11th Week: TCAPs Testing Week

This week was a testing week for the 9th and 10th graders at Poudre High School and the last year ever that the TCAPs (Transitional Colorado Assessment Program) will be given. The TCAPs provide the state with assessment data from each school district to determine how well a school is doing based on those scores. The unfortunate part of the testing is that TCAPs don't provide the student with any incentives to do well or to even show up. The TCAPs are solely for statistics purposes; they do not go on the student's transcripts or help the student in their grades in any way. Students are asked to do well as a reflection of the school, but in this narcissistic world, there needs to be more.

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The TCAPs took up three days: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The tests were given in the mornings, and the schedule for the week was changed to accommodate the tests. It was the week after Spring Break, so the staff and the students were feeling a bit ragged trying to get into the swing of things. Upper class students (juniors and seniors) weren't required to be at school in the mornings because of the testing, so they often didn't make it to class at all. Many of our classes had half the students there.

For me personally, the week was long. Proctoring a test is not fun, and we had more free time than usual built into the schedule. It was great to get caught up on planning and grading. I also provided Mr. Long with an observation opportunity, so I only have one more observation to complete for both Mr. Long and Mrs. Hixon. Whew. The semester is flying by. My teacher work sample is about finished, I only have two more seminars, and two more observations. I need to be finished by May 1st with everything, so I'll start reviewing everything this week and next week and finish a week early.

It's also job hunting time. I've been looking at school districts in the area as well as school districts in Texas. As of now, there are no business teaching positions in any of the districts that I have seen. Disappointed and overwhelmed, I'm going to keep searching and stay positive that something will come up.

Spring Break 2014

I wanted to share a few pictures from Spring Break 2014 on our trip back to our home state, Texas! Spring Break is meant to be a time to refresh and renew as we finish off the semester. For me and my family, it was refreshing, and it was also challenging. With limited funds, we drove to Texas, which meant hours in the car driving across the desolate Kansas and Oklahoma landscape. We were able to spend time with family and even get in some play time at the parks, farms, and beaches around Houston. Now back at school, I'm feeling a bit tired, but it is good to know that this is the mid-point of the semester, and it's all downhill from here.

Playing at the Park

Picking Strawberries

There's a local farm in my hometown that allows strawberry picking now. We went out there and picked a whole bucket of strawberries with our daughter and my mother. These are the best kind of memories.

Grandma is helping

Riding the Ferry Boat

It was always so much fun for me and my sister as kids to ride the ferry boat across the bay from Galveston to Bolivar Island. We usually go on the ferry boat when we go to Texas, and this time, our daughter loved it! She could look for porpoises, see the waves, and enjoy the birds.

Playing at the Beach

The beach was the best part. I wasn't sure if our daughter enjoyed the beach or not, but she would get knocked down by a wave and get up laughing every time. Each time, I thought she might start crying, but she always looked up laughing. She looked for seashells and jumped waves. She still asks for the beach when we show her the pictures or mention it.

The Family having fun

While Spring Break wasn't completely ideal in that we had to drive everywhere we went, and it was a long and arduous journey, we did it as a family, and we have some good memories to take with us.

10th Week: Slliiiiidddding into home

Some baseball humor in the title. The home opener for the Colorado Rockies isn't until April 4th, but I'm looking forward to the warmer weather and baseball being on television again. Maybe even taking my daughter to a game this season. Riding my bike to school, and wearing short sleeves and sandals.

Photo from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_College_(Missouri)

This week was the week before Spring Break. It was a slow start with International Day on Monday for the International Baccalaureate students at Poudre High School. It was a day filled with presentations from around the world and cuisine catered by ethnic restaurants around town. I went to five presentations. The first was about China that was given by a senior IB student. The second was about Korea, where I discovered where I could get good Korean food in Colorado. After lunch, I went to India, Israel, and Zambia. They were all interesting in their own right. Zambia was most interesting because it came from an adult who visited there. Now, I know Sebastian, who is also in the STEPP program, and he is a refugee from Zimbabwe, so I know a little about the culture there from talking to him. However, it is also interesting to hear an outsider's perspective of being there. The presenter spoke about the country as if she had just visited, and really, it had been seven years!

Photo from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cristic/466888471/

Parent Teacher Conferences were on Wednesday at Poudre High School. I was able to brag to the parents of some of my best students, and I was able to connect with parents of students who were struggling. I spoke with most of the parents of the students with whom I was concerned. The parents seemed just as concerned about the grades as I was, and we discussed ways to help the students improve. Often, the solution was simply turning in late work. Other times, it was more about behavior and engagement in the classes. Teenagers are facing many challenges in their lives including raging hormones, media feedback, school, and pressure from friends and family. This is even not to mention that they are really still "just kids." This is a generalization about most of the students I teach, but some of them are very mature for their age. One student's mom was very concerned for her daughter's dis-engagement in school and in her relationship with her. She knew her daughter well, and told me a lot of the same behavior that I was experiencing in class. Unfortunately, other than turning in missing work, I wasn't able to help much. Another parent was somewhat out of touch with her child's behavior and grades. She had taken her daughter's word about the feedback that I was giving her about her grades and didn't speak with me directly about it. Because the situation was somewhat confrontational, I decided to take a side step and let her parents know that I would work with her in class and come to an agreement, which we did on Thursday after conferences. However, I was also able to see that the student was "pulling the wool" over her parents' eyes and blaming her ineptitude on me as a "lack of communication." I don't work well with manipulation, and I'm quite tempted to email her parents again with a progress report to ensure that work gets done over break. Overall, the Parent Teacher Conferences helped me to practice my communication with parents and to make note of things that I could do to help students more in my classes.

The projects in Entrepreneurship are beginning to come back to me better and better. I've graded all of the Building and Location projects that have been turned in thus far, and they are creative and interesting. My best students have turned in their work and made A's on their projects. I'm still waiting for a few projects to filter in over Spring Break.

Friday is, of course, the day before Spring Break. A few students are already leaving for vacation on Friday and will not be in school; however, there are plenty of students that will still be in school as well. In 4th Hour Economics, we have decided to have a "Friday Fun Day" for the day before Spring Break. We want to keep the two Economics classes on task together, so we had an extra day to expend. Students will bring snacks to share, and we will watch a movie or episodes of The Office. As much as the students are ready, teachers are just as ready for this week-long break. It denotes the middle of the semester, and after Spring Break, end-of-year activities begin to ramp up, which will lead to the downward spiral of the last day of school.

Changing Education Paradigms

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Another video that we saw in CSU Seminar this semester. I also just read an article by one of our teachers at Poudre High School about shifting paradigms and turning more toward a "Student-as-a-Client" pedagogy. The theory and research behind it is enough to make most educators stop and think about whether or not what we are doing now is working. I agree with the concept that students need to take responsibility for their education as much as teachers do. I especially agree with it this semester as I pat students on the head and push them along ensuring that every assignment is complete and that they are organized enough to complete the class. For some students I recognize that this must be done because of disabilities; however, there are very capable students in my class that are failing because they just refuse to take responsibility. This is the part that needs to change, but how? Do we start in elementary school? Is it from their home life? There are so many questions to consider when speaking to making major reformations in our education system because our schools are not just a place for education but also an expensive (or inexpensive) babysitting service. We require attendance by law for students K-12. If we are going to change our system, don't we need more choices in our education system to engage our students so that they want to be there and are not just required to be there? This is a difficult debate and one that is generally heated. As an open-minded educator, I welcome feedback and other ideas and opinions as well.

Teacher Humor Before Spring Break

We had CSU Seminar last night, and our instructor showed this video from Saturday Night Live. I wanted to share here because... Well, it's funny because there are elements of it that are so true... Characters that look like our students in one way or another.

9th Week - Diggin' Deep

My 9th Week student teaching has been really positive. In Entrepreneurship, I've been working closely with a few students to get their work complete, and they are getting caught up and doing well as a result. It is so gratifying to see the students successfully accomplishing the tasks assigned, especially those that have been struggling along the way. They are all starting to get excited about the projects.

In Economics, I struggled a bit with the material, but I made it through with the students having a good understanding of the concepts. After the students completed a worksheet assessment over elasticity, I reviewed and graded them to ensure that the students were understanding, and according to the answers, the students were doing very well with their understanding.

Last, but absolutely not least, the Poudre Girls' basketball team is in the final four for the state basketball championships! They just won to Cherry Creek last night at the Denver Coliseum. Next week they play the top team in the state at the CU Events Center in Boulder. Congratulations to the Poudre Girls' Varsity Basketball Team for their hard earned wins!

It's the second week before Spring Break, so I'm feeling the need for a break, and I can tell that the students are also feeling this. It's time to "dig deep," as Mr. Long says, and stick with it for just one more week.

8th Week: On my own

The 8th week of my student teaching experience culminated in my mentor teacher being gone to a DECA Competition in Colorado Springs. DECA is a business marketing club for high school students. It assesses students for their understanding of marketing concepts and interviews them in their ability to apply these concepts to a real-world scenario. While he was gone, I took over all of the classes. Movies were shown in most of the classes, so there wasn't a lot of teaching. Classroom management was required more than anything.

The problem student that I had at the end of the 7th week decided to drop my Entrepreneurship class. It was so interesting to me that he would rather take a failing grade than try to resolve the issue and move on in the class. He brought the withdraw slip to me to sign, but I required him to get a signature from Mr. Long before he dropped the class completely. The real issue was the work that he was required to do in the class. He wasn't doing the work, and he wasn't asking questions pertinent to the work. He was continually working on other activities instead of getting his work done. When I asked him about it, he became frustrated. Unfortunately, I never had the chance to work with him to get his work done. He was defensive every time I talked to him about his work, and he finally just walked out of class on Tuesday without talking about the issue. When confronted to resolve the issue, he became even more defensive. While this issue had little to do with me, I still wish that I could have been part of a resolution instead of a failed student.

The week ended with an observation from my CSU supervisor. I invited her to observe the 4th Hour MYP Economics class. We were going over Supply and Demand shifts, and in order to practice the concept further, we went through a "baseball" activity that asked a question requiring each team to provide an answer. Any team that had the right answer got a point. The students were discussing the questions thoroughly, and they were having fun thinking critically. Overall, I think that the class went well. Carol Ann had a few suggestions, and the feedback provided me with some good information that I will use in my future classes. For instance, I wasn't intentional when opening and closing the class. This is something that is easy to work on and practice.

While I'm enjoying my student teaching experience (overall), I'm also looking forward to the upcoming break. I'm also looking forward to Spring and some warmer weather.