Skip to main content

Already too busy for words!

I took Sunday off as a day of rest!  And of course, it was Mother's day so I spent the day with my Mother.  My Dad took us out to eat and we watched a movie and had ice cream later.  Yesterday... I just completely forgot to post!  So this post will be about what I did yesterday.

Yesterday's focus was pertaining to the class I have this evening in Legal Issues.  I had a case brief that I needed to turn in for a homework assignment and NUMEROUS chapters in a law book to read.  Have you ever read a law book?  I have found that if you don't take it personal it can be rather dull reading.  By that I mean you have to really have a vested interest in what you are reading.  This really made me think about teaching and school in general.

Kids today get a pretty bum rap all around where school is concerned.  They are unfocused, bored, discipline problems, and all kinds of things... but rarely do you hear what I think is the real reason why.  Is what they are doing personal to them?  Have teacher's made the learning personal?  I remember when my daughter was learning decimals and she would come home from school complaining that she just didn't get all the junk that teacher was talking about.  So, I made it personal.  We went shopping.  We played with money talked about sales and percentages off so we could figure out how much we were really going to pay so we could stay within our budget, and it clicked for her.  All of a sudden those decimals and numbers and place values had meaning in her life.  I would never say anything derogatory about how my daughter's teacher taught, I wasn't there.  Maybe she did use great examples, they just weren't relevant to what my daughter was thinking was important.  I guess my point is here, much like that law book, it has to be personal to grab the kids' attention.

My legal brief was more about constitutional law and there just happened to be schools involved, so really no major lesson there.  The constitutional law that was broken was about checks and balances between the different branches of a specific state's government.  I wrote my brief, turned it in, and we will see what the professor thinks.  I'm hoping she likes it.  My undergraduate degree is in law and I've had A LOT of practice writing case briefs, complaints, contracts, and discovery documents.

Today I have class and still so much homework in my technology class.  I will be working long into the night.  But for now I hope everyone had a blessed Mother's day!

God Bless You!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Inspiration and a Smart Pen

I finally figured out how to work my little interactive white board tablet in my room.  I used it on Friday and my kids loved it.  I like it to, and it was really my inspiration behind getting my Echo smart pen.  When trying to figure out how to use my interactive white board tablet (we will call it IWBT) I thought well I'll just google it and go from there.  Turns out... it isn't made anymore.  Never the less, I was able to figure out what I was doing, and it is great for my classroom.   It operates a lot like a Think Pad.  At any rate, I've seen several blog post referring to smart pens and LiveScribe on several blogs I subscribe to and I thought I would check it out.  I found an Echo pen in Best Buy and fell in love.  I was on a spending splurge today and decided this was going to go one of two ways.  I either was going to get an iPad, or a Smart Pen.  Well... I got the Smart Pen. So I've been sitting at home and right now the new drivers are being done on my new p

A disappointment stumbling block.... (sigh)

Well I must admit I thought we were rocking along in math class, and then I get to test day.  I realize two things: 1)  The kids don't know the material like I thought they did. 2) Since so many of them don't get it, I know the problem is me. So today I am spending time trying to find a million ways to teach my kids about positive and negative integers and about greatest common factor and least common multiple (this for my 6th graders) so that we can retest on Wednesday.  I feel bad for the kids that completely aced my test, but I'm more worried about the ones that failed dramatically.  20%, 30%, and yes I even had a 0%. It is official.  Come Monday I will be off track on the lesson plan the teacher has left for me to teach.  It is also official that my teacher will be coming back November 16th, and I need to ensure when she comes back in it was like she never left.  There is a lot of pressure for a long term substitute.  It is much more different than if it was you

STEM Professional Development

Let me be honest.  I live for the summer.  I always knew teaching would be the perfect job for me because when I wasn't a teacher and spring hit... oh it was so hard to sit still in an office.  The last job I held before I taught was perfect for that!  I was able to turn off my fluorescent lights and open the blinds and let the natural light come in, and I would make excuses to visit clients so I could get out of my cubby and go!  Now, I just wait for that last school bell to ring and give my goodbyes for the year to my students and plan on a summer of organization, exercise, dieting, travel, crafting, sleeping in, and a new me.  Oh yeah, and I always intend to blog so much more. Reality is, I do a little bit of all of those things, and sometimes I even feel I've accomplished something, but partway into the summer...I get bored. There I said it!  The nerd in me gets bored and I start researching cool technology and thinking about all the new things I'm going to use in my