This is the busy time

So this week is going to be a LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG WEEK. Have to study for a quiz and test in a class, got the E-portfolio to do (which I will start Tuesday maybe). For those of you who, at the beginning of the class didn't believe that I would wait until the last minute you now know I was telling the truth. Who knows what else there is to do but oh well the semester is almost over, which then means summer, and then another semester only we are that much closer to our goals. I am looking forward to a lot and at the same time dreading a lot.....well kinda. But anyways this week we covered some valued information that I honestly didn't know a lot about mainly due to the lack of use, however it is vital that we know a little about this stuff. When we broke out into small groups we were told to role play. Personally I feel very split between role play, for this I think it should not be used how we were instructed (no offense Heath). I believe for something like these scenarios to be effective you need a prepared person to do the role play or deal with the same thing otherwise the full effect I feel is missing. I do think for a less serious situation that role playing can be effective but I just don't believe it is all there when it is this type. Once again it is time for more things to get done and I will see you all on Wednesday. And just so all are aware and excited this Sunday I believe is another retreat. Jenna don't forget to bring your car just in case :P

Loss for words

Here is a day for all to remember. I really don't know what I want to blog about other than what we were assigned for accountability.
"What can I bring to the table of a group?" well of course I like to bring FUN, however I can be serious. I like to think about things from a logical way and try to solve some problems very quickly.
"What can I improve on?" I can improve on everything however some key ones to improve on would be for me to consider feelings more when I act in addition to taking my time with some of my responses, sometimes they come back to bite me. another big thing for me is to make sure everybody is involved, sometime I do not pay attention and leave people out.

Now back to my random talk, Matt I am pretty sure I dominated your TEST and I would like to say I really want to watch some disney movies now. hahaha

Lesson For Us All

Lesson Plans, Lesson Plans, Lesson Plans. Thats what we covered this week. We broke them down and covered what it was that we should cover and then what each part of the papers given to us with the outcome, assessment, questions, and conclusions. Now that I have lead you away from my point we will begin the actual blog. In class while Heath was talking to us, he covered a topic. That topic basically was keeping everyone focused on the class while in class, keep the students from day dreaming, or just sitting there not paying attention. Now I had gone and talked to Heath and Allie on Thursday because I had to take off a little earlier than everybody and wanted to double check on some things. While I was there we got to talking a little more about this. Now in class it was apparent that we were not completely there, which is not necessarily a bad thing as long as we are still there and active but I know for my case I was randomly going in and out of class with my head. Now while talking to Allie and Heath Thursday we got to talking about how the future freshman are going to take this class. We were wondering what their attitude was going to be. Now for my perspective I told them that we are going to have students that appreciate this class and then others that are just there because they were given some money. When we got to talking about how the students pay attention I brought up this point, for our class we are here because we wanted to be, we applied for this and we are here to get something out of it, and even after that we still are not fully aware in class. Now for them to fully see my point I talked about how I viewed the class when I was a freshman. I was not the student who viewed the class as useful or worth my time other than I was here for the money, now after a while I got a talking to from the lady in charge (Debra :0 ). I know who would have thought. However see talked to me and my view turned for the second half of the semester but it showed them that even for us it is hard to stay focused and we have chosen this and now we have to try to keep students (almost typed kids in) that the Hixson program chose to be here to do the same thing. So at this point I do not have a solution other than trying to connect and prove to the students so as to help them get the most out of the class but otherwise I am clueless on what we should do. So a thought for all if any ideas post a comment or bring it up in class

OOPS

So after talking about accountability in class I of all people forgot when this was to be done. In fact I didn't even look at this stuff until today, so sorry. However I am glad that I didn't blog until know because over break I have something that I would like to bring up. During our amazing week off I went home and spent the entire week doing not much that I would describe as productive when you look at a regular week. I did however come to a realization. While at home I was able to hang with some of my friends that I haven't seen for a long time, those that went to another college, a younger grade than I was or for whatever reason. While hanging with one in particular I found that he has not really matured since high school and is still stuck in that high school stage of his life. It made me think the students that are going to be coming in next year are going to be at very different levels of maturity and it is our responsibility to control and try to connect with each of them. Now in terms of this friend he wouldn't leave me alone the entire week however he never had anything productive to do, as in all he wanted to do was sit and play games. Now I believe that every now then it is worth taking some time and playing games and I do but I cannot do that all day everyday. Now I am not trying to say that he is a bad friend in anyway but he has not really grown up. I just thought that this is a good point to be aware of before next year, we are going to have students that are very productive with their time and have matured a lot while at the same time there are going to be those students who don't really have a care in the world and won't see a point in anything we are doing. It is up to us to reach those students and help them grow and see that there is a point to what we do. So sorry about being late and hope everyone had a good break and will see you on wednesday.

Let it Rock

Alright so this week was a total mind evaluation. WE HAD TO THINK. ALOT. haha I do believe that metacognition is a good thing to do and that it is a good thing to learn about so we are more aware of it. I have found that I tend to do it a lot, sometimes while the situation that I need to think about is happening. However it never hurts to do it again and again. The more I think about it the more I think of the saying there are two sides to every story. Now when I first hear this (and probably most of you) I think there is my side and there is the other person involved side. Well while going into this deep train of thought I have come to the conclusion there is two sides for just me (and sometimes more). We all have our first reaction which in many cases is what ends up happening. Now as Heath was saying in class how he had mentioned that he hated the book, he had said something that came across not as it was supposed to. He of course didn't mean that (at least that is what he says now). So when thinking about this I think of a situation that seems to be reoccurring each week. I dislike a certain part of my Tuesdays and Thursdays (yes a certain class) and my actions in this class are not what they could be. I of course am doing things to make me enjoy my days a little more, however I can think of multiple ways that I am effecting not only myself, but the kids around me and the teacher. Moving forward I can also say for those that have developed a high level of metacognition and can catch themselves (by that I mean think about what is happening before it is happening) have a chance to stop themselves and can act in the manner that is going to bring about the best result. So after rambling and loosing myself a time or two (lack of focus at this point) the goal I believe after all this is to practice this enough to know what the situation is going to turn into and why it is going that way so we have a chance to fix the outcome before it is too late. Thats all I have to say

Teaching

I think that teaching is something that we should cover, or maybe more into different teaching methods. I know we went over them a little in class but there are always ways to better discover a good way of teaching, most of those ways is from experience which we will be discovering next semester but I would like to hear more from people who have some experiences and explain what they did and why it worked. It is something that we are all going to need to know how to do and so we might as well learn what we can before we just jump into the water and find out it is only 6 inches deep.

So.....

Alright so this week we talked about discrimination issues kind of. Well I cannot say that I am the best person in the world to come to while dealing with discrimination. I have feelings and view certain things differently than most people. I will honestly say that I do not agree with a lot of the things on the list from the email. I know that this is a sorter post but I think if we are to fully discuss this it needs to be something that is done on a more personal level but at the same time I want you to understand that I do not mean any of this in a bad way. I am only telling you in a no harm meant kind of way what I think and feel about this topic. If you wish to no more than ask and I will be willing to talk to you about it.

A Deeper Thought

Alright, so I have titled this blog A Deeper Thought. I will get right into what made me come up with this title. I have just spent the last hour going through and reading all these blogs. While reading I have of course been thinking, and because of how I am I have been thinking about just about everything coming up and about random things from the past. As I was reading I came up with something that I would never have thought about and am still not sure what made me think about it any more. So....How many of you, when you eat Chinese, are tired of getting a fortune cookie that really doesn't give YOU a fortune anymore. . . . Well I was and usually I take my fortune and read it, put it down and say that was a joke. Once again that happened today as I had some good Hy-Vee Chinese. My wonderful fortune was "To open the doors to your future, first you must open the door for others." Now between when I first started this and now I have come up with even more meaning to this. (random side note, just proves I think a lot about A LOT) However, after reading some of the blogs I have come to the conclusion that we are all taking this class to help us on our way to our future. By doing this we have unknowingly chosen a path that is making us open doors for others first. Now my brand new thought is adding more to it. By opening doors for others we are building a stronger base for us to push off of to reach our end goal. There have been many before us and I'm sure many behind us that will not take the time to open these doors for others and I am not saying they are going to fail but they will have to work harder to get to a point that we are. By opening these doors we have accepted that we cannot accomplish something on our own and that we are accepting some form of help from others to HELP US. There are times when we will struggle and there will be forms of help trying to help us but no matter what we have to open the door for them to get to us and help us. This can be looked at from so many directions that I am starting to loose my direct train of thought. So this is not what I had initially planned on posting but I think that this is something that everyone should take into consideration. You can not achieve everything in life without ever opening a door, but look at the other side as well sometimes someone will not open a door unless it is being knocked on, so if you can follow this great if not ask me to explain. (In all truth I am still explaining it to myself) However, I will leave you with that.

Good ol #2

Alright so Wednesday in class Josh and Hannah had us go over the questions in the book. I think these questions may have brought up some new things to think about and some that we have talked about prior to. I think that these questions are important for us to think about and use as guidelines. For those who don't remember they are 1) Who are you? 2) Why are you here? 3)Where are we going? 4)How are you doing? 5)What is working? What is not working? 6) Are we there yet? I think that although we may not have exact answers for these questions we can all come up with some ideas for how we would like to answer them. I think these are something that maybe we should come back to at the end of the semester or before we meet the incoming students and see what we think.......see if we really think that we are ready for what we are about to embellish upon. I know that right now I am still working on figuring some of these questions out for myself. But back to my other homework and tasks to get done so see you all Wednesday.

1st post

For those who did not believe that I wouldn't start until the last minute, here is the proof. I would have to say however that the biggest thing that I learned from this past week would have to be from the mini institute from Friday. I went to Debra's and learned some things about social networks. Like I had mentioned in class, it has really become something that kids (yes kids) and the current STUDENTS have come to rely on. For those older generations they are just starting to use it and attempting to understand it, but now that they are they can see how it can be used in more than just a social sense. In the presentation Debra showed a video of a class using Twitter to post comments for the class, when you think about it it gives those kids who usually don't speak up in class the opportunity to give their reactions. Now after hearing this and some other things from class I can see how things like this can be good for the incoming students that we will be mentors too. Like Heath had said with these blogs, it is making us take something that we felt was a learning experience and think about it more and comment on it. It makes us take a little more time and really learn something about it so we can make up our blogs. And the biggest thing with the blog system I believe is that we will get to look and see what everyone else has to say about things, instead of having everything in class get turned into a teacher and nobody learns from other people in the class. Not only are these things useful outside of what might have been first considered their original purpose but they are a great way to go about networking, keeping in touch with old friends, (in my mom's case) finding old friends and reestablishing the friendship, and a way to meet new people. These networks are really an untapped resource for countless things. But hey that is just what I think, and now before the night is over I am going to submit this. it is now 11:54