The Malicious Monocle

Viral campaigning is an interesting proposition.

So, here’s my contribution to the virus.

  Well, so far student teaching has been incredibly relaxing. Of course, that may be because we’ve ended up with two non-contiguous snow days this week. When we were in school, I did step up and teach a lesson using the teacher’s lesson plan and had it go pretty well. The only real problem I felt I had was in going too quickly for the kids. I really need to learn the proper pacing for these Middle School kids. I don’t have my lesson plans written yet, but they are pretty well planned out in my head. I’ve also managed to make a good start on my first power point. Their regular teacher uses an overhead, but I can’t stand them. I had to copy endless notes off of overheads when I was 13. I really don’t want to now use them myself.

For my snow days I’ve spent them being pretty productive. Perhaps not as productive as I could have spent them, but I didn’t totally slack off. Today I even managed to go out and meet up with a classmate for some coffee. That was pretty nice. It was only for about an hour and a half, but at least it meant I got out for a bit. She even bought me the coffee.

I also filed my income tax today. Education credits are fun!

Before going back to my power point slides, I’ll leave this: http://blog.wired.com/geekdad/2008/01/ipod-plus-delca.html

It’s a link to an article that has copies of both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution read aloud and available for free download.

    Elephant fumed as he read the Chennai Times. An article on the front page discussed the recent High Tea hosted by the Governor General. According to the Chennai Times Elephant had attended this tea. It seemed that Elephant had also done an incredible job of charming the other attendees with his wit and gracious nature.

Elephant saw this for what is was: an attempt to draw him and his followers out from hiding. He refused to take the bait, but Orangutan’s recent arrest worried him. It may be necessary to risk everything just to rescue him. Word had also reached Elephant of Zebu’s recent, grisly discovery.

  I’ve now finished up with my second and third days of student teaching and all is going pretty well. I’ve started working on my long-form lesson plans for my first few lessons and have also started participating in teaching the classes. At this point I’m largely just adding to what their regular teacher is lecturing about. I was kind of worried that I might be annoying him by throwing my own two cents into his lectures, but I spoke with him and he said it was fine. He actually thinks it may be a really good way to transition the students between us as their primary teacher.

The current unit is on the U.S. Constitution.  Friday was spent on key terms and today was spent on the 7 basic principles of the Constitution and the preamble. Tomorrow we’ll probably get into the first article or two.

My newest issue of NEAtoday showed up in the mail today. According to an article in there, the NEA won an appeal in court over the NCLB Act. The federal government is trying to say it doesn’t have to give schools any extra money in order to carry out the mandates in the Act. The NEA feels differently. The case was initially thrown out, but with winning this appeal it means that the government is going to actually have to explain why they don’t need to pay for their legislation.

Over the weekend I also received an email from the author of the WWI blog I have linked here. He wanted to discuss the SmartBoards. It turns out he’s and IT co-ordinator for schools in the UK. I just feel really bad that I accidentally  deleted the comment he left that started the email exchange.

   Today was the first official day of student teaching. As expected, it passed rather uneventfully. I spent the day observing rather than any actual teaching. I’m sure I will probably be up in front of the classroom by the end of next week in some capacity or another though.

Today’s activity revolved around the Citizenship Test. I’m happy to say there were only two questions I wasn’t able to answer correctly. The rest weren’t really any problem at all. Oh well, I guess I won’t be able to engineer being deported to Germany or the UK anytime soon. I’ll have to find another way, I guess.

That first lesson or mini-lesson I’ll probably end up doing will likely be on the subject of the U.S. Constitution. That’s rather ironic as I spent a good amount of my time at University playing with the various student organization constitutions. I helped write three or four and engineered work-arounds for a couple others. I have an idea of a fun lesson incorporating some of those constitutions, but I’m pretty sure the teacher has already covered the writing of the constitution and they are now looking at the amendments, etc.

An odd topic I’ve heard mentioned several times about one’s first day of student teaching, is the outfit one chooses to wear. I’m guessing it’s because most teachers are women, because I didn’t obsess over what I was going to wear. I just picked out an outfit before going to bed (in case I woke up late). No sweat, no blood, no tears. I wore a pair of kakhis and a gray sweater. A very simple outfit to be sure,but one that was professional-looking. I’m very happy I was able to arrange for a seeing-eye person to go shopping with me the last time I bought some clothes.

I also identified a couple of students as gamers. One plays an IG army for 40K. I’ll have to arrange for a game against my Tau before the end of the semester.

Today I went to an all day training session for Smartboards in Milwaukee. It was very informative and we all had a chance to play on the Smartboards. The training room had four different boards set up so there wasn’t ever very long to wait. I even had some time during lunch to just mess around on my own. I spent that time looking up this very blog on a big screen and seeing how the pictures from last Saturday look on a big screen. Adverb and I also spent some time with map programs messing around and looking for our houses. Sparta was the other Cohort member who came up with us for the class.

Stroke of luck with the class was that we were actually given certificates for attending. That means the three of us can use these in our favor when looking for work next fall. It also helps us look all pro-active when it comes to professional development. I got some links and stuff for using Smartboards, but I need to get an email back from the teacher to clarify the handout.

Here’s a couple that seem to have been written correctly:

i-Maths are online, interactive, multimedia and math investigations.

Available at: http://illuminations.nctm.org/students.html

Electronic Abacus Applet explores the use of abacus model for representing numbers and performing addition.

http://illuminations.nctm.org/mathlets/abacus/index.html

 Mongoose silently watched the Governor General’s Tea from behind a rosewood screen. He watched the faces of Hedgehog’s guests as they spoke with the “Raja”.

Trotting out a look a like of the real Raja had been Mongoose’s plan. A plan he had no intention of allowing to fail. So far, none of the guests had said or done anything to make Mongoose believe they doubted the Raja’s identity.

Mongoose watched Elephant as well. The Raja looked to be enjoying himself as he nibbled daintily on a delicate cucumber sandwich.  Between nibbles he exchanged vacuous nothings with the other guests and looked well pleased with himself.

He should enjoy himself, thought Mongoose. His life would be forfeit once the true Raja had been found and disposed. It only remained to be determined how Mongoose would be allowed to kill the imposter. The Governor General was not one to allow loose ends to hang about after their usefulness had passed.

Mongoose preferred slowly bleeding useless people to death over a few days, but a quick death could sometimes be just as satisfying. Only time and the Governor General would know which lay in the future of the imposter.

 I was originally going to head up to Milwaukee this evening to meet a friend for dinner, but the weather has caused those plans to be scratched. We’ve been trying to get together for coffee or dinner for almost a couple of weeks now. Schedules and such just keep getting in the way. Oh well. I had also intended to swing by my favorite store while up there but I guess I’ll just have to go some other time.

Today was a pleasant day. I pretty much pissed the day away. Much as one of the last days before beginning student teaching should be spent. I did get some writing done however. I also set up a play date with a new friend later this week.

  Governor General Hedgehog glanced to his right at Elephant sipped at his tea. This was the first official High Tea in which Elephant had been officially invited to by Hedgehog. Along with Elephant, a select few members of the most loyal families and functionaries had also been invited. Hedgehog had been told by his secretary the social battles were getting almost open in the attempt to secure an invitation to Elephant’s first social event after that article had appeared in the Chennai Times.

The guests were all hear to witness this new, ‘tamed’ Raja and claim they were in his, and the Governor General’s, good graces. Hedgehog wasn’t a fool. He knew better than to blindly trust any of these sycophants. If they left this tea not fully convinced that Elephant was who Hedgehog said he was, their tongues would be wagging so fiercely the news would travel the length of the Ganges quicker than Hedgehog could sign his name to an Order of Execution.