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September 15th, 2009Fossils – Age
September 8th, 2009
Fossils collected 8/27 & 9/6/09
I live in an area with many interesting geological features – the glaciers advanced and receded over this area several times – including areas that are rich in fossils. Each summer, I spend time mucking about in shale or limestone beds searching for these ancient sea creatures, which are proof that at one point, the north coast of the US was a tropical sea south of the equator. The possibilities for using this local resource in teaching are endless – dating methods for Chemistry, glaciers and continental drift for Earth Science, adaptation and proof in Living Environment (Biology). The fact that this area – the third snowiest metropolitan area in the country – was once tropical is a discrepant event of mind-blowing proportions. Sigh… I can’t wait to teach again.
Recent fossil hunting excursions got me thinking about how they determine the age of fossils. In an effort to improve my chances at a teaching job, I have removed everything from my resume that would allow a potential employer to determine my age. The Career Center advisor said to include my original degree and its date – it would be evidence of maturity and experience. In my first round of job applications, I did not get a single interview. I think age was the reason. Either that or prejudice against career-changers; we had a mock interview in which one interviewer said she had bad luck with career-changers and wouldn’t hire another one. Who knows?
Today was another first day of school in most of the rest of the local districts. I feel like someone who got left standing when the music stopped – approximately half the people in my program got jobs although a few are 0.7 or 0.4 positions (part-time). It’s a bad year to be a science teacher looking for a job. At this point, I know of only one solid position (it was advertised in the newspaper); the rest are rumors.
Fossil Hunting Grounds (I’m in yellow)
Lighting a Candle
September 2nd, 2009
© HeikeKame – istockphoto.com
This morning when I woke up, I lit a candle for Josh. In the waning light of this evening, I will relight it. He was a wonderful young man – too soon gone, a year ago today. I am thinking of him and his family almost constantly today.
Today was the first day of school in the urban district where I wanted to teach. I haven’t completely given up hope but I suppose that will happen soon.
I will never forget my first day of High School Chemistry. My family had moved and I was the new girl, in a new school, in a new town where I knew nobody. The teacher had us light a candle and asked us to observe carefully. She told us to write our observations into our notebooks. Another shy girl (yes – there was a time) was sitting next to me and she agreed to be my lab partner. We were excited that we got to use matches in school and started to write down observations. I think we had twenty or so between us; after all, it was just a candle. Our homework was to read Appendix A in our brand new Chemistry textbook, which listed 303 individual, completely valid observations. I was blown away!
Is it any wonder that I majored in Chemistry?
Last night, I lit two candles and thought of Josh and his twin brother who were born on September 1. The chemistry-inspired stained glass from my friend Wayne, who I met through Josh’s mom, is in the background. I couldn’t resist including this picture too.
Portfolio Completed!
August 27th, 2009
It doesn’t look like much in this picture but it took most of the summer to complete. At first, I found the project completely aggravating. The task was to review my work over the course of my program, synthesize it to prove my competence about ten principles of education, and collate the evidence to address almost 100 individual rubric points. My irritation was that I wasn’t learning anything new, not doing any research, not extending myself and I thought it would be a book that never got opened after it was reviewed. But… It was an opportunity to think deeply about education and something that I will probably review because it captures my naive beliefs and objectives for my future practice.
It ended up filling a four-inch binder and is mostly appendices with the required artifacts – most of the papers I wrote during my program. One of the hardest parts was that it felt like bragging – “This proves that I’m good at that. That proves I’m good at this.” It was a cloud over my summer but it is finished. Now onto finding a job so I can put this learning to work.
I really, really need a job.
Blog Spam – Apology
August 24th, 2009If any of you are following this blog in Google Reader, I would like to apologize for the spam related to prescription drugs that is now showing up in the feed. I have no idea why this is happening but there are rumors that the tech support people are working on it.
Neglected Blog
August 22nd, 2009
I’m back to my long neglected blog. On another blog I read, Julie blogged about Living, not Blogging – I have a similar excuse. It has been a busy summer with trips to visit family or drop off kids every weekend until this one when I actually find myself home on both Saturday AND Sunday – time to blog. I have been to the Adirondacks for camp pickups and dropoffs, Ohio for a family reunion, Vermont for my niece’s graduation party, and camping on Cape Cod for a family beach vacation. [Links to pictures]
Ostensibly, this blog is about teaching. I miss being in the classroom and am still hopeful about a job but also dealing with the reality that I may be substitute teaching this fall. It’s not a good job market even for science teachers. I am knee deep in my masters portfolio and although it’s a bit tedious, it feels good to be thinking about teaching and learning full time again. After 14 months of intense grad school including student teaching, it was odd to not be immersed in it full time this summer. On the other hand, I didn’t get to take any of those trips last summer.
Another adventure got me thinking about how difficult it is to teach something you know instinctively. The picture above includes the front of my canoe as I solo paddled on a recent canoe trip with my kids, some friends, and their kids. I have canoed for most of my life – more than a few decades. I didn’t know that my friends were novices – the kids all know how to paddle from various camps; we no sooner pushed off when my friends asked how to steer. I gave them the standard sailor response about moving the rudder in the direction you want to go. They were going in circles as I came to realize that canoeing is almost completely backwards from that and they had no idea how to use a paddle as a rudder and were focused on paddling only. We laughed hysterically while I picked the process apart and then taught them how to steer a canoe.
Fortunately, when I teach my students, I know that I need to prepare and break things down. This was just another reminder of how difficult it is to teach something that is instinctive – chem lab procedures are like that for me but fortunately, in my professional experience, writing procedures for others including programs for computers was part of the job.
Potpourri
June 10th, 2009or rather what I’ve been thinking about this week:
- I continue to be inspired by Dean Groom’s blog about technology and education. This post titled 5 Ways to create spectacular classrooms is loaded with good ideas and is also on my Links worth Saving page.
- I signed up for Dr. Scott McLeod’s Second Annual CASTLE Summer Book Club which will be reading and discussing Why Student’s Don’t Like School by Daniel T. Willingham You can still sign up through Friday, June 10 – I have an extra copy of the book, if you are local and interested.
- For class this week, I’ve been playing around on Twitter – you can find me at Twitter/KathJensen. In the middle of the experiment, the Time magazine article on Twitter by Steven B. Johnson hit and made me think about Twitter in new ways. I enjoyed being able to discuss the article right away with others who had read it. Twitter might stick with me but I wish followers with pornographic profile pictures would go away. More about Twitter in this NY Times newspaper piece on Twitter features and a NY Times magazine article by Thompson on digital intimacy.
I’m looking for an idea for my next class assignment on Web 2.0 platforms (or Web 3.0). I didn’t like Digg and am OK with Twitter but not as transformative as I was led to believe. Does anybody have any suggestions?
Substitute Teaching
June 3rd, 2009
© Diane Diederich – istockphoto.com
I have been substitute teaching 1-2 days/week, mostly with the 8th graders that I taught fall semester during my first student teaching block. I don’t know how teachers get over giving their students up to the next year, another grade, and new teachers year after year. These were the first students that I taught and they will forever be important to me.
Today, I subbed for their Math teacher. It was odd to spend so much of my day on testing – NY State Social Studies Test for the first two sets, NY Regents practice test with the next class, review book with AIS students, and a practice test with the accelerated class. Yes, there were three tracks today in 8th grade and the 10th graders were part of a one-year course spread to three-semesters to help students be successful on the NY State Regents test that has become a requirement for graduation. Perhaps this plan was partly due to having a sub but at least two of these activities were on the preprinted calendars for the class.
It was most amusing that the students assumed I wouldn’t be able to help them with math. The comments today included:
- “I didn’t finish my quiz because I ran into a problem and didn’t think you’d know how to help me.”
- Another girl was questioning a problem involving graphing a formula. I provided two options: 1) solve the problem algebraically to be as close as possible to y = mx + b and graph that, or 2) leave the formula in its initial form and make a table of possible x and y values, then graph them. She told me that she would take the quiz home for help from her father. I told her that it wasn’t a take-home test and her regular teacher would help the next day.
- Another group didn’t believe my explanation that trig was involved in a triangle-depth problem until two other student groups confirmed it. They all expressed surprise that I remember sohcahtoa and knew how to use it!
Tonight I have the pleasure of reading Paolo Friére for my last class of my master’s degree. It was a nice antidote to a day in a middle school classroom. I am continually amazed by his description of man’s inhumanity to man but deeply inspired by his thoughts on critical literacy and pedagogy. In any classroom, probably in any group of people, there is oppression and a need to examine its structures and practices. From Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Friére, 1970), “Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift.” I look forward to having my own classroom.
Just for Fun
May 25th, 2009
This is a Word Sift of my blog over the last few months. You can do this for any document by going to http://www.wordsift.com/ and pasting in a text selection. I’m pleased that student was the most common word because that is the real focus!
Digital Native?
May 22nd, 2009
© Konstantin Inozemtsev – istockphoto.com
The last course of my program, titled Literacy Learning as Social Practice, is going to be terrific. A book for the course is one that I might have bought on my own - Lankshear and Knobel (2006), Digital Literacies: Everyday Practices and Classroom Learning. Among the issues posed this week was the difference between digital natives – individuals who have grown up in the personal computing age, and digital immigrants – typically older than 35 and uncomfortable with computer technology and the new social spaces that have been created.
I am old enough that I learned to use a slide rule in high school chemistry. I learned to program using paper punchcards including assignments that were programs to format text for printing – a rudimentary word processor. I remember when personal computers had a drive for a program disk and one for a data disk BUT no hard drive. I remember the first time I saw VisiCalc run on an IBM PC and watched a number in a formula matrix change instantly because another number had changed – the first spreadsheet program.
I fall into the age category of a digital immigrant but as someone who has been there since Commodore 64 and TRS-80 computers were the state-of-the-art, I am more than comfortable – some might say addicted. One of our class projects is to investigate a Web 2.0 technology in which we have not previously participated. Most of the Web 2.0 technologies suggested on the syllabus were included in my list of literacy events over the last 24 hours. None of the ones left on the list intrigued me.
Then I came across this post about the use of laptops in the classroom written by Dean Groom. He is an “educator of educators” specializing in technology who writes one of my favorite blogs. In that post, he stated that educators should, “Use Diigo as a forum, a learning management system and an exercise book!” – everyday! What I have learned about Diigo is fascinating, it seems to be a combination of Facebook, Google Groups, Wikispaces, Diig, Google Reader, and more – with the predominant feature being the sharing of bookmarks. At least that is how I understand it so far - stay tuned.
I love an adventure and am grateful that my cyberspaces include educators from all over the world.