The Malicious Monocle

 I’m pretty sure I’m at the same point all of the other student teachers are at right now - counting down the days until Spring Break and a little bit of a rest. I’m exhausted. I can’t seem to ever get ahead of the work I need to do for this and every time I think I may have pulled a little ahead, I find out about something I forgot to do.

I was sick a couple of weeks ago as well. That slowed me down to a crawl. I’d get home from school and just want to crash. I didn’t get any papers graded or much else done in the evenings. I’ve just about caught up from that now, but I won’t really be able to say I’ve caught up until sometime Sunday night probably.

Next week marks the end of my first placement. After Tuesday next week I will be slowly transitioning away from the front of the classroom and letting my co-op take his room back over. I’ve enjoyed working with him and his class. I’ve also enjoyed meeting the rest of the teachers from the 8th grade and working with them as well. I can only hope the 7th grade teachers are about as equally unified as the 8th grade teachers are.

Needless to say with as exhausted as I’m always feeling, I haven’t done any writing on the monocle. I did come up with another fun bit of alliterative clothing though. The “Dastardly Dagged sleeve”. I have a sentence written for it, but nothing else to really go with that little sentence.

My 2nd formal observation is this Thursday. I’m not ready for it. I’m pretty sure I’ll do ok, but I can’t really say I’m ready for it. I just want to sleep for a week or two.

In preparation of actually having some free time again sometime in the future, I picked up Guitar Hero III for my Wii. I also hoped on Ebay and picked up a cheap wireless guitar for my PS2 for whenever I pick up the GH games for that platform.

Yeah, that’s enough time away from being productive. Back to work. Sleep beckons, but it’s not going to happen. The know in my shoulder will probably see to that.

  Today had all of the makings of an awesome day. There was a high chance of a snow day and I’d ended up watching the BBC feed on the primary results rather late. No snow day. To be fair, the roads weren’t looking all that bad this morning, but everyone knew the bad weather was still coming. By 10 this morning it was clear that the weather was going to be really bad by the end of the school day. Maybe we would be given a half-day? Nope.

The snow came and it came down really hard. It came and it came and it came. The windows of the classroom were almost completely covered by the blowing snow. School started without about half the students absent. About half of those left over the course of the day as well as parents came and picked them up. Then it took me over a half an hour to dig my car out of the parking lot which hadn’t been plowed at all during the day. Well, except for during the last period when some students were taken outside to shovel and clear off cars. Unfortunately it didn’t look like they did the lot I was parked in.

Sitting at home wasn’t on my list of things to do tonight, but that’s exactly what I’ve done. Well, except for the time I’ve spent outside digging my car out of the driveway where it was stuck when I got home and then clearing the driveway as well. With the shoveling I haven’t even managed to get any work done on my lesson plans. There’s still a couple of hours though, so I may yet get somewhere.

Grr. I hope tomorrow goes better than today did.

One kind of nice thing. I found out the science teacher in my house is married to a guy I kind of knew back in High School. He’s a professional artist now. I’m always seeing a painting of his at my favorite coffee shop. I wonder if he recalls who I am.

Soon my happy fun-time will end and I will start my student teaching. Am I spending my time practicing lesson plans? Am I reading about performance assessments?

No.

I’m working on my Mûmak.

Here are some work in progress photos of my Mûmak.

The paint job is mostly a series of drybrushing so far. The base especially has a lot of work left to do on it. Next up is to finish the toenails and then start in on the tusks. After the Mûmak is finished, I’ll start work on the howdah, alternating with work on the base as the whim takes me.

For my student teaching goal I propose an expedition into the deepest, darkest corners of the school A/V room. This expedition will, of course, be fraught with perils as I brave scorn from the oh-so superior A/V nerds and the overly protective and suspicious Tech-priests known as librarians. My goal for this expedition is to learn the effective use (if any) of film strip projectors which go ‘beep’ and other examples of educational archaeo-tech I may find.

As with any student teaching goal, I will have to answer the question of how I know if my expedition goals have been met. I will know I have succeeded when the Student Helpers accept me as one of their own and bestow upon me my A/V club name. (Personally I’m hoping for something fun like, ‘He-Who-Ironically-Forwards-At-The-Beep’.) Acceptance into their tribe will not be enough for the success of my goal, however. I will also need to be inducted into the arcane rites of the Librarian Tech-Priests. Only when they have taught me the proper prayers that need be offered to Edison, Morse and Bell before activating a piece of equipment will I be able to use the equipment as easily as any coal-stoker stokes the furnace of an ocean liner. I will know for sure that my expedition has been successful when I can walk in to a school library and get a knowing nod of the head as I point to any piece of equipment and know that the librarian is signing that piece of equipment out in the name of a teacher they don’t much like.

For an artifact I intend to bring back detailed schematics of all of the types of equipment available. Included with these schematics will be important notes concerning alternative power sources in the all too likely event that the equipment doesn’t work when needed. These schematics will clearly note if a candle may be used to replace a burned-out bulb or if the class hamster and its wheel can be used when the power cord has become too frayed to unwind from the A/V cart.

    The semester is just about over. There are a few classes left yet, but fortunately the super big piles of homework that I’ve been having to deal with have shrunk to almost tiny piles. I have to write nearly ten pages worth of reflection for next week, but compared to the homework I’ve had to deal with I’m not even worried.

A package I’ve been waiting for showed up today in the mail. My calendar for next year, “The Lovely Mistresses of George W Bush.” Some great classic pin-up shots to brighten the next thirteen months.  Miss April is someone I know from an online forum. I’m kind of surprised that none of the girls have any ink on them, but the photographer could have easily ’shopped the ink out.

I’m off to watch some more of Tin Man  before heading off to bed. I promise some more Monocle in the coming days as well.

  I did actually take some time to relax a little this weekend, but most of the holiday weekend was spent doing homework and trying to get everything done before the end of the semester. I managed to finish out two assignments this weekend and get the nitty gritty of a third out of the way as well. So, that should leave me with approximately 3.5 assignments left to do before I’m free for a few weeks to kill off some brain cells before student teaching.

I ran into a guy I used to know from college last week as well. I found out his daughter is a student at the school I’m doing my student teaching at and she is in the right grade. I have no idea which classrooms I’ll be in though, so I couldn’t tell him if I was going to be teaching his daughter. I’ll have to see if I recognize his last name if I see it on the class roster. Considering I can’t remember what his name is currently, I figure I have a 50-50 shot of recognizing it if I see it written down.

How will I celebrate the end of the semester and the fact that I have given my current place of work notice? I will be getting together with a friend to watch the Series 3 Doctor Who episodes we missed and maybe play some Wii. I love it when girls ask me to bring my Wii over to their place to play. It just seems… titillating somehow.

Clearly I am also running into some fun insomnia with the end of the semester as it is half-past one in the morning and I’m awake.

Don’t Blink!

I taught my second lesson today. At my co-operating teacher’s  recommendation I taught the lesson three times today. In between the first and second classes I taught I tweaked my power point slides and changed up some of the organization. The only real changes between the second and third classes, I didn’t change too much at all.

The classes went pretty well. None of the classes were burning me in effigy or in open revolt. Most of the kids seemed to even get the lesson I was teaching. Some did better than others, of course, but that’s to be expected.

I should be working on my presentation for Monday, but I’m not. I’ve wasted the evening surfing the next and watching shows on my DVR. Now it’s time for booze. I’ll have a little of that and then maybe I’ll even post to the Monocle.