Sep 23, 2016
Monday, September 26th
Just a friendly reminder that Monday, September 26 is a Pro-D day. There is no school. See you on Tuesday.
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Monday, September 26th
Just a friendly reminder that Monday, September 26 is a Pro-D day. There is no school. See you on Tuesday.
I don't think parents understand that Pro-D days are not for chores.. They're for giVING ME A FUCKING BREAK CUZ SCHOOL IS STRESSING ME OUT I'M SORRY BUT COME ON
One stereotype about small towns that has proved to be true so far is the sense of a tight knit community, where everyone knows everything about everyone else. And that means that everyone, even people I haven't met, know me as “Ms. Mahar, the new high school teacher with the great shoes.” To be honest, I kinda love that this is how people know me so far because I do have some pretty awesome shoes! That being said, the feeling that everyone knows me can be a bit intimidating. Gone are the days of running to the grocery store in my sweats with no make up on to buy nothing but junk food. Every time I leave the house I have to think about what impression I might be making. On the other hand, that sense of closeness has led to an incredible amount of support from the community. Before I'd even moved to Houston I had people emailing me with offers for housing, to show me around, to have me over for dinner. Once here, that level of support only doubled. When I needed to find furniture I sent out an email to the school staff and within 45 minutes I had three responses. In less than a week I had my new place fully furnished without having to pay a dime. My furniture is an eclectic mix of pieces from a few people's houses, and the auto shop at school, but its functional and actually kind of cute.
This week was a short three day school week because of the Family Day holiday and a pro-d day at the end of the week. The shortened week two weeks into the job was a wonderful thing. Having to move so quickly to Houston, I didn’t get much long term planning done and every day it felt like I was just getting enough done to make it through the next day. The long weekend and short week gave me the time to really flush out my semester and plan several weeks worth of lessons and resources. By the end of the week I was feeling so much less stressed and ready to start giving up my prep block to TOC occasionally.
My classes are really starting to come along. Surprisingly I love teaching Science. At times I still feel completely out of my league, but luckily the students aren’t prone to asking many questions I don’t know the answers to. I am still finding my rhythm and finding it unusual to be in a non-discussion based class, but the 80 minute class usually flies by. In the first week of classes I led a “lab” where the students made ice cream, which earned me huge brownie points with my kids and made most of the other students in the school jealous that I am not teaching them Science. This week the kids did their first real lab, where they extracted DNA from strawberries. I spent most of the class saying “Don’t ask me what the procedure is, read your lab notes!” and “Don’t pour the extra ethanol back into the bottle, its contaminated now!” and “Pour carefully!” while repressing the instinct to say “Wow! This is so cool, who knew strawberry DNA looked like that” because I should at least pretend I know what I’m doing in times like these. It was a little bit stressful, but overall really fun and interesting. I think my students may be a bit disappointed that we won't have a lab this coming week.
Communications is always challenging, especially since it’s a split class and I am constantly bouncing back and forth between the grades. This week I finally found a way to help my students stay on track while working at different speeds, which made me feel a little more calm. The grade 11 students, who are focusing on reading skills this semester, tend to be good at motivating themselves and when I assign them a task they work on it with little intervention from me. I think the problems they face are skill based and/or confidence based. The grade 12 students on the other hand, who are focusing on writing skills and provincial exam prep, seem to have the basic skills, they just lack all motivation and are easily distracted. A simple writing prompt can take then 30 minutes because they can’t or wont stay focused long enough to complete it. This week I discovered that they are very consequence based learners, so hopefully I will be able to find some strategies to keep them more on track as we progress in the course.
On Friday I had my first taste of Pro-D as a teacher. The whole day was really relaxed and started with a homestyle breakfast at the Pleasant Valley Restaurant. The day was basically centred around choosing two school goals for next year and coming up with concrete plans for how to implement them and what pro-d to do in the spring to help us facilitate them. The two goals ended up being to improve collaboration and implement more cross-curricular units and to improve community involvement. It was exciting to be a part of the discussion and know that even if I'm not teaching in Houston next year I will still have an impact on the school.
Completed Zend PHP Training
Well, finally I've completed the Zend PHP course, and I'm itching to try out my newly acquired knowledge. Because the course was so short, I didn't get to learn all that I set out to and we didn't have time to do actual coding during classes either. It was just all cramping of information which is unfortunate but what that's how it goes with 2-week long course.
Anyway, one of the products my company sell offers templates for some basic programs like record listing, work with records or summary reports. I figure I'd try to convert those to object-oriented base template. Who knows, if work like it enough, they might even get included in the next product release, hehe.
PRO-D DAY, FRIDAY DECEMBER 9th :) Don't come to school, or else you've officially become a big nooooob.
What is at the heart of all good thinking?
As busy as the start of the school year is, it was great to have a pro-d weekend, Thinking and Learning in Today’s Classrooms, with Michael Pohl. To answer the above question, our group decided it included being inquisitive, imaginative, creative, and reflective. Though still a lot more unpacking of what was covered this past weekend is required, here are a few highlights for me:
Thinking, feeling and learning are interlocked.
Abandonment leads to innovation. In order for us to move forward, we must be willing to leave something behind.
To build a strong culture of thinking in our classroom and school, we need to establish and use the language of thinking, plan with a thinking focus, and utilise graphic organisers (of which there are structured ones: concept maps and non-structured: mind maps)
We have to be able to analyze in order to evaluate in order to create.
Implementation requires desirability, manageability and achievability.
Changing Education Paradigms, Sir Ken Robinson--seen this a few times and still loving it as it is great drawing and great content.
Random input in brainstorming (to inspire in the making of art)--keen to try this out in class.