Where we're from

Hummus
Victoria's pink power suit
Shelley's faces during MB squared time
Kathleen's slide during "Where the west wind blows"
The butt dance
Crista the social director
Bill playing guitar
Chuing-Chen's ribbon dance
music video
very important chicken
savage inequalities
inspirational teachers
ice breakers
Puppet shows
Apple core-- baltimore
Little sally walker
Scrounging for parking money
Beans and rice
Pinata that wouldn't break
karaoke singing
Scamming the parking system- getting caught
BBQ at Lindsey's
Looking for sexism in "Alexander and the Horrible..."
Nutria
Alan changing my flat tire
Alan (Bobcat) the proctor
The Zoo (the bats!)
Traffic on 26
Yoga stories
Chiung-Chen's ballet
Kip
Alyssa's drum performance
Linda Kidd telling Lindsey she's not ready for grad school
Walking in place
Spirit fingers
Rachel letting people touch her
Elmo's
Lunch at Rachel's house
Liz
Playing with blocks in math class
Deep, meaningful academic conversations
Belonging and connecting
Sticking up for each other
Lots of food
A unified front
Music
Sharing passion for teaching
Unmatched friendships
The orphan cohort
Triads
Yellow roses
Passing the pinch

needing to vent

Okay, so it has been a long, long time since this blog has been updated. But my other blog is down, and we haven't had time to meet in triads much this semester, and we are all beginning to feel overwhelmed by the impending deadlines, and i just need to get it out! It seems like everything needs to be done in the next three weeks- classroom management papers, multicultural lesson, Social Studies unit, readings for Reading- yikes! Not to mention resumes and websites, portfolios and FAFSAs. And have you filed your taxes yet? Me neither.

And so I find myself staring at my computer, my shoulders sagging with this load, and I can't find a place to start. Anything I choose to work on means neglecting other equally important tasks. And so I just let the panic rise and dust off this old blog instead.

Everything we have to do now requires lots of time, and lots of care. The stakes are high, and the time is short. I don't want to skim through these wonderful books! I don't want my exciting mud hut unit to become a chore because I have to stay up so late to work on it! I don't want to zone out in class when my wonderful colleagues are sharing their wonderful ideas because my mind is full of the next class, the next idea. And weighing especially heavily- I don't want to compete with my cohort for jobs! We have been a team right from the start. I'm not ready for comparisons and sizing up!

I wish this could be a pep talk post. I know most of you are as stressed as I am right now, and I would love to ease some of our collective worry. But I can't muster the energy for anything more than an old fashioned venting session. Hopefully getting it all out here will allow me to actually get some real work done!

I wish all of us the best of luck.

Happy Summer and Salmon Lesson Plan

Hi everyone!
It's me, Willow. I just wanted to wish you a happy, well earned holiday. These last eight weeks have been_________ (fill in the blank- amazing, overwhelming, inspiring, exhausting, envigorating...) I've missed having our whole cohort together these last couple weeks, though it's been nice to get to know some of the other dudes. I can't wait to all be together again.

Some people in my PE class wanted me to pass on this PE/Science lesson that my friend Steve gave me. Here is a summary:

Salmon Relay

Set up an obstacle course representing the life of a salmon. Kids start out curled up like eggs. The first obstacle is a turbine (jumprope being swung by two helpers). They then get 10 seconds in the safe zone, before hitting the downstream predetors- otters, heron, etc. This is sort of a tag section with big kids or helpers being "it." Once the kids get through they are in the ocean. There are two circles filled with wood chips, with a lot of space in between. the chips are food, but there is a fisherman stationed between the circles. They have to get four chips total, relaying between the circles (Four to represent the 4 years salmon spent in the ocean before heading back upstream). The kids who get through head back up stream (on part of the course that is parallel to the downstream section). The kids that have been tagged out are sitting in the first upstream area. They are dead fish. The live fish must circle around each of them. Then they progress to the bear. Must aviod being eaten (tagged) Finally there is a waterfall to jump over before hitting the breeding grounds. Phew!

After the course, process with the kids. How many fish lived? How many died? How could we make it so more fish survived? (Restrict fishing, truch fish around turbine, etc)

That's the gist of it! Hope it made sense.

Take care everyone! I miss you already!
Willow

a sampling of our art...

Summer practucom

(Please ignore the previous post since it was posted by accident before I was done. I pressed some combination of keys to save and it turned out that secretly, it was the command to post. I apologize.)

I also expected that the summer practicum would be more emotionally stressful and didn't really feel it. For me, there are three reasons: 1) I'm too tired and busy to have any strong feelings, 2) It seems to me that most of the kids in my room are so happy and lively, 3) I really don't know them too well yet.

I did get some sense of how hard life could be for most of them last Wednesday. I was assigned by the teacher to check the children's teeth and select 3 children for detal check-up; remember in the orientation they said that only 3 from each class would get to see the dentist. It was very disconcerting to see their teeth. I think more than half of the children have pretty bad teeth. Some have rotten teeth and some have lots of caps and gaps (missing teeth?). One child has so much metal in her mouth that I could barely see her teeth and one of the cap/false teeth was falling off. The child complained all morning about how much it hurts. Yet at the same time, the child was going about doing stuff without making too much fuss.

I didn't feel good when I had to pick just 3 since so many of them really need to see a dentist. I thought to myself, "This is hard."

I wonder whether they behave the same in the regular school year. I think Mr. Fernow did mention that some children do so much better in the summer school because they are with their peers and their own native languages are used. Perhaps that is another reason why on the surface, things seem to be OK (at least in my room).

Regarding Alyssa comment about alternative schooling, I think she points out a very important thing - when we think about the children, we need to think about all of them. Traditional teaching methods a lot of times are look upon as "bad" because they don't work well with some students. We shouldn't deny that they work pretty well with others.

Chiung-Chen

Education Ideals

First off, I think most if not all of us certainly understood that your comment in Jordan's class came from your experiences and was very valid. We just didn't want to throw the bathwater out with the baby, ... or was that the baby with the bathwater. Let's see, bathwater ... baby ... Oh, forget it! :)

To pick up on Alyssa's description of her job as "stressful," I was thinking a lot about that at the end of John's class yesterday. Basically there's this big arena of elementary education out there, with jobs of many sorts. Most of us are probably choosing to become teachers because we want to make a difference for children, and perhaps also because it makes us happy to work with children and to teach. So I define the challenge as finding a job that speaks to the idealistic goals in your heart without burning you out in a few years time.

Remember the statistics we were told about how long most teachers stay in the profession? (Actually, I don't remember them exactly, but I do remember that they were impressive on the side of "teacher dropout/burnout.") I think what you can "handle" in terms of stress and working situation depends on a ton of variables, including: personal traits, background, support network (family, friends, formal professional groups, informal professional support networks, possible religious support group,administrative support through the school and district, etc.). Hopefully we'll get some good, practical ideas from our education here, too, as well as a solid theoretical foundation useful in discussing and analyzing challenges. Even for people who find they are taking jobs in "privileged" schools, I think they will find plenty of challenge in the work. Also, I think those types of schools sometimes provide "testing grounds" for new ideas to be tried out that would be tough to try in ordinary places. What do others think about that? Also, these schools can speak to the "greater good" in other ways if they choose to do so, -- like sharing some of their special programs with other area schools and providing scholarships.

I thought working in the migrant summer program would be more emotionally stressful than it is turning out to be, so far. Was the only one concerned about the emotional impact of that practicum experience?

Antje

Alternative Schools

Good morning!

thanks Willow for creating a place for us to share our thoughts and satisfy our graphophilia.

I wanted to post as I felt like our discussion on alt schools got cut short yesterday. I was somewhat emotionally overwrought, due to my brief and stressful job experience last year, when I attempted to get a community of parents and students excited about education. In all fairness to my program, it worked in many ways, but none so radical and idealistic as that of Peninsula or E. Harlem, or Tanlewood, etc. I realize and respect that some of you shared my views about the difficulty, well nigh impossibility of serving schools in poor neighborhoods. I also believe that alternative schools represent more than inequaltiy, they represent ideals that are largely important to every educator who I have cared about, even in my public agriculture school experience.

After class, Willow mentioned that if I had kept up doing that job for ten years, I might very well beable to enact changes closer to my ideals. I think thats an excellent point. As an educator it is quite necessary to cultivate patience.

I also wanted to comment on where I think our conversation was going - what were best practices in the alternative schools we viewed, and what would we change? Best practices seem quite clear to me. Children participate in open dialog with each other and their teachers, they have choice in what, when and how they learn. Teachers guide students by showing them leadership skills, modelling communication and respect, etc. This is by no means an excellent description of the model, but I think the video broke it down so y'know whut i mean.

One of my questions to the class, then is that many times alternative schools are billed as places where non-traditional students, sometimes kids who were not successful in traditional environments, can go to be successful. With Respec' to those of you who feel like public schools do nontradtional students an injustice, What about students who are successful in or well adapted to traditional teaching environments? Would for example an audtitory learner who easily remembers everything he learned from an engaged biology teacher's lecture do as well teaching himself the same material and discussing it with his peers, who know little more than he does?

I'm going to invite Jordan to check in on this conversation. So no bad language, okay?

cheers,
Alyssa

Welcome to the World of Blogging!

Hello cohort-mates! Here is our collective blog! Bear in mind that it is on the Internet, which means that anyone can read it. Use discrection when talking about particulars of practicums, students, etc. I think it will be easiest if we all use the same user-name and password (which I will share with you in class), and then just sign our names at the bottom of each entry. Post whatever you like- journal entries, scheduling issues, happy hour info, whatever. This is our informal forum to discuss, explore and freak-out! Ask me any questions, give me any suggestions. I will gladly be the go-to person for this expiriment. Welcome and enjoy!

Willow