School Projects

Yesterday, the 9th of February, I saw blooming snowdrops. In Muncie. This weather is well and truly confused. 

Purely Photography

It's been awhile since I could truly say that I was excited for a semester of school, but I think this one has the potential to be an awesome one. I'm not sure if I talked about it here or not, but I had the math teacher from hell last semester. One of those situations where a teacher doesn't realize that half (or more) of your class failing means it's you and not them.

Anyhow, I went into this semester knowing that I had two Profs that I like- on the head of my department for English the other a guy I would happily call the best teacher I've ever had. As it turns out, I like the other two as well although I really don't like the lab director for my geology class. I'm loving the geology class- I find it fascinating to study how the world works; everything is so much more amazing when you know the what and the why. Art history is rather boring, but it's not nearly the workload everyone had made it sound like.


My other two classes are both education major specific. One of them is my practicum course for the ESL portion. I'm working with two little boys this semester. J is a native Spanish speaker and is in 1st grade and M is a native Arabic speaker who is in 2nd grade. Both of them can speak very well, especially when it comes to socializing with their peers. M can't read at all, and J doesn't do well. I'm going to be evaluating J tomorrow morning to see exactly where he's at. M is getting some pretty intense phonics help from someone else- my goal is to help him with math word problems. That's going to be an interesting challenge. I've got some ideas and we'll have to see how they go.

The other part of that class is a class wide professional development project. Our plan is to make a survival guide website and document for general education teachers who have ESL students in their classroom. If it's not your area of concentration there's a very good chance no one has ever told you how to deal with the special issues these kids have when it comes to school. We hope to set up a workshop, or at least visit some classes, to present it once it's done.

My final class is my night class and it's diversity in education. Thankfully, unlike most diversity classes this one is not just focusing on race and income. It's covering everything from sexual orientation, to language, religion, and physical disabilities. We're currently in groups working on an iMovie looking at a certain problem in a chosen area and ways for teachers to help deal with it. I got a group together for language, specifically in regards to testing. 10% of kids in Indiana speak a language other than English at home. That's a low number; the national average is 22%. ISTEP, Indiana's standardized test, is only offered in English. 10% of kids at an immediate disadvantage, when their graduation, their teachers' salaries, and their schools' very existence depends on those scores. It's a huge problem.