College Life
Hyper-quest in the making
Jul 22nd
Since my last post I have had some time to sit down and put some leg work into my Webquest (err, hyper-quest). First off I decided to use HyperStudio because I am so finicky about using fun fonts and graphics that were just not available through Questgarden. Though I have no doubt I will be happy with the result in the end, at this point I am having teensy regrets simply because its much more time consuming building each page with links from scratch. I also do not have some of the templates provided through Questgarden like the evaluation rubric. Luckily with so many sample projects being provided it should be fairly simple to create these missing elements on my own with a little extra time.
I am however excited to be exploring the Hyperstudio software itself. I feel like using it is such a positive experience and is already bringing about such a strong desire to use it with my future students. It is user friendly and very versatile. I also appreciated that when I hit a small stumbling block, Karen (my instructor) was available to help me resolve the issue quickly. At this point I still have many of my pages to assemble but feel as if I am more than 1/2 way done and especially glad to have the preliminary planning of it all out of the way.
WebQuest
Jul 20th
My current project for reflection is a webquest. For those of you reading who are not in my Instructional Applications & Software class, a webquest is an awesome tool for students (created by teachers) to lead them around the web to learn about specific content standards in a fun manner. Sort of like a choose your own adventure book only on the web.
For my project I am drawn to create a space expedition. I want to create something like a kid friendly Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where the students have to decide literally what it would take to travel to different planets in our galaxy. Specifically survival tools like oxygen, water, protection from the sun, etc. The students will be supplied with links to sites which discuss what each planet’s environment is like, telling them essentially what would happen if we landed on the planet without certain essentials.
5th and 6th grade Earth Science standards will be specifically addressed in the completion of this project. The final assignment which will asses the students mastery will be a suitcase filled with the most essential elements needed to make a stop on five of our nine planets. Part of the project will force the students to think closely upon the simple yet complex elements that allow for life on Earth. I’ll post a link here in case anyone wants to see it when its completed.
Tomorrow is the day…
Jan 28th
How many of us I wonder end up in the career we dreamed about as children? I know for me when I was 8 years old and in third grade I was new to the area and didn’t have a friend in the world. My teacher was Mrs. Allen. She was super friendly, and even let me stay in during recess to help grade papers. Yes this sounds a bit corny, but eventually the one friend I made turned out to be the type that only came to school once very other week, so I counted on something to occupy my time. Eventually Mrs. Allen ended up moving to Arizona, but she left such a powerful impression on me that from that day forward I wanted to teach. Once I reached high school I started to think of different professions, and even considered being a CPA, but was again inspired by two incredible teachers in my senior year. I now had an example who made me want to be important in the life of a child, and two others who had gained my respect in making me think on a deeper level. This was when it was certain that I was going to teach one day.
I finished high school with a high GPA, started community college and then oops, found out I was pregnant. I was probably the last person anyone would have ever thought would be entering into single parent hood as I was super responsible and “going places”, but plans were made to be broken, right? I spent the next 4 years raising the sweetest little boy on a waitresses income, and periodically continued going to go to school to get my degree, but sometimes a second job would get in the way and school would get to be too much of a challenge so I would decide to stick with waiting tables.
Just before I met my husband in 2002, I had started going to school full time again and finally pushed through my AA and started my BA. I gotta say I hit many bumps in the road, including a hectic mommy schedule with two additional pregnancies and added family members, as well as frustrations with myself for waiting so long to finish. Plus each time I would run into someone who I had told I was going to be a teacher it would remind and embarrass me that I still wasn’t doing it.
Now, the point of this long winded post is that tomorrow is a super big day for me. I am going to be walking on to my first campus as a teacher. Ok, well actually substitute teacher for now, but still a huge milestone for me. What seemed like an impossible goal for awhile there is now actually happening. I will be finished with my BA in just 5 months and I can not believe I have made it here. I am super nervous and am not sure I will be able to sleep too well tonight, but I can say without a doubt that I am glad I didn’t give up when the tough got going. Wish me luck that I don’t fall flat on my face on day 1.
California State Bill 777
Jan 23rd
I often mention my overwhelming load of homework, but rarely discuss the nature of it. Well today is different because my homework involves a subject that I feel needs to be publicized as much as possible. California State Bill 777. If you have heard little or nothing about this bill let me bring you up to par. Mind you, this is a bill which has already been passed without going to a public vote. As a parent and future educator I find it both frustrating and ridiculous. What SB 777 has done is changed the definition of “gender” in California education code. Where it used to read that your gender was “the biological condition or quality of being a male or female human being”, it no longer does. Now your gender is what you “perceive” yourself to be. Educators are not allowed to challenge a student who may be born male who now feels he is a female (or vice versa). Nor are they allowed to disclose the child’s chosen gender to the parents.
Big deal right? What this means is that males who perceive themselves as females (and vice versa) if not allowed to use the facilities of their choice are now being discriminated against. That if they want to go into a restroom of the opposite sex they must be allowed. That anything that was previously male or female only, is now open to the opposite sex if they perceive them self as that gender. Before you think this is extreme and will never happen, LA Unified has already put it in to place where students of the opposite sex must be allowed into the locker room of their choice as a result of this bill.
What you may find if you start reading up on this is that the advocates of the bill are claiming that SB 777 is necessary to remove discrimination and hate crimes against trans gender and homosexual students. Except this was already very clearly specified in Ed. Code 200, 220, and others if you read them. They state, in many terms, that it is unacceptable to discriminate against students for any of the above reasons and more. So the advocates of SB 777 decided rather than spending their time, energy, and state tax dollars to enforce the laws that we already have in place, they would instead put their energy into re writing the law so as there would be no misunderstanding that “gender” is NOT how you are born.
Before anyone misunderstands my position and thinks that I do not support the rights of these innocent children, or that I would condone hate crimes on a trans gender individual, that is not the case. However our children were already protected under the existing laws which apparently have not been actively enforced every where. What this bill seems uninterested in taking into account however are the rest of the children who are now being put into uncomfortable and unsafe environments. When educators are being told that they are no longer allowed to stop a male student from entering into a female restroom, other students security is being put at risk. There is a lot more to this bill if you are interested in reading up on it hopefully with enough attention to the matter it will be forced to be brought back to a vote or appealed. As parents and citizens we should at least have that right.
Just wasting time
Jan 8th
Is there a rule that says whenever you have loads of stuff to do you should instead waste your time away on something else? I ask because my week is jam packed with an enormous “to do” list, yet here I sit, not doing any of it. Here is a glimpse at my week.
- Gather all necessary documents to apply for a substitute position (done)
- Get finger printed for above stated job
- Fill out and address birthday invitations for 3rd birthday party coming up
- Get homework done for class one (due Wednesday)
- Finish homework and study for final exam for class two (due Thursday)
- Get to the store for diapers as the littlest Riley has only 1 left
- Make dinner multiple times this week since I have yet to do any mass cooking for the freezer this month
- etc. etc. etc
Now that you have seen my rather boring list of things to do, I would like to share what I did instead this morning with toys piling up around me and Blues Clues chiming in the back ground.
Yep, I decided I would try to make my own flowers for my first decorated cake. Mind you the party isn’t for nearly two weeks yet, but I couldn’t shake the notion of conquering the darned flowers. Surely I had a back up plan to run to a bakery and buy a sheet of flowers if this flopped, but I am very excited to say that I successfully made two flowers on my first try and am fairly certain I will get them the way I want them on the day of the event.
Thursday Thirteen: Becoming a teacher
Aug 30th
For anyone out there that thinks that teachers are overpaid and that “those who can’t, teach”, here is my list of thirteen hoops I have to jump through (or already have) just in the pursuit to become a teacher.
1. Get an AA taking ugly general education courses as electives rather than fun foo foo classes.
2. Major in Human Development rather than anything thing else more interesting because it contains most of your pre-rec’s for the credential program.
3. Take the CBEST ($41 pass or fail).
4. Spend many late night crumpling papers and throwing them as far as they will land wishing the school would burn down or you would win a billion dollars and get to drop out.
5. Add additional classes to your already full schedule to finish within your cramped time frame, because believe it or not, you can not get a BA in two years unless you are overloaded.
6. Expend massive energy preparing for a three part state exam (aka CSET) that you can’t teach without, then take the CSET (at $74 per part, pass or fail).
7. Once you are in your credential program, you now get to go to school full time, AND go to work every day as an unpaid student teacher.
8. Finally finished with your AA, BA, and Credential you can start interviewing.
9. In the process of finally getting hired, you will need to go get fingerprinted and have your entire background checked (hopefully while you were completing the first three lengthy steps you stayed out of trouble).
10. Get a job and start paying back years worth of debt accrued in student loans for the exciting $38k per year you will now be earning.
11. Sign up to teach summer school as well, because you need to pay off a couple of extra bills that your deficit pay check didn’t cover.
12. Listen to a bunch of idiots tell you for the rest of your career just how lucky you are to have the whole summer off.
13. Sigh in relief that college life is now over, but take a deep breath for the new world of politics and administration that has now alienated your life.
Links to other Thursday Thirteens!
1. Damozel
2. Jessica the Rock Chick
3. Jennifer
4. Damien
5. (leave your link in comments, I?ll add you here!)
The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It?s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
Who would've thought?
Aug 9th
After nearly 12 years attending college, I can sometimes turn bitter in my endless pursuit to finish. So as much as I try to keep my college bashing to a minimum in front of my children (lest I discourage them from enrolling) sometimes I slip and utter phrases like “this stinks”, or something equally low about the ridiculousness of a given assignment. In fact the closer the deadline of a major assignment, the nastier the comments get.
Today however I received an email from a girl I met last week. In it she thanked me for giving her a ?motivational push? to fulfill her dream of finishing college and re-enrolling in her Bachelors program. Ironically this email came as I was cramming to complete the final two major assignments for my last night of class. My first reaction to the email was shock and excitement that someone was encouraged to further their education from something I said. Almost instantly though my thoughts jumped to the moments in the last few years where I have been either ranting or in tears, while forcing myself to keep working on my schooling, and the realization hit me that my name will be what follows the bleep in this girls new misery. Who would?ve thought that one brief encounter could turn me into a motivator and Satan all at once?