In the darkness

Earth Hour 2009.  I had not heard of Earth Hour before my science class last Thursday.  What a great idea; one hour with the lights off.  My whole family was prepared and ready to participate in earth hour.  On Saturday morning Briana and Garrick made some posters to put up on our front window and door.  Briana had participated in a school wide Earth Hour on Friday afternoon so she already knew what it was about.  Garrick is only 3 so he did not have a clue but he was enjoying himself.  Michelle and I decided we were going to participate but the question what what could we do to keep the kids entertained with for an hour in the dark?  I thought of starting a fire and making smores.  Then we decided that that was too much sugar when we wanted the kids to go to bed shortly after.  Then we decided we could make bush pies in the fireplace.  So we ran out to the store and picked up the necessary ingredients.  Sandwich (square) bread, cream cheese, pie filling, and of course a bush pie iron.  A bush pie is some filling between two pieces of bread which is then put into the iron and cooked in the fire.  In the end you get a small personal pie because the edges of the bread are squished together creating a pocket with filling in it.  We used apple and cherry pie filling but you can use anything you would like.

It was great.  We sat around the fire with some candles burning and we just enjoyed each others company.  The kids had never seen bush pies before so they thought that it was great to cook in the fireplace and have desert in the darkness.  It was fun; no kids arguing, only laughter with some silence.  All around it was a great experience.  One that reminded me of camping and how much I miss the sitting around the fire, in the darkness, in the wilderness.  I am so glad that it is spring soon because we are getting into prime camping season.

Darin

End of the Block

What are some of the things I have learned from my three week block?

Teaching is exhausting both physically but mostly mentally.

Planning is important but things do not always end up the way you planned.

There is never enough time.

Just because a bunch of lessons fail in a row does not mean you can not do the job.

Plans work and fail depending on the kids that day.

Kids have wild imaginations and can take you places you never thought possible.

Those are just a few things that popped into my head right now.  There are more but I would end up writing forever.  Teaching is exhausting; after three days of being in a classroom full time my brain hurt and my body hurt.  By the end of the three weeks I was starting to feel comfortable with standing all day, but by the end of every day I did not want to think anymore.  On three different days with three different teachers I was told that I should be mentally exhausted at the end of a day because the average teacher makes about five thousand decisions everyday.  Knowing that did not help my exhaustion but I definitely could see that many decisions are possible and would make my head hurt.

I planned the crap out of my unit before I went into the classroom and after the first couple of days I realized that most of it was not going to work the way I had planned it.  I had to redo everything I had planned on a daily basis.  I can not imagine having to do that for every subject; I will never get any sleep.  The plus is the I was getting quicker at planning lessons by the end of the three weeks.

I never had enough time for any of my lessons.  I have come to the conclusion that I was planning too much for too short of a time.  I had so much I wanted to accomplish with the kids but I just did not have enough time.  I am sad about that but I only had three weeks with them and that is not really that much time in the big picture.  I can not have them experience everything.

I spent time questioning my teaching abilities because I had many lessons fail in a row.  But I was trying a lot of stuff that was new to the kids that I should have thought about more closely.  I now see that there is a lot of base knowledge in procedures and such that have to be modeled very slowly at the beginning.  I can not expect that students will get things right away and be able to preform a task that should have been modeled for weeks before.  Lessons also failed because the kids were just not cooperating with the lesson on that day.  The lesson, with proper set up, would probably succeed on a different day.

My students’ imaginations blew me away in the blogging stories.  All the stories went to places I did not even imagine when I thought up the project.  There were some minor problems with the blogging but I call it a huge success.  I know what I would do it differently next time and I know that I will have to allow for more time to write, edit, and represent, but the students loved the blogging.  On my last day they made cards for Andrea and myself and three quarters of them mentioned how much they loved the blogging.  To allow them to experience blogging when most of them had not heard of it before was a great experience for me.  From there cards and in things they said I know that it was a great experience for them too.  I will take what I learned with the blog and be able to make a blog in internship that is even more successful.

In the end I learned that I can teach, but I still have more learning to do.

Darin

Pre-intern Block

I was supposed to post a reflection at the end of each week of my block, but I have been so busy that I totally forgot about last weeks.  I will discuss both weeks in one.

My first week was okay but I did have some problems.  I am going to start with the blogging.  My first day was an introduction to blogging and it went good.  The kids were extremely excited about the blog and are having a lot of fun creating their stories.  At the end of the first week I realized that we just did not have enough time for the blogging.  I only had fifteen minutes per day for the kids to review the story and then write their additions to the story and this was just not enough time.  I talked to Mrs. Walker and she said that I could ask the six kids I was blogging with per day if they would like to stay in at recess; this would give them half an hour worth of blogging time.

I am teaching a language arts unit on stories to learn from.  We are not only answering questions about the stories but also figuring out what the lessons are that the stories are trying to teach.  By the end of the second lesson, which was day three, I realized that I had started to quickly with the students and was expecting more than they could do without really modeling it for them.  I guess you could say I learned the hard way that I have to teach them first exactly what I want and model it for them not just tell them what I want.  I ended the four-day week with a teacher in role drama based of “The True Story of the Three Little Pigs”.  The drama went very well and the kids enjoyed it.  The only down fall was that I ran out of time and was not able to do the tableau with the students.  I was upset about this because I was going to film them and put them up on the blog.  I know now to plan more time next time.  Because the kids were not getting what I was trying to teach, what I had planned for week two was not going to work so I had to re-plan the whole second week.  I was upset and questioning if I could even do the job because not only were the students not getting it, but I was also not finishing my lessons.  Between the mental and physical exhaustion at the end of the day and the late nights making adjustments to my lessons I was on the verge of breaking down.

I must look at the positives of the week though.  The kids are loving the blogging and the stories are turning out better then I imagined, and I stepped completely out side of my personal comfort zone to do the teacher in role drama and it went well.  Andrea told me after that my voice was even shaking at the beginning of the drama; I was crapping myself at that point though!

Week two started with a review of the previous weeks lessons.  I was having some problems with my pacing and was not able to make it through my lesson again.  At the same time I was also having classroom management issues.  This added to my frustration and I continued to question my teaching abilities.

Tuesday was stories on video day.  I had three aboriginal trickster tales that I wanted to get through with the kids.  The videos were very short and they only needed to answer three or four questions per video.  I planned the crap out of the lesson; I did not want to feel like a failure after another lesson.  The videos helped to keep the interest of the students and we went through the questions together so that they knew exactly what I was looking for.  The lesson went very well.  I was in need of a successful lesson to build up my confidence again; it really did help me refocus.

Now that my confidence was built back up a bit I felt that I could actually accomplish the jigsaw activity I had planned for the next two days.  Let me start out by saying that we had indoor recess everyday so far this week.  Day one of the jigsaw went not too bad.  Day two was a different story.  My lesson ended up being split before and after recess.  Before recess was a complete management disaster.  After recess I regrouped, made some adjustments and told the kids that if things started to get like they were before recess I was going to pull the plug and direct teach them the information.  They lasted fifteen minutes and I pulled the plug.  I told them sorry but it just was not working.  I tried something knew and there was no way it was going to work that day.  The lesson did fail, but I did learn a lot from it.  I also thought of many ways to make adjustments for next time.  I was also very happy that I was me that was the more critical about the lesson than Mrs. Walker.  It almost looked like she was laughing at me as my lesson was sinking.  I told her the same thing I told the kids; I tried something new and if just did not work today.

Positive sides of this week.  Blogging is going great (other than the one day with no internet), I do not feel like a failure as a teacher, and I tried something new and lived to talk and laugh about it.  I hope that next week will end on a positive note as well.

Darin

My Students Blogging

As part of my three week block in my pre-internship I am having my students do some blogging.  I decided to start small with the students because they have little computer experience and I only have three weeks to do it in.  I have split the students into six explorer teams and given them all the same story seed.  Everyday six students will have an opportunity to add to the story.  Where will their stories go?

I would appreciate it if you could visit the blog regularly until March 20, 2009, which is my last day of my block.  Please leave some comments for the students.

Thank you in advance,

Darin

Teaching Treaties in the Classroom

Last week I had the opportunity to take a workshop on teaching treaties in the classroom.  Teaching treaties is a requirement in Saskatchewan’s curriculum and I think that it should have been for years.  I was raised and schooled without much First Nations content.  I did not know hardly anything about the history of Canadian First Nations.  Since I started attending university I have had the opportunity to learn about Canada’s past.  Canada’s past, when it comes to First Nations, is disgusting.  On top of the history courses I have taken, I have had the opportunity to listen to First Nation elders speak.  I am learning both sides of the story.  Why was I never privy to both sides of the story before now?  One reason my be that I was never taught it, and the other is because I had not taken the time to learn.  In my time at the university I have learned that if I want to know something, I have to find it out for myself; no one is going to spoon feed me with the knowledge I need.

Teaching treaties and other First Nation’s content in the classroom is very important because there are so many untruths, discrepancies, and misunderstandings in society today.  With education, there may be change in the future.  I do not remember where I read it, but I read that racist attitude begin in infancy.  It is no wonder that racism is so hard to change; kids do not have a chance to escape it if family members have racist attitudes.  The more youth and adults who are educated the better the chance of racism being part of history.

The workshop was my fourth opportunity to communicate with an elder as they tell about the past, the present, and the future.  Every time I learn something new and there is never any blame against me for what my ancestors did years ago to the First Nation People.

Through understanding the past, the future is only going to get better.  And that is why we need First Nation’s content in schools.

Darin

Playground Wisdom 5 to 8

5. “Always play nicely” and 6. “Challenge yourself everyday”

Well, I consider myself a nice guy and I pretty much get along with everyone, so always play nicely is something that I do everyday.  It is not something that I necessarily strive for, it is just me.  As for challenging myself everyday, I do.  Every morning I get up and go to school at the university; then I come home and spend hours doing homework.  That daily grind is a challenge everyday.  I go to school and have to think; some days my mind hurts from thinking and reflecting so much.  But, what a great thing when those hours of thinking and reflecting finally start to make the connections between what is happening at school and where I am going.  I have to play nicely and challenge myself or I am not going to end up being  the teacher I want to be  and especially the teacher I need to be.

7. “Don’t give up” and 8. “Trust”

We have been hearing since the beginning of the year “trust us” “don’t give up”.  At the beginning of the year I had problems doing that because sometimes I did not understand what the heck my professors were teaching us.  It just did not make any sense at times.  I do trust and I am not giving up, and I know that my professors have the big picture in mind.   I just do not always see the picture clearly.  Some days I wish I could go back and retake my fall semester because with what I know now, I could have learned a lot more from those professors.

Now let me look at it with a different lens.  When I think about “don’t give up” in a classroom,  I think about not giving up on a student.  If something is not working I should approach it from a different angle until that student gets it.  I have seen teachers giving up on students and I hate seeing it.  Pass the student on to someone else because the student does not get it, is out of control, or has a learning disability.  “My kids can’t do that” is giving up before allowing that students an opportunity to try.  Some days kids amaze me because they “can do that” if they are giving the opportunity and the freedom to try to do it.

Darin

Engagement activity

The other day I had present an engagement activity to the rest of my science class.  I showed the class that gravity needed air to work.  I had a bottle with a hole in it and when I filled it with water the water ran out of the hole.  Just what you would expect right.  Next I filled up a bottle and put the lid on it; then I put a hole in it.  The water did now run out until I loosened the lid to let air into the bottle, which pushed the water out of the hole.  Some classmates were amazed; in fact I was the first time I did it.

Then a classmate asked me if that worked “for beer darts I mean Coke darts”.  I was unsure.  To try to answer the question my professor went to the next room and got a can of  Sprite.  The class concensus was that the pop would not leak out until I popped the lid.  So I lined up the can with the sink so that it would run into the sink if it did leak.  I put the hole in the side and the pop sprayed out like a jet across the room hitting a classmate about eight feet away.  I quickly tipped the can into the sink and the rest of the can leaked out of the can.  The funniest think was that not a drop got on the floor; it was spraying that fast.  I guess it was the carbonation which made it spray?  I do not really know.  One classmate said that it would not spray if I would have put the hole in the bottom.  I now have more question then answers.  I guess that is what science is about; trying to solve mysteries, but always ending up with more questions.  Now that I think about it that it what education is all about; more questions then answers.

Darin

Playground Wisdom 3 and 4

3. “Reach for the Stars”

I reach for the stars every day.  To me, reaching for the stars right now is just trying to keep up with family, school, and Scouts; you know, life in general.  Some days I do not know how I am going to make it through; there is too much to do.  Too many commitments and not enough hours in the day.  But, I am succeeding.  I am getting what needs to be done done.  It may take me longer, or I may have to choose not to do some readings.  I am reaching for the stars everyday because I am a husband, a parent with two kids, a student, a Scout leader, a Group Commissioner, and now on my way to being a Scout leader trainer.  Back when I decided to go to university you should have seen some of my family member’s faces of disbelief.  Darin in university was not a vision of many.  I reached for university and made it in, and everyday here I am reaching for something that years back many people and myself never thought possible.  If I aim high and know in my heart and mind that I can accomplish it; I can reach and touch the stars.

4. “One step at a time…You’ll get there”

On the whiteboard in my office I have all my assignments and readings listed for each week of the semester.  I look at it and I am overwhelmed.  But what a great feeling to cross something off of it.  One thing done; the empty space at the top is getting larger and larger.  The space shows me that I am getting some where.  I may have a ton of assignments left, but I sure love the empty space at the top.  I am getting better at breaking up my assignments into workable chunks.  It is those workable chunks that are making the space at the top become larger.  One step at a time/one chunk at a time and I will get there.  Even if it only means the end of a semester, with every semester ending I am one semester closer to my degree.  For a guy who slept and failed his way through high school classes; I think I am doing okay.  Just had to decide to make that first step.

Darin

Playground Wisdom 1 and 2

1. “What ever you do, make it fun?”.

For my March block my unit is in language arts.  My co-op suggested that I do a novel study, but she is open to any good suggestions.  I feel that a novel study would be ok if I found a good book, but  I am thinking that maybe short stories or poetry would be more fun and engaging for the students.  Having a wide variety of reading experiences would open the door for cross curricular learning and a more fun and engaging unit.  I want my students to experience a different approach to what they are presently learning.

I will be starting a class blog with the students in my March block as well.  I feel blogging is important for students to experience.  Students need the opportunity to share what they are learning with more people than just their teacher.  In my pre-internship class there is very little work done on computers, which may by a challenge for me to do blogging, but at the same time it will be fun to see how the students react and how much fun they will have with the blogging experience.

I am starting to see some of the connection which our professors have been trying to teach us about for this pre-internship year.  The connections are broadening my thoughts, my ideas of how students can be taught.  My mind hurts today because of all the thinking and connections I was making.  But, even though my mind hurt, I am excited about the possibilities I am starting to see.  I always believed that learning should be fun but now I am starting to see how it can done in an integrated way to make it fun and engaging for my students.

2. “Practice gratitude”

I am grateful to my family for giving up a good proportion of time I should be spending with them, which instead I am doing endless amounts of reading and assignments for school.  This year has been very challenging for us because we are not able to spend all the times together that we should, but if it was not for my family I know that I would not be able to accomplish this in the first place.  Thank you and I love you.

I am grateful for my friends at school.  Without them going through this pre-internship year would suck.  I do not know if many of us would make it through this year without the bonds of trust and friendship that have developed.  We are like a family, and we should be because we spend more time together in a day then we spend with our families at home.

I am grateful to my professors Julie Machnaik and Garth Pickard for helping me to finally start to understand and begin to make the connections that I have not been able to make up to this point.  The connections are starting to open up possibilities that I did not know were even possible.

Darin

What’s wrong with this picture?

Other than the mess in my garage, what I find wrong with this picture is that my kayak is hanging from the roof.  Today is -24 degrees Celsius and all the lakes and rivers in the area have been frozen for three months now and will be for at least another three months.  The reason I have a problem with my kayak hanging form the roof is because of peace.  Inner peace to be specific.  Being out on the water paddling my boat is one of the few times in my life where is have inner peace.  I define inner peace as a point in time where there is nothing else happening in the world or in my life; everything  just melts away and I am not thinking about anything accept what I am doing.  I had one professor last semester for my ED Aesthetics class describe it as an aesthetic experience, but inner peace is a better for me to describe it.  I am very busy between family, school, Scouts, and life in general and sometimes I need to just get away from it all and not have anything to worry about.  That boat hanging from the ceiling gives me that.  I can put it in the water and within ten minutes nothing else matters; one stroke after another leaving my busy life and all the things I have to worry about behind for a little while.

Another time I have inner peace is with my family.  In the picture above we went out snowshoeing with friends.  You would not think that snowshoeing with four kids ranging in age from 2 to 10 would allow for inner peace, but I did for me.  We went out on the Trans Canada Trail here in Regina.  We snowshoed for half and hour, stopped for hot chocolate and snacks, and snowshoed back to the vehicles.  It was a wonderful time.  Only an hour but one awesome hour.

Most of my moments of inner peace happen in nature; kayaking, snowshoeing, hiking, camping, canoeing, biking, and even watching a sunrise or sunset.  But sometimes all it takes is being with or in the arms of the ones I love.  Inner peace moments generally do not happen often enough in my busy life, but when they do I am reminded of what life is all about.

Darin