A Trip to Mars

A trip to mars
Skater64

I was getting ready to leave for mars. I packed food, my spacesuit and packed me desert for on the ride to mars. I went in the ship and got prepared. I got ready to takeoff to mars. They did a countdown 5, 4,3,2,1 blast off. I was proud of myself. I landed on mars then jumped out I did back flips. I was happy when I jumped out. I got bored and left to home. I got bored because there was nothing to do. They thanked me for going to mars for them. I was proud of myself.

Solving the problem

Solving the probmel

Originally uploaded by Kimberly_Herbert

I love using my Promethean board and projector. The problem is we are constantly turning the lights on and off ask kids try to take notes. I have kids that are low vision, dyslexic, dysgraphic, or who just never bring their glasses. So our inclusion aid brought in some small LED lanterns that run on AA batteries. It works great. The picture doesn’t do it justice. The kids love using them.

End of 1st Week

Well the first week is over. In the spirit of start as you are to go – I started with technology. The first day I had my homeroom class clean the writer pads, idle all last year, and put new batteries in them. Then they created their accounts and started their typing lessons. The second day my partner teacher was actually scheduled to use the writers, but she asked me to get the kids set up so I did. I know there are people that maintain we don’t need to teach keyboarding because the kids just get it. My kids don’t have computers at home. They need some formal practice or they won’t be able to keep up at the Middle school, JH, or HS.

We are scheduled to have the cart of laptops every 6 days and the cart of writers every 6 days. Also I’m assigning each table to a computer each day, rotating so no one group gets stuck with the silver laptop that is as slow as all get out every day.

We haven’t used the laptops, yet. We will be using them Monday. I also had my kids that have oral administration of their tests use the iPods while taking the 4^th grade placement test today. One child has sound issues and didn’t like using them. So aide took her to resource. The other two seemed to like the autonomy of working at their own pace. They did take the ear buds out between questions. I find ear buds to be very uncomfortable, so I expected that. I look forward to integrating more technology into the classroom each week.

I need to borrow the cameras from the Tech department, to have the kids photograph experiments and other lessons in class. I plan to start that in the next week or so.

We also had some tech fails. The on line grade is still a mess with the wrong people assigned to classes as teachers meaning I can’t take care of my grades for the Leos because their homeroom teacher is the teacher of record for math and science.

First Day with Kids

Image via Wikipedia

Today was our first day with kids. I just had my homeroom today. They are a pretty good bunch. We spent most to the day working on our social contract, which I need to print out. They decided on the team name Pegasus Galaxy, partially my fault. They voted for Pegasus, but we have the Pegasus Program for disabled children. So I was trying to say Pegasus Constellation but my brain got stuck in the Stargate Universe and I kept saying Pegasus Galaxy.

Night out

I just spent a wonderful evening at Melissa & Phillip’s house. Loren and Brett were as sweet as can be. Brett loves to sit on the couch with my I-phone and look at the pictures of family members. Loren plays games on it. First she had to put on a show. I should have gotten some video of it. I did get some of her and Brett saying suuuppper staaars for my introduction video. I need to go finish that now.

When Rights Clash

http://www.teachermagazine.org/tm/articles/2009/08/21/294472ilutisticstudentsdoglawsuit_ap.html?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mrss

COLUMBIA, Ill. (AP) — A Monroe County judge says a southwestern Illinois school district must allow a 5-year-old autistic boy to bring his service dog to class.

I understand this child’s rights. I’m just wondering what about kids like me when I was little. I am still very allergic to some types of dogs. Depending on the breed I might not be able to be on the same wing, even now as an adult. I would have trouble breathing. Then sinus and lung infections could set in. My skin would react. It would be raw and inflamed. Then secondary infections

Image by kris247 via Flickr

would set in.

Has anyone ever been in a situation that had to balance the needs of different children were serious health risks were involved?

Day 5 of Teachers Back

It was a good day. I got my room together. My terrific teammates got our Pod common space decorated. I forgot to take pictures. I am not a foo foo person, decorating is NOT my thing. One of the two bulletin boards is set up for AR points contest. The other is going to be a star student bulletin board – but now is set up to introduce the teachers and our aid.

Day 4 of Teachers Being Back – District Inservice

We went to a district inservice on Interactive Notebooks presented by Region IV. It was great. I’m really looking forward to using the interactive notebooks in Science and Math. The presenter was high energy and really believed in the system. He didn’t use catch phrases and didn’t tell us that we had to do it exactly like him for it to work. It was refreshing. I can’t wait to get started on these.

Day 3 of Teachers being back

Today was Day 3 of Teachers being back. Our secretary has been selected to open the new high school. So we had a birthday breakfast for her this morning. People gave moving speeches about her. The funniest was about her first week at our school. First principal handed her the entire population of our schools folders and told her to enter them into the computer. This was 48 hours before the students were due to arrive for meet the teacher. She and counselor stay there till after midnight getting all of students entered into the computer. The more I hear about the backstage antics of a first principal, the more I am amazed she lasted as long as she did.

Then we had a team meeting. One teacher is very upset about and being required to teach writing, math, social studies. I felt that the team leader handled this very well, and in what more diplomacy that I would’ve been able to muster. Then we worked on our rooms for the rest of the day. It was over all a very protective day.

Day 2 of Teachers Being Back

Today was day two of teachers being back in my district. We had ½ day on campus 1/2 day convocation. The administration has cut back. No longer do we have a keynote speaker. It was the Superintendent and kids from our district, no paid speaker. That is an improvement in this time of budget crunching. I was still not happy with other ways money was wasted.

1. Having it. The Superintendent could have simply given his state of the district speech via e-tv. That is what the system is made for.
2. Having it at a non district location that we have to pay for – and I predict sometime in the future will be paying millions of dollars in an 1^st amendment settlement for having used the site. It is a church an all it is going to take is one employee who isn’t allowed by his/her religion to go in another religion’s sanctuary for there to be a huge lawsuit.
3. They are still pushing Capturing Kids Hearts. I’m still disturbed by the cult like language and techniques (Like isolating people at their “retreat” center). The lack of parental involvement also disturbs me especially because of the disregard of children’s safety I saw in their presentation. Encouraging a child to go cold turkey off of drugs without parental knowledge or medical support. CKH’s thrusting teachers into the position of drug councilor and mental health provider.

Good things

1. I didn’t have to go to the restroom and I hightailed it out of there at the end – so I didn’t get cornered by teachers from “the wealthy –wanta be schools telling me “You did so well considering your population”. UGGGGG I teach kids – wonderful, delightful, aggravating kids. Now if I can just avoid them at the district inservice on Thursday.