Monday, February 19, 2007

Fun Tarot Quiz

This was a fun Tarot quiz that my friend Suna had on her blog.

The Sun - Interesting. I am happy right now. Things have gone right since last summer, and I do feel like I have managed to overcome so very many obstacles in my life this year!

Strength - it's about inner strength. I have felt like I had to depend on my inner strength this year, for sure. It's paid off, with an opportunity for education that I made happen through sheer determination. And good grades, again through sheer will power.

High Priestess - knowledge. Good card for someone back in graduate school.

Empress - all about gestation. Good card for someone in apprentice teaching this semester!

Justice - regaining equilibrium. Yes, this is a good reminder for me that I need to find my equilibrium, not only for the semester, but in my new chosen career, and in my life. For a year, I have chosen to hibernate while I study, not work on my social or emotional life other than with my children. That will need to change soon.

Death - I hope this is my indication that I will rise again like a phoenix from the ashes. From change comes something better is what this card tells me.

Fool - my second chance? And maybe a warning to be careful.

Emperor - be bold. hmmm. A chance to practice more of my idea of what makes a good teacher?

Tower - rude awakening. Am I the rude awakening, or am I to receive a rude awakening?

I also thought it was interesting that my scores for Devil and Lovers was so low. No time in my life for impulse or falling in love. That would be true, in my mind, right now.

I have some things to think about ...

You scored as XIX: The Sun. This is the happiest card in the deck. It is full of joy and optimism, everything is right with the world. We are as innocent children playing in the fields without care. The Sun brings success, well-being and happiness in all spheres - material, emotional, spiritual -wherever our desires lay.When this card appears in a Tarot spread it indicates success, joy and happiness. Obstacles will be overcome, goals achieved.When badly aspected, it can indicate a stagnation through over-indulgence, too much of a good thing.

XIX: The Sun


88%

VIII - Strength


88%

II - The High Priestess


81%

III - The Empress


81%

XI: Justice


75%

XIII: Death


75%

0 - The Fool


63%

IV - The Emperor


63%

XVI: The Tower


63%

I - Magician


50%

X - Wheel of Fortune


44%

XV: The Devil


13%

VI: The Lovers


0%

Which Major Arcana Tarot Card Are You?
created with QuizFarm.com

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Time Flies When You Are Having Fun!

Well, so much for my resolve to post every day of student teaching. I made two weeks, then skipped two weeks! How did that happen?
We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am loving the work. I am hating the amount of work! No, scratch that. I am actually loving the amount of work; it's fun, I lose myself in it. And that's the problem, I haven't learned balance yet. I have to figure out how to write a lesson plan and get the work done for a lesson without it taking six hours for a 45 minute lesson. I need to learn how to do this fast, because I'm sinking in a mass of out-of-control paperwork, on top of the dust bunnies floating around the house.

This week I started to get a handle on the paperwork. I have half built a binder to organize all the lesson plans I'm writing. Now all I have to do is get the backlog all hole-punched and organized in the binder. I have another folder with pockets to hold the week's worth of lessons, to carry back and forth every day. I'm carrying my data key back and forth regularly now, and only once this week forgot to copy the files I need onto the key, mostly because it was my fifth night in a row up past midnight (and a 5:30 am waking time) and the old brain wasn't working so well any more.

Yesterday I had my second observation. It was another good evaluation. I'm grateful for that, but not really surprised. I've been working with children for many years now, and I know I'm decent at the job. I'm putting in time at school so that everyone else can recognize my gifts with an official piece of paper. And learning a LOT in the process, not to belittle my education. The education has been incredible, and I'm loving that part of it.

I asked my field supervisor to pay special attention to my questioning technique yesterday. The lesson was a normal lesson from the text book. We were finishing up the last text book lesson on Greece (not finishing the unit, we have two more weeks to go, with lessons that I have already created or will finish creating this weekend.) Part of why I want to be a teacher, and part of why I chose Social Studies for my middle school specialization, is because I have always loved history and social studies. That's why I had enough credits, because I took history courses as electives, along with sociology, psychology, and a host of other social studies courses beyond the required economics courses for my business degree.

So now that I am teaching Social Studies this year, I'm improving my ability to get children to think all those higher level thinking skills. And I want to be the best I can be. To me, that's the highest purpose to being a teacher - to get children to think, to encourage them to question authority. And I want honest feedback on how I can be better than I already am.

The feedback I did receive was on how to improve the look of my lesson plan. That will help me while I'm searching for a job. I'm disappointed at how little feedback I got for concrete suggestions on how to improve my ability to hold a group discussion. I got one suggestion to change the seating around. That would help, it's true, but my cooperating teacher has to agree to that. And she's not sure there is enough space in the class to do that.

I got one very specific suggestion to tie the wonders of the ancient world into modern wonders, which I applied to the last lesson. That was a good reminder, to always be thinking of how to tie history to present day. Even though most of my lesson was aimed at how relevant history is to us today, it didn't hurt to have that reminder.

Well, maybe there's just not much feedback to give for a lesson that is a typical lesson for a public school classroom. I'm wondering, when I'm actually in a classroom, if I will use shared reading like my cooperating teacher does, or if I'll try a different technique to help the children get through the book. Shared reading really helps in many ways. It improves literacy, gives children practice in reading together. It helps the less able readers to hear someone else reading aloud to them while they follow along. I even think it builds confidence, to hear others struggling with difficult foreign words just like them.

The chapters or units are short, four to five 45 minute lessons, unless I spend too much time on discussion. And the teacher takes the children well beyond what the book teaches. She's very creative, gives them lots of different ways to learn the same information. I like that, and happily join her in thinking of new creative ways to remember history. And yet I feel like I need to take it one step further. I'm struggling with how to bring history alive for those students in the same way it is for me.

I am grateful that I am not hampered by NCLB requirements that stifle children and teachers alike. I can concentrate on bringing history alive, and if I improve reading and writing and evaluation skills at the same time, all the better for my students. What I really want to do is create students who are alive and thinking. And that means going the extra mile for them.

So I'm back to the question of the week, or maybe semester, for me. How do I put enough into a lesson, and still keep my family and life intact and not kill myself with overwork?
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.
~ Galileo Galilei

Friday, February 02, 2007

Day 9 - Plays and Persuasion

Today, the fifth grade had fun producing short little plays about groups of people who had to decide whether to be Patriots or Loyalists at the start of the Revolutionary War. It was interesting watching the light bulbs go off. Or not, in some cases.

They enjoyed making up the skits, I only provided them with a short vignette, and they wrote their own lines and acted them out for the rest of the class. I also asked them to answer questions as their characters. That was especially important for the groups who didn't bother to use the facts provided to justify their decisions.

The students took home an assignment, due Monday, to write a letter home (as in England) about their decision to be a Loyalist or Patriot. I gave them a grading rubric for persuasive essays. I can't wait to see what kind of job they do.

Today I picked up kalamata olives for the sixth grade on Monday. They're starting a unit on Ancient Greece, and I'm teaching the first day. I thought it would be fun to hook them in by offering a taste of a food that Greeks are famous for - olives. Kalamata olives are pretty skunky. I wonder how many of them will be brave enough to try the olive, let alone eat one?

On Thursday, I have my first observation. I'll be teaching the fifth grade, and will do a lesson on George Washington's amazing spy ring. I'm looking up ideas for writing in code ...

I'm enjoying bring ing history alive for the students!