Category: Blog

I was absolute wiped out yesterday afternoon and so were my kids. I know, I asked.

For the first time ever, we did an accellerated block. We normally have 7 regular class periods and a short advisory period, giving us 50 minutes with each class. To help the math and science department and to give some time for special events, we have a modificed A/B schedule where we have 4 class period each day. Thursday was 1st through 4th, which gave me no break. Friday was 5th through 7th, then Advisory (we call it PAWS), so we could have a pep rally.

I tried to get my students to do class periods of work, but I think I was only successful with the advanced (AP) students. I am having trouble getting all my students to get with the program, and am going to have to really crack down on them on Monday. I have students in each class that are cooperating, but not the majority.

Thankfully the modified schedule happens about once a month. Though boy howdy, science better be doing labs on those day.

Would love to get some more ideas on this.

One of my student — one of the broken ones from last year that I’m still trying to fix — asked me to sponsor movie club.  Since I enjoy making bad movies as a hobby, I agreed to sponsor.

He’s a smart cookie — I wasn’t sure when we could met and showed him my calendar — he said "how about Thursday after school, you don’t have any appointments then.  He figured it out quicker than I did!

So far, I’m thinking about showing them Jing.  Wish there was a good way to install that on the lab computer, I could find good use for it.

I’m also going to show Camtasia and would love to have a lab set of it.  Will have to ask the Techsmith people.

Will also sign them up for screen cast.

Wish Adobe would do better pricing on their products.  Right now, I post the school announcements on a website from an email.  Wish I could get a copy so the person writing the email could do the posting.

Not that it’s hard to do the cut and paste, just that it takes time.

There are other things he could do directly if we could get another copy.

I work with a department that most of the time I really like.  I’ve already whined here that they just don’t do a good job planning.

For example, I got materials in the middle of the first week of school.  Excuse me?  I was required to report before that and they should have been there waiting for me on the first day.  Or at least the first teacher work day.

So here’s the deal.  They are starting a new program, and I officially got the news of it today. Supposedly my principal was supposed to forward an email last week.  He didn’t and he’s too busy to do that.  So I just found out that I am expected to be somewhere on a full day on September 11th.  The substitute plan is to do half a day on Monday and Tuesday evening on the 13th and 14th.

Since my plan this year is to do nothing extra if possible this is not my idea of a good time, but at least I get extra pay.

Wish they would get their act together.

Not sure I like this modified block thing.  WAY too long with 2nd period — my lunch period — though we did get an extra five minutes to eat.  Actually way too long with each class.

Also no break today.

Tomorrow, I get a too long break.

Good news — Labor Day Weekend.

Our campus based technician arrived today and introduced himself.  Avid readers will recall I have looking forward to this event for some time.

Not his fault, but nothing like having support arrive the week AFTER the students arrived. 

He left me with a favorable impression.

I took several courses at @NewHorizons from my district and I have been using the software since I got back.

I had never even looked at Illustrator before, and I used to use Publisher.  For what I have been doing, Illustrator is easier:

Making signs with the objectives for the week for each class.

A sign indicating that the seating chart had changed (though kids STILL didn’t see it).

I did know how to use Photoshop to resize photos – but did use that information today to put our new assistant principal on the school website.

I’m sure I’ll be using the software even more.

And it has made my life easier.

We survived the first week. Lots of new enrollments the first couple of days, and since web mastering was one of the few open electives, I got lots of new students.

However, I have about 20 kids in each class, except PreAP/AP Computer Science, it’s at about 15. Which isn’t bad, considering that former administrations have tried to kill it.

Things I wish could change:

• Wish I could put my own students in Moodle. It takes about two days to get new kids in.
• Wish the process of putting students on Novell were faster. I should have all students at my school on Novell over the weekend.
• Wish the specialist would contact us the week before students start. Contacting us on Wednesday of the first week is a bit late.
• Wish parents would enroll new students the week before school starts.

Nothing I have control over but life would go better if these things were done in a more timely matter. And enrolling your new students would probably fix the Novell issue.

Only thing — I figured this out YEARS ago.

I created my own classroom management system years ago, because it helps keep me organized. Since the district has moodle, I now use it.

Quoted from http://melaniemcbride.net/2010/08/22/classroom-management-2-0-an-holistic-vision/:

melaniemcbride.net » Classroom Management 2.0: An holistic vision

Initially, I used blogs because they were a relevant interactive learning experience. But soon discovered that the course blog was also serving an unlikely purpose: classroom management.

She’s right.  However, I have a much more structured environment that she does which puts things in a different perspective.

First the classroom management system helps me stay organized.  It forces me to put down my assignments in advance.

Second the classroom management system answers all those annoying questions:  “Did I do all my work?” “Did you grade my assigment?”  “What do I need to do to make an ‘A’”.

But it also forces my students to be organized, and allows them to keep up with what they need to do.  Now, my classes are only 50 minutes long, and I have a truancy system in place that forces my students to come to school.  As a result, there are some things I can’t or won’t do:

• Allow drinks in my room.  Just the thought of a drink next to a keyboard with teenagers on either side make me shudder.
• Allow food.  See above.  Added issue with both, THEY DON’T PICK UP AFTER!

If my students were picking up after themselves, I might allow food.

• Allow free time and wandering around.  Sorry but we only have 50 minutes.  However, if you do have everything done for my class I can live with a few moments of off task behavior.
• I do allow people to go to the restroom as long as it isn’t everyday and they have done my work.  Remember I am limited to 50 minutes! We have a lot of stuff to do.

I do allow students to listen to music and urge them to bring it on their MP3 players. 

In order to prevent tardies, I do my instruction at the first few minutes of class.  If you are lucky I will record it with Camtasia.  But only if you are lucky.

Well, I have my last staff development on an online course starting next week.

But we’re done with our three days of building Staff Development, I have completely finished one of the online courses I needed for Instructional Technology, I’ve done all the work for the second and waiting for it to be graded and finished, and like I said, have the last one starting next week.

The online instructional technology courses have been interesting.  I don’t think we could have completed the assignment – taking an existing project and making at a Group Project Based Learning assignment in a classroom easily, so that was good.

It was also good that I didn’t have to drive somewhere to take it.

It was more work than I wanted to do for a full day staff development credit, and it looks like the other one is more work that I want to do for half a day’s credit.