Looooong Week

Wow, this week has been incredibly long. I am so excited about tomorrow being Friday!! We're going on a field trip and I get to wear JEANS! We're going to Meany Hall (on U Dub's campus) to see Les Ballet Africains. Then on Monday we are going to the Burke Museum (also on U Dub's campus)to visit their NW Coastal Native American exhibit and do a craft. My kids are especially excited about the Burke, since it goes with our StoryPath unit on the NW Coastal Native Americans.

Last night at SPU we had an Education Recruiting Fair and many western WA school districts were there. I'm particularly interested in the Issaquah school district and they have many openings for elem teachers (80+ right now!), since their district keeps growing every year. They're even building a brand new elem school that needs to be staffed this fall. I also looked at a private school in Issaquah called Snoqualime Springs School. I gave them my resume last night and I received an email from this afternoon saying they are very impressed with my qualifications and highly encourage me to apply for a kindergarten position. I'm floored. They had my resume for less than 24 hours and they already emailed me. Whoa. It also boosts my confidence - someone is interested in me!!! Now I just need to start a placement file so I can actually apply...

My Day

My mentor teacher has been sick for the past two days, so I've taken over the class and have been subbing for her. WOW. I wasn't entirely prepared for it, and I am really glad that she'll be back tomorrow.

Eli punched Rory in the nose and willingly admitted to it.

Sierra whined ALL DAY LONG.

A simple language arts lesson - create a class taxonomy for the NW Coast Rainforest and write a sense poem - took an hour and half longer than it should have.

I have sent at least one kid home sick every day for the past week.

Some days I wonder if this is what I really want to do with my life...

StoryPath

Just a quick post to say that I am incredibly excited to teach our upcoming social studies unit! I get to teach an entire StoryPath unit, which I am geeked about. We're doing the unit on the Pacific Northwest Native Americans. Yay!! We start setting the stage for the unit tomorrow and my students will have all of Thursday afternoon to make their huge frieze. If you have no idea of what I'm talking about, I'll post more later :)
Gotta go work on some more geometry lessons...

A Few of My Favorite Pictures...

Tid Bits

I feel like I have lots of random stuff to post about. Let's see, where to begin...

My second graders crack me up!! They just say and do the funniest things ever. Here a few examples:

While teaching another lesson on telling time, one student asked why a person would want to be early for anything. Another student answered, saying that it's a good idea to get to the movie theater early because you won't want to miss the start of the movie. Then Max answered, "But there are previews, so you wouldn't miss the beginning of the movie if you were a little bit late!" Zach raised his hand and advised everyone to get to the movie theater early - esp if you're seeing the premier of a movie - so that you will be sure to get tickets. I readily agreed, thinking that our conversation had convinced my students that being early - at least at the movies - is a good thing. Then Simon raised his hand. "Ms. V! You don't have to be early - you can just use Fandango to get tickets!"

Ms. Niemann and I use headset microphones while teaching because one of our students is hearing impaired and has (most of the time) hearing aids. The mics sometimes give feedback, which we're pretty used to. However, during science last week, the feedback was really loud and caused us all to jump a little, and caused Siobhan to yell, "Oh no! They're coming to invade us!" I couldn't contain my laughter and told Siobhan that she makes me laugh :)

Last week one of my students decided that it would be a fantastic idea to kick his shoe onto the roof of the school. Yeah, he got into some trouble and the custodian who had to go get his shoe was pretty mad, but I still chuckled a little. Kids just crack me up.

I received a HUGE compliment from my univesity coordinator last week. She observed me teach another math lesson on telling time. It was the wrap-up lesson of the unit, so I didn't actually introduce any new concepts surrounding telling time in the lesson. I did, however, do a mini lesson on Big Ben, the most famous clock in the world. I showed my students a Power Point with pictures of Big Ben, including a picture of the face of Big Ben with a 5'4" person superimposed onto it, so they could see just how huge this clock is. And it also happens that Ms. Niemann is 5'4", so I told them to pretend that the person was her - their reactions were classic. Next, I asked them to estimate how long the minute hand and the hour hand of Big Ben are. Once they all estimated, I called on two students to unroll a 14ft piece of adding machine tape, which is the length of Big Ben's minute hand. I didn't tell my students how long it was; rather, I allowed them to walk up and down alongside it, run their hands along it, try to measure with their hands, and whatever else they could think of to comprehend how long it was. I did the same with the 9-foot hour hand. They all re-estimated the length of the hands, and I revealed the lengths of the hands. During my meeting with my coordinator, Sue, she told me that I used some very constructivist approaches/methods to my students' learning when I had them unroll the adding machine tape and allowed them to initiate their own learning. I was thrillied! Constructivism rocks :)

Seattle has been cool but clear and sunny these past few days, which is a wonderful reprieve from the freezing rain/slush we had last week. I'm praying for outdoor recess this week!

Back to working on unit plans and stuff to hand in....

On my soapbox

So, there are about a handful of things that I have very strong beliefs/opinions/convictions about:

1. I don't believe in prescribed gender roles and yes, I am a post-modern feminist.
2. I believe with all my heart that grace knows no gender and that women are as fully capable, gifted, and Spirit-filled as men to serve in any church ministry, including ordained ministry.
3. Having met Christ while in public school, I am a firm believer in having Christians in public schools.
4. As an educator, I take a constructivist approach to learning and teaching, as opposed to direct instruction.
5. For many, many reasons, I am pro-choice.

And tonight I would like to jump onto soapbox #4:

I can't stand direct instruction, and honestly, I am trying to figure out why it is still being used in so many schools today, namely Christian schools.

My Elem Math Methods professor assigned us some articles to read that covered direct instruction vs. a constructivist approach to teaching and learning. They both covered a lot of research, which was good, but I will spare you all from that right now. We did, however, discuss the A Beka program at great length. (for those of you who don't know, the A Beka program is a Christian curriculum that is used in many conservative Christian schools and it can also be used for homeschooling.) And basically, this program is entirely direct instruction. Direct instruction = all of the teacher's lesson plans are completely pre-planned out, and in many cases, even scripted out. Direct instruction also involves many worksheet-oriented lessons - for instance, my friend Candice is interning at a Christian school where they use A Beka, so for science, the students read the text and complete a worksheet. That's it - no hands-on learning, no inquiry-based approach to teaching science, no doing science, just reading about science. And the same for math. And language arts.

The A Beka program - and so many others like it - does not call students to higher levels of thinking (hello, Bloom's Taxonomy!). Math is not problem based and centered around problem-solving. Science is not inquiry-based, with students actually doing and experiencing science. Research has shown over and over again that students learn by doing, so why aren't more educators teaching by having their students doing? Science should include student-lead investigations that allow students to use hands-on approaches to learn from experiences and make connections to the real world.

I could also go on and on regarding what I believe surrounding having an entirely "Christian curriculum", but I'll stop for the night.

I have lesson plans to write...

Relieved and Ecstatic

I'm in between classes right now, but just a quick post to share some great news. I just went to my Elem Math Methods prof's office to pick up my 30 pg unit plan matrix, and written on the top in red are the words "Absolutely Incredible!"

eeee! I'm geeked and can't get this huge grin off my face :)