyd, among others. Saturday I got up and left around 8:45 and made it to Memphis at about 6:45. I was held up in traffic in a few places. However, I didn't mind the traffic on Saturday because each of the road construction zones had signs plastered around informing the drivers that the construction was made possible by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. In Memphis, I stayed with one of my good friend's parents. My friend wasn't around because he's actually started his job in the Twin Cities. It was a great stay regardless. I felt that it was my patriotic duty to wait in that traffic and support all those jobs that have been "saved and/or created." I ended up leaving Memphis around 9am and getting to Castroville, as I said above, at 9pm.
My plan was to unpack from the summer/school year, repack for Mobile, and get quite a bit of a head start planning all my classes (with broad outlines). However, as Mama, Dad, and the stuff piled up on the staircase can attest, I am still stuck on Phase 1. Last night we did get to go babysit my twin cousins who are two years old. Friday we head out for our annual family get-together at the coast near Corpus Christi. I missed last year's, so I'm definitely looking forward to getting down there.
I'll come back Sunday, pick up one of my ACE friends at the airport (she'll be teaching in San Antonio), and then my family's heading to Houston for the Astros' game on the 4th. We'll spend the night in Houston, and then on the 5th I will head out for Mobile and my family will head back home. I will get to Mobile that evening, start with meetings on the morning of the 6th, and then the first day of class is the 17th.
No other big news to speak of. I promise to keep this thing going. I know I slacked off at the end of the summer. I'm sure I'll be re-energized by funny/sad/stressful stories about my school and community!!!
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Saturday, July 18, 2009
It's been a while...
Sorry for the long lag in posts. It has definitely not symbolized a lack of anything going on!
The weekend after the 4th of July, I flew to Lake Tahoe for a Clary family celebration of Gran's 80th birthday. I had a great time seeing a lot of family that I hadn't seen in a long time, but the weekend was a bit less exciting than you might expect since I spent an entire day doing homework!! The week of July 6th I had a unit plan due. I worked pretty far ahead on it, but did not realize how much work it was going to end up taking. I worked on the four-hour flight (first flight I've ever not slept on) and then until 5 in the morning on Thursday night when I got to Tahoe. I woke up Friday and spent from 9am until 4pm finishing it up. It's OK, though. I got a very good grade on the unit.
This week I had two projects. The first was to make a course calendar. That assignment basically involved dividing the school year into units for my world history class. I had to have unit goals and calendar dates for each unit. The other project was to turn in five unit cover pages. A unit cover page basically has the unit title, a unit goal, a unit assessment, and then lesson plan objectives and assessments for each of the lessons that will fall under that unit. I had a few other small reflections due Friday also.
You'd think that with the final weekend of my first summer of ACE here, I'd be living it up big, right? Not really...after averaging about 4 hours of sleep per night last week, I slept for 14 hours last night. It was pretty awesome. I've been playing a newly-learned card game all day today, and am planning to go out to a party that the first year teachers are throwing for the second year teachers tonight. The party should be a lot of fun.
This week will have three days of class, some meetings Thursday, a send-off ("Missioning") Mass on Friday morning, and that's it! I'm hoping to get a lot of packing finished tomorrow so that I can leave shortly after mass on Friday. I'll be in Chicago Friday night, Memphis Saturday night, either Dallas or home Sunday night, and definitely home by Monday. I can't believe the summer is so close to over!!
The weekend after the 4th of July, I flew to Lake Tahoe for a Clary family celebration of Gran's 80th birthday. I had a great time seeing a lot of family that I hadn't seen in a long time, but the weekend was a bit less exciting than you might expect since I spent an entire day doing homework!! The week of July 6th I had a unit plan due. I worked pretty far ahead on it, but did not realize how much work it was going to end up taking. I worked on the four-hour flight (first flight I've ever not slept on) and then until 5 in the morning on Thursday night when I got to Tahoe. I woke up Friday and spent from 9am until 4pm finishing it up. It's OK, though. I got a very good grade on the unit.
This week I had two projects. The first was to make a course calendar. That assignment basically involved dividing the school year into units for my world history class. I had to have unit goals and calendar dates for each unit. The other project was to turn in five unit cover pages. A unit cover page basically has the unit title, a unit goal, a unit assessment, and then lesson plan objectives and assessments for each of the lessons that will fall under that unit. I had a few other small reflections due Friday also.
You'd think that with the final weekend of my first summer of ACE here, I'd be living it up big, right? Not really...after averaging about 4 hours of sleep per night last week, I slept for 14 hours last night. It was pretty awesome. I've been playing a newly-learned card game all day today, and am planning to go out to a party that the first year teachers are throwing for the second year teachers tonight. The party should be a lot of fun.
This week will have three days of class, some meetings Thursday, a send-off ("Missioning") Mass on Friday morning, and that's it! I'm hoping to get a lot of packing finished tomorrow so that I can leave shortly after mass on Friday. I'll be in Chicago Friday night, Memphis Saturday night, either Dallas or home Sunday night, and definitely home by Monday. I can't believe the summer is so close to over!!
Monday, July 6, 2009
4th of July Weekend
I hope everyone had a great 4th of July weekend. I went to Practicum on Thursday morning, even though I didn't have to. My students were none too pleased about that. They are scared of me and think I'm mean (apparently). After the lesson, I spent about 10 minutes changing and heading out of Notre Dame. I grabbed Taco Bell for lunch right before I got to the toll road, and made it over to Pontiac, IL (where my Assistant Rector from the past three years lives) by 3:30. We headed up to Wisconsin by 5, and arrived at Lake Kegonsa that evening. We were up early on Friday and teed off on an absolutely gorgeous golf course at 7:50am. Although Bobby's fiancee out-drove me consistently, it was a great time.
When we got back to the lake house, I went out and tubed for a while. Today is the first day that I haven't had soreness in pretty much every muscle connected to my shoulders. It was a great time, though - I love being on the water. Saturday morning we headed back to Pontiac. It was rainy that day, so we just stayed in and napped. I got some emailing finished just before the wall of sleep hit me. For not being a very good napper, I took an impressive 2-hour power nap. It was enough to see me through dinner, doing some more work up at Bobby's office, roasting marshmallows and making S'Mores, and watching a movie (Taken). Taken was a great movie. It was pretty mindless, and I actually couldn't stay awake for the first 15-20 minutes, but once he started killing everything in his path, it became much easier to stay awake.
I got back to ND Sunday afternoon at around 6, and hit the ground running with a lesson plan for my Teaching Religion in Catholic Schools class. I had to microteach that lesson on Monday, but I will save that story for my next post.
Hope your 4th of July was very enjoyable! I can't believe I have less than three weeks left of classes!!! That's a scary thought.
When we got back to the lake house, I went out and tubed for a while. Today is the first day that I haven't had soreness in pretty much every muscle connected to my shoulders. It was a great time, though - I love being on the water. Saturday morning we headed back to Pontiac. It was rainy that day, so we just stayed in and napped. I got some emailing finished just before the wall of sleep hit me. For not being a very good napper, I took an impressive 2-hour power nap. It was enough to see me through dinner, doing some more work up at Bobby's office, roasting marshmallows and making S'Mores, and watching a movie (Taken). Taken was a great movie. It was pretty mindless, and I actually couldn't stay awake for the first 15-20 minutes, but once he started killing everything in his path, it became much easier to stay awake.
I got back to ND Sunday afternoon at around 6, and hit the ground running with a lesson plan for my Teaching Religion in Catholic Schools class. I had to microteach that lesson on Monday, but I will save that story for my next post.
Hope your 4th of July was very enjoyable! I can't believe I have less than three weeks left of classes!!! That's a scary thought.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Happy 4th of July!!!
Well, the day after I videoed myself, my class continued to work on the roll call vote sheets for percentages. They started asking questions about some social studies topics that were tangentially related (at best) to their packet of votes, so we got off of math pretty quickly. They kept asking questions, I kept answering them, and pretty soon class was over. I think we spent a grand total of 20 minutes (out of 85 total) doing math.
Two particularly funny exchanges happened in the midst of this social studies discussion. The votes were broken down by Democrats and Republicans. Someone raised his hand and asked what the difference between a Democrat and Republican is. I was just about to answer when one of my students raised her hand and said "Oooh! I know this!" She pretty much never has that reaction in class - never - so I thought it would be a great time to let her answer since she seemed so confident. Her answer to the question runs something along the lines of: "Well, I'm really Republican. And, the reason why, is because, um, well, all Democrats like abortions and gay marriage. Although I suppressed my initial reaction to completely dissolve into laughter, I was able to keep a straight face and say that her answer was AWESOME for two reasons: 1. It illustrated that the difference between the parties lies in their differing opinions about how public policy should be formed, and 2. It illustrated the danger of making sweeping generalizations. We then had about a 15 minute talk about stereotypes and the mistake of applying general statements of fact to specific cases.
The other question I wanted to share required even more delicate talking and quicker thinking. We were talking about impeachment (specifically that Supreme Court Justices can be impeached) when one of my students interrupted me to yell that Bill Clinton had been impeached. I explained that yes, this is a good example of impeachment not being followed with removal from office. A few minutes into my answer to the next question, a saw another hand and called on him. This question, which I completely should have anticipated, was "Why was Bill Clinton impeached?" Well, I didn't really want to get too graphic, and I didn't even think to explain perjury (not that I wanted to do that either), so I settled on asking if you were supposed to have boyfriends and girlfriends if you're married. I explained that Clinton did, and that made a lot of people very angry. Finally, I pointed out that this is a good part of the impeachment process because even though enough people were mad enough to impeach, he was not removed because after some time and examination of evidence, it turned out that he didn't actually break any laws - even though what he did was bad.
On Thursday, I microtaught. Microteaching is what we call it when we teach in front of our ACE classmates. It was in my social studies class; we taught 20 minutes of the lesson plan we turned in last week. I got very good marks on that lesson plan, but it still required some adjustment, so I fixed it up Tuesday night. We usually split high school and middle school teachers into two different classrooms so that we do not have to have every person go one at a time. Unfortunately, there is one more middle school social studies teacher than high school social studies teacher. I was dumb enough to volunteer to be the one teacher that everyone watched. I also went last.
So, I was teaching in front of 20 first and second year teachers during the last 30 minutes of class before a four-day weekend. My mentor teacher said afterwards that I had to "deal with the business end of everyone wanting to get the heck out of class for a long weekend." I actually didn't feel that they had been too terrible, and I felt that the lesson went very well. I got a few pieces of criticism back, but it was very helpful. The upcoming week is going to involve planning multiple Practicum classes (all of the remaining 10 days' worth, to be exact) and planning a unit for my world history class next year (it's due Friday for a class). I think I'm going to try to do a unit on ancient Greece. It should be good and interesting since I had an entire semester-long class on that topic last semester.
Sorry this has dragged on for a bit. I will post again soon to update on my weekend.
Two particularly funny exchanges happened in the midst of this social studies discussion. The votes were broken down by Democrats and Republicans. Someone raised his hand and asked what the difference between a Democrat and Republican is. I was just about to answer when one of my students raised her hand and said "Oooh! I know this!" She pretty much never has that reaction in class - never - so I thought it would be a great time to let her answer since she seemed so confident. Her answer to the question runs something along the lines of: "Well, I'm really Republican. And, the reason why, is because, um, well, all Democrats like abortions and gay marriage. Although I suppressed my initial reaction to completely dissolve into laughter, I was able to keep a straight face and say that her answer was AWESOME for two reasons: 1. It illustrated that the difference between the parties lies in their differing opinions about how public policy should be formed, and 2. It illustrated the danger of making sweeping generalizations. We then had about a 15 minute talk about stereotypes and the mistake of applying general statements of fact to specific cases.
The other question I wanted to share required even more delicate talking and quicker thinking. We were talking about impeachment (specifically that Supreme Court Justices can be impeached) when one of my students interrupted me to yell that Bill Clinton had been impeached. I explained that yes, this is a good example of impeachment not being followed with removal from office. A few minutes into my answer to the next question, a saw another hand and called on him. This question, which I completely should have anticipated, was "Why was Bill Clinton impeached?" Well, I didn't really want to get too graphic, and I didn't even think to explain perjury (not that I wanted to do that either), so I settled on asking if you were supposed to have boyfriends and girlfriends if you're married. I explained that Clinton did, and that made a lot of people very angry. Finally, I pointed out that this is a good part of the impeachment process because even though enough people were mad enough to impeach, he was not removed because after some time and examination of evidence, it turned out that he didn't actually break any laws - even though what he did was bad.
On Thursday, I microtaught. Microteaching is what we call it when we teach in front of our ACE classmates. It was in my social studies class; we taught 20 minutes of the lesson plan we turned in last week. I got very good marks on that lesson plan, but it still required some adjustment, so I fixed it up Tuesday night. We usually split high school and middle school teachers into two different classrooms so that we do not have to have every person go one at a time. Unfortunately, there is one more middle school social studies teacher than high school social studies teacher. I was dumb enough to volunteer to be the one teacher that everyone watched. I also went last.
So, I was teaching in front of 20 first and second year teachers during the last 30 minutes of class before a four-day weekend. My mentor teacher said afterwards that I had to "deal with the business end of everyone wanting to get the heck out of class for a long weekend." I actually didn't feel that they had been too terrible, and I felt that the lesson went very well. I got a few pieces of criticism back, but it was very helpful. The upcoming week is going to involve planning multiple Practicum classes (all of the remaining 10 days' worth, to be exact) and planning a unit for my world history class next year (it's due Friday for a class). I think I'm going to try to do a unit on ancient Greece. It should be good and interesting since I had an entire semester-long class on that topic last semester.
Sorry this has dragged on for a bit. I will post again soon to update on my weekend.
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