My class is over. Yeay!!! I'm going to buy a bushel of apricots to celebrate. Actually, I'm going to try my virgin apricot juicing skills and see if I can make a batch of apricot nectar.
Summer is starting to run out. I was curious to see how my numbers are looking for next year, so I got online and pulled up my class rosters. Isn't technology grand? It gave me a heart-attack. I have two classes at 45, and one at 43. I e-mailed the principal and told him this wasn't going to work. He said he'd work on it, and asked me to call him. When I talked to him on the phone, he assured me that he would work with the registrar to take care of the numbers in my classes. In the course of our conversation, he also casually mentioned that he had made me the department head, and did he tell me that last spring? No, he didn't, but I had kind of figured it would happen, just by the process of elimination. We lost our department head and wonderful Spanish teacher to a different high school in the district last spring. (Sigh! Grrr! That whole situation made me so mad! And sad!) I'm the only full-time foreign language teacher left who has been in the school for at least a year. The German teacher we share with Bonneville is the department head at Bonneville, and I'm sure he doesn't want double-duty. Ah, the joys of a small department.
Anyway, I'm off to tackle the apricots!
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Thursday, July 2, 2009
I'm drowning in a bowl of cherry-flavored jello of syrupy sweetness and despair.
Week one of my Master's of Education classes:
I have to say that so far, I am not very impressed. I'm really hoping that I just got stuck with a bum class. It's more than a bum class. It's shocking beyond belief, is what it is.
I'm a little limited in my choices of what I can take this summer. I got a late start getting the registration and admittance process going and as a result, wasn't able to get into the class I wanted to this summer. There was a class called "Understanding Reading" that was available. I already have my reading endorsement so I didn't really need to take it, but I thought it might be some good review. Heck, I might learn something I could apply to the content areas that I teach. It was advertised as a grade 6-12 class, so I thought it would kind of fit. Did I mention that was the only class that available? (...with the exception of the other class I signed up for that should be starting next week, but got cancelled.)
I got to class, and the professor started talking about a reading "program" we will be learning. Okay, I guess. Sometimes one specific program doesn't meet all of my needs, but I was willing to keep an open mind. By the end of Day 2, I realized that any time she used the word "program", what she really meant was "a script that you will be memorizing verbatim to teach rote memorization of vocabulary".
On Wednesday, the teacher informed us she would be showing us the "program" for teaching vocabulary. She then proceeded to drill and kill the word "helping" to us by breaking it into parts, having us write and spell each part, read, sound out and spell each part ad nauseam. By the time she was done, I thought she had gone a little whacky. It also gave me the urge to do things and say things I would probably regret later. (Teacher: Think of a phrase that uses the word "helping". Me: "Bob was helping Tom bury the body of the dead man in his backyard.) A few minutes later, it dawned on me that we would be memorizing that same asinine script. The line on the syllabus under assignments that reads: Teach a word lesson" means "Memorize my script that I wrote for you."
Aside from the annoyance of memorizing a script, the other thing that totally bugs me is that teaching vocabulary has its place, but if we pre-teach every word that might be difficult for the students, how will they learn the strategies they need to figure out what words mean on their own? Do you really go running for a dictionary every time you come across a word that is unfamiliar? I would hate to read if I had to do that. I could rant on this one more, but I'll refrain.
I'm really hoping this isn't what the rest of the program is going to be like. This might be naive, but I thought that in a master's program, I would be doing things like, I don't know...thinking and solving problems? Reading current research and discussing it with others? I want to pull my hair out and scream. This is NOT what I signed up for.
On the brighter side of things, we finally painted our deck. Remember the project that my dad came out last fall to help us do? The rest of it is finally done!
Before
After
And, lest you think I have run out of time-consuming things to do with the deck, I want to pull all of the weeds out of this part, add top soil to the whole area around the deck, and put in an herb garden. Oh, and don't forget the gutter I need to put in on the end of the deck so the ground below it doesn't get pounded to smithereens.
And as long as I'm giving a tour of the yard, the tree that we planted four years ago for Carrie has grown quite a bit. When we first planted it, it was just a little taller than Ryan. It's become a real tree since then, and actually creates a little shade now. I think the only problem with planting that tree is that I would be devastated if anything happened to it.
Carrie, I miss you. May our memories of the happiness you brought to our lives live on in the kindness we show to each other.
I have to say that so far, I am not very impressed. I'm really hoping that I just got stuck with a bum class. It's more than a bum class. It's shocking beyond belief, is what it is.
I'm a little limited in my choices of what I can take this summer. I got a late start getting the registration and admittance process going and as a result, wasn't able to get into the class I wanted to this summer. There was a class called "Understanding Reading" that was available. I already have my reading endorsement so I didn't really need to take it, but I thought it might be some good review. Heck, I might learn something I could apply to the content areas that I teach. It was advertised as a grade 6-12 class, so I thought it would kind of fit. Did I mention that was the only class that available? (...with the exception of the other class I signed up for that should be starting next week, but got cancelled.)
I got to class, and the professor started talking about a reading "program" we will be learning. Okay, I guess. Sometimes one specific program doesn't meet all of my needs, but I was willing to keep an open mind. By the end of Day 2, I realized that any time she used the word "program", what she really meant was "a script that you will be memorizing verbatim to teach rote memorization of vocabulary".
On Wednesday, the teacher informed us she would be showing us the "program" for teaching vocabulary. She then proceeded to drill and kill the word "helping" to us by breaking it into parts, having us write and spell each part, read, sound out and spell each part ad nauseam. By the time she was done, I thought she had gone a little whacky. It also gave me the urge to do things and say things I would probably regret later. (Teacher: Think of a phrase that uses the word "helping". Me: "Bob was helping Tom bury the body of the dead man in his backyard.) A few minutes later, it dawned on me that we would be memorizing that same asinine script. The line on the syllabus under assignments that reads: Teach a word lesson" means "Memorize my script that I wrote for you."
Aside from the annoyance of memorizing a script, the other thing that totally bugs me is that teaching vocabulary has its place, but if we pre-teach every word that might be difficult for the students, how will they learn the strategies they need to figure out what words mean on their own? Do you really go running for a dictionary every time you come across a word that is unfamiliar? I would hate to read if I had to do that. I could rant on this one more, but I'll refrain.
I'm really hoping this isn't what the rest of the program is going to be like. This might be naive, but I thought that in a master's program, I would be doing things like, I don't know...thinking and solving problems? Reading current research and discussing it with others? I want to pull my hair out and scream. This is NOT what I signed up for.
On the brighter side of things, we finally painted our deck. Remember the project that my dad came out last fall to help us do? The rest of it is finally done!
Before
After
And, lest you think I have run out of time-consuming things to do with the deck, I want to pull all of the weeds out of this part, add top soil to the whole area around the deck, and put in an herb garden. Oh, and don't forget the gutter I need to put in on the end of the deck so the ground below it doesn't get pounded to smithereens.
And as long as I'm giving a tour of the yard, the tree that we planted four years ago for Carrie has grown quite a bit. When we first planted it, it was just a little taller than Ryan. It's become a real tree since then, and actually creates a little shade now. I think the only problem with planting that tree is that I would be devastated if anything happened to it.
Carrie, I miss you. May our memories of the happiness you brought to our lives live on in the kindness we show to each other.
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