안녕하세요 Ahn-nyung-ha-se-yo

3. Try not to come in with expectations of what things will be like. There is no set "Teacher Corps Experience." The only thing you can pretty much bank on is that things will be difficult. No matter how much training they try to cram in this summer, you will not feel adequately prepared to take on "the classroom" and all that it entails.

2. Having lesson plans done in advance (more than a week ahead of time) gives you a nice, settling feeling. However, if there is any chance you could change what you are teaching, you probably will. Planning ahead is great, but try not to get too bummed when tens (or even hundreds) of lesson plans are no longer useful to you...you have to start over! This summer, definitely lay out a curriculum plan of what you would like to (or have to) teach for the first semester or year and try to do a few lesson plans, but don't spend too much time preparing lessons...

1. GET A LIFE! For the first few months of teaching, it is hard to do anything except crash immediately when you come home from school. There is so much to do and you are always so tired. Give yourself a little time, but then get out and explore! Hang out with people who are not teachers. Get connected in a way that does not involve your kids.

You want to feel like you are making a difference?
You want to get paid enough money for what you do?
You want to teach so that you only have to work M-F 8-3 and have the summers free?
You want to "try this out" because you're not sure what you want to do after college?

If yes is your answer to any of the above questions, please DO NOT APPLY to MTC.

You want your life to be full of surprises?
You want to feel helpless in the struggle to give kids the education they deserve?
You want to wake up every day and not know why you continue to do what you do?
You want to be simultaneously depressed and ecstatic on the day you find out a "special" student is moving?
 
If yes is your answer to any of the above questions, please APPLY to MTC.

This experience is frustrating. I do not know what I am teaching. I do not feel qualified to teach. I do not have the greatest classroom management...
This experience is rewarding. I know that whatever I can teach my students will be better than the alternative: no one to teach them Spanish. I have learned so much about the lives of my kids. I see how hard my principal works to change our school and I feel inspired... :)

DG has become one of my favorite students. The first memory I have of DG is one day when he was sick at the beginning of the year. His seat was in the first row by the wall. He raised his hand to ask a question about an assignment. I slowly walked over to him as he sniffled and blew his nose. There was a bubble of germs floating around him. I thought, oh man - this kid is going to get me sick...I have to touch his journal and grade his snotty paper! ahh! As soon as he was enlightened, I ran back to my desk and loaded on the hand sanitizer. I brought it back and gave some to the 3 students sitting around DG. I had hoped he would stay home the next day - I couldn't afford to get sick!

There has never been another day when I wished DG would've stayed home. Just seeing him everyday puts a smile on my face. He is an excellent student and always does his work. I'm going to have to check in with him to make sure he has big plans after graduation this year.

Today he was the Hulk. Even though he was painted green and had on a ripped t-shirt, DG is not very "hulkish" in appearance. He's got a Hulk of a heart though. Yesterday he was writing cute little sticky notes and posting them on students. He wrote me a "great teacher" one with the condition "this gets me a 100%." You'll have to work a little harder next quarter for a 100% DG... :)

From Wong:
3 Ways to Take Roll Efficiently and Effectively
    1. Look at your class and refer to your seating chart. Mark whoever is absent.
          I assigned each kid a number. I made the seating chart. I taped the numbers on the desks (to my surprise, none of them have disappeared yet). I told each kid their seat number as they entered the room. I did not start the class with role-taking! I did not involve the class in the role-taking process! However, I kinda forgot to take role... I remembered the empty seats but realized as I checked my seating charts that not all of the kids sat in the seat I told them to because I knew the ones that were supposed to be in the empty seats were present! Hmm...next time make sure the kids sit in the correct seats...

    2. Have folders or something personal in a box at the door.
          My Spanish II class is small - only 10 kids. I let them sit wherever they want. I lay their journals out on a desk for them to find and take to their seats. The journals that remain tell me who is not there. This works perfectly. I don't even have to mark anything during class because I can set the leftover journals to the side.

    3. Have each student's name on a clothespin.
          I didn't use this one.

Can I just mention how annoying the blasted neighbor's dog is right now...

To increase the amount of time the student works to learn:
    1. Have an assignment posted daily to be done upon entering the classroom.
          Thanks to summer school, a warm-up posted on the front board is a natural step as I prepare myself and the room for the students to come. This is certainly not hard for me to remember to do and my students (even though they could stand to move a little faster) work quietly for the first several minutes.
 
    2. Teach procedures and routines to minimize interruptions and maximize uninterrupted learning time.
          We did not go over "how to be quiet as Sra. Smith speaks." I am not talking about side comments and chatter as I teach. I am talking about keeping your mouth shut because I just want you to listen to the Spanish. I know that you don't understand everything that I am saying. Just LISTEN! I am pleased that you are so responsive and like to repeat and interact with me, but sometimes you don't need to understand - I just want you to HEAR THE WORDS!
   
    3. Constantly monitor students so as to keep them on task.
          I think that I have been doing a great job of moving around the room. Well, maybe not in my Spanish II class because they are so small. However, I definitely hit all 4 walls and every student in my 33- and 35-person classes. I was pleased today when EK (who tells me that she is going to switch classes and clearly has no motivation to do anything in my class) raised her head off her desk after a little "I know you may not be staying in this class but I need you to work with and help your partner" talk and practiced the conversation with her partner!! :) I love answering little questions about pronunciation and meaning as I walk around the room.

My homeroom. Oh my homeroom. I love you - I really do. You are a handful and I'm not really sure what to do with you. Supposedly we are to help you with ¨character development.¨ I just want you to have a break in the day from class...behave when I take you to lunch and don't be too rowdy in the classroom. Thanks
"Can I touch your hair?" "Was your class in Pennsylvania (yes, I taught in PA before...) like this (points to her skin) or like you (points to my skin)?" "Where'd you get that shirt?" "You have a lot of hair on your arms." "Your eyes are like waterfalls!" - that's a good one, haven't heard that! Man BB, you sure stare at me a lot.
"Can I go to the bathroom?" "Can I go buy a Gatorade?" "Let me run down the hall and tell her something." "Can we play spades?" "Can I have more time to eat my lunch (because I chose to wait 10 minutes before entering the line with everyone else in the class...)?" NOOOO!!!!! :)

I absolutely LOVE my 4th block. I love the other kids too, but man, especially for being at the end of a long day, they are really great.
I scored major points today with the counselor for bringing my Spanish II kids to the office and instructing them in Spanish to give her several tarjetas that they decorated with "que tengas un buen día," "muchas gracias," y "eres muy amable" during our tour of the school. 
Pats for broken air conditioning at the middle school that lets the whole district get out at 2:20 instead of 3:54 on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Kicks for Cookers not having a key for my classroom (I JUST WANT TO LOCK MY DOOR!!!!!) :)

"¿Qué pasta?"
pasado - pass ON 75% OF THE PAPERS!!! did you not hear me, I said pasT
How do we spell absurd? Absurd? Anyone? A-B-S-U-R-B You've got to be kidding me.
Hobbies/Interests outside of school: motivational speaking, reading  - oh SK I love you :)
"On 8-7-07 I was given the assignment to wrote about a time I quit and I quit."
"The second-thing I quit on is my piano lessons. I really wanted to learn how to play but my teacher had a breath problem and I couldn't take it anymore, I didn't like the smell."

I say that this has been an intense week because I think about my kids 24/7. Well, I don't exactly remember my dreams (I sleep quite soundly at night!), but every waking moment I am thinking about school. I can't get the kids out of my mind. It's consuming me! :) haha I don't mind (for now...) - they are so young and most of them are really good students - I can tell they try and want to do well.

...another taping of me teaching. It was okay I guess. I'm still saying "okay" at the end of almost every sentence! One student was absent the day I recorded so I am only teaching to one student. The lesson was effective - notes and practice on arithmetic (not the easiest word to say 50 times in an hour by the way...) sequences and series. However, it definitely wasn't interesting and I wasn't very energetic. It would have been helpful to vary up the activities a little more. One thing I think I have been doing well is asking questions. I always have the students explain why they give me a certain answer. Through my questions I have the students discover math.

It will be hard to adjust to having 30-35 students as opposed to 2. I will probably spend most of the period walking around the room and keeping an eye on all of the students. There are so many benefits to building in independent work for the students. It will definitely help me with informal assessments and give me a break from lecturing from the front of the room. I just have to be careful not to spend too much time helping one student or one group. I need to expect the students to be able to learn without me looking over their shoulder the whole time.

featuring...yours truly  haha
I hate watching myself on video, but it is helpful to see the areas where I need to improve. I taped my "Intro to Algebra" lesson and in the middle of explaining variables, I realized I had confused myself. My kids tried to understand the muddy picture I painted for them, but I am sure it was not easy to see.  One thing that really bothered me was the "okay?" or "alright?" I added to the end of every sentence. Hopefully now I'll be more conscious of this.

I absolutely hate closing. I see the importance of summarizing what was learned during the period, but I just have a mental block against actually doing it. At first, I simply didn't pay attention to the time and the bell rang before I even thought to close. However, by the time I taped this lesson I knew when there were 5 or 6 minutes left in the period and I refused to pause the procedures and start my closure. I know this won't pass when I am being formally evaluated so I guess I'm going to have to find some way to break down the blockade at T-5.

I think I generally follow knowledge-level questions with higher-leveled questions as I teach, but for my lesson on exponents I tried to plan out specific questions and navigate through the topic based on higher level questions to emphasize critical thinking. I had discovered a day or two before that the students had a pretty good grasp on basic powers - most of them could easily calculate 2^2 or 5^3 or 10^2 - so I thought I'd take it a step further and cover multiplication of integers and fractions raised to a power. As has been the case for my past few lessons, I ran out of time at the end. There was so much I wanted to cover with them and I only had 1 period :( Looking back, I guess I bombarded them with a lot of new information, but hopefully, as one of the students commented about our teaching in the classroom, I "broke it down real good." I knew they needed to review multiplication and addition of integers and this lesson was a perfect chance to incorporate that.

Some of my leveled questions:
What is 2x2? 2x2x2?
How do we write that?
How would you show 2^7?
What is -3x-3?
How about -1x-1x-1? (wrong answer by all) How did you get that? (correction)
How can we rewrite 2^4 = 2x2x2x2? (hint: What if I grouped these twos so that 2^4 = (2x2)x(2x2)?)
I was so excited when I got a "2 squared times 2 squared," followed by a "2+2=4," followed by another observation, "2x2=4." I could tell they were thinking :) I went on to tell them the rule for adding exponents when the base is the same. After writing 2^1, 2^2,...,2^5 in a column on the board, they were able to compute the other column of 2,4,...,32.
What do you think 2^0 is? (all said "0")
What does the calculator say 2^0 is?
What is the pattern in the second column?
So what is 2^0?

I had planned to go on to negative exponents using the information we had covered but as I said earlier, I ran out of time. I enjoy using this questioning strategy because I like when the students can figure things out on their own. This isn't possible all of the time and sometimes they need extra guidance, but I think it boosts their confidence and improves their critical thinking skills.

I have always been interested in exercise and nutrition due to the fact that my mom is a personal trainer and lives and breathes fitness. Lily Chang-Chien’s focus paper on Nutrition in Schools interested me because of the relationship between a person’s health and his or her ability to function both physically and mentally. The paper points out the importance of a healthy lifestyle for children in order to maximize their development and success in school.

At the homeless shelter where I volunteered, I saw first-hand how “hunger is less of an issue than malnourishment, which often manifests itself as obesity.” The issue of hunger in the United States puzzled me because I saw people living in poverty with plenty to eat. The shelter received food donations everyday in the forms of non-perishables, recently expired items from supermarkets, and cooked meals.  However, there was an absence of fresh produce and an abundance of processed food and bakery items.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Mississippi incorporates all of the USDA child nutrition programs. However, as Lily concluded, we cannot fight malnutrition with only the availability of nutritional meals in school. The other part is educating about portion control and regular exercise. Also, it is important to not make the "competitive foods" more accessible and appealing than the meals and snacks offered through the programs. Students need to know that soda and snacks from vending machines do not replace a meal.

No prob - I think I'll have my share of "welcome to Mississippi" signs over the next several weeks and months... Upon entering Mississippi, the only thought on my mind was getting to Oxford asap so that I could stop driving and go to the bathroom. Even though I split the trip over two days, it was longer than any car ride I had ever done. Ever since departing PA, I can't get it through my head that this is real life. It seems as though I'm simply on vacation or a summer excursion of some sort. Oxford and Ole Miss are beautiful. Everyone who has been through Lewisburg talks about how beautiful Bucknell is. It's a nice campus, really, but can't compare to here.

It's amazing to realize the diversity and wide range of people populating one state, let alone one country. I've been to different parts of the country, but nowhere quite like here. We've been talking about the different areas of Mississippi, especially the separation between Mississippi and the Delta. Pennsylvania has its "special" areas as well. Similar to MS, the geography and various industries of PA have played a huge role in the separation of the two main cities, Central PA, and "everywhere else." I guess my role is to realize where I come from and who that has made me to be so that I can relate to people who live outside of Central PA. I have definitely already started this process, but entering into Mississippi and the Delta will introduce new challenges and highlight other differences between me and... the rest of the world :)