It's a Rainy Wednesday

Let's see, what has happened since I last blogged. Last Friday we held the first of our Urban Round Table  Series, which myself and a fellow classmate are in charge planning. This is an event that is held once a month and each month we invite a different teacher to speak. This past week we had a teacher who is actually a mentor of one of our interns, he is also a graduate of the Union MAT Program and also went through National Board Certification here at UGC, so he was able to provide a lot of insight on both our internship experiences as well as the program. The talk was supposed to last an hour and it went two hours and over 20 interns attended. He was so helpful answering all of our questions and being open and honest with his experiences and how he has dealt with different situations. I think the timing was perfect for all of us, at having been interning for almost two months now, it helped to have a different perspective and also hear how our fellow classmates experiences are going. This weekend I was hit by the change in weather, long days and stress so suffice to say I slept a lot and still not feeling well called in sick to my internship on Monday,which was hard for me to do, because I don't like missing things. What I realized is I would not be at my best for my students and I did not want to get anyone sick. My mentor was totally okay with it and I went back yesterday. Yesterday was a little rough, but today was much better. I am looking forward to doing a demonstration for my lab on Friday, hopefully my students will be as excited as I am. I gave a longer quiz today, which I was glad to see some of my students did much better than they had been, so I was extremely excited to see that. I think my students enjoyed today's lab. They got to look under the microscope at an Elodea leaf, which was still fresh so they were able to see chloroplasts moving around, which they seemed to think was pretty cool.
  My supervisor is coming in again tomorrow, which I am interested to see how it goes. The last time he was in, my students were a little less behaved than they normally are, so I am hoping I can get them to stay on task and listen to the notes I am giving them. I am looking forward to any insight my supervisor can provide to help keep the students more on task and keep the flow of the class go more smoothly. Sometimes it is all dependant on the day and the student dynamics, so you can never quite predict how a class might go.
  Well I think that is it for today. I will let you know how the demo and supervisor visit went next week!

October is Flying By

 I can hardly believe today is October 20th and the month is almost over. One thing I kept hearing over and over about this program is it is a lot of work, but the time flies by. It seems like just yesterday, I was starting my first day of the summer program not knowing what to expect. I just found out last week who I will be interning with at Doyle Middle School starting in December, which I am glad to know. Part of the MAT Program, is you must do an alternate experience, so if you are interning for the full year in the high school, you must spend time in the middle school and vice versa. Due to the fact that Troy HS has a middle school attached to it, for convenience I will be interning there for the month of December, when UGC has its break. Our break is pretty much the month of December, so when we do not have Graduate classes, to best use our time and not overload ourselves, I will be doing a half day with a science teacher at the middle school and still continuing my half day at Troy HS. I am not quite sure what to expect. Some might think middle school students would be easier to deal with, but from what I can tell and what I have heard; December might be an interesting month.
  Halloween is next week, so I am trying to think of something fun, yet on task that I can do with the students. I will have to consult with my mentor to see if he has anything in mind. I have a few options for Halloween for myself as far as plans, just not sure how next week is going to play out, but should probably decide if I need a costume right?
  Something different that I had to do this week for my Biology Demonstrations class was to make a model. It had to be 3D, but could be a model of pretty much anything that could relate to a concept in Biology, except a lung or cell. I chose to make a model of mitosis and meiosis. I know these are areas that students have a hard time with trying to compare the two, plus I am not all that creative, which I may have mentioned, so I thought it would be somewhat easy. As I started to think about it more and started to work on the logistics, it was not as easy as I thought, but I had already committed to it and wanted to give it a try. Originally I thought I would use shoelace licorice and candy buttons, but soon realized this was not as feasible as I thought. So through walking around the craft aisle at Walmart and talking with my professor, I used paper plates, pipe cleaners, puff balls (pom-poms) and yarn that I then attached to a tri-fold posterboard. After many hours of toiling with it, it is now about as good as it is going to get. I have to present it to the class tonight, so wish me luck! I love crafts, but some types of creativity and artistic abilities are certainly not my strong suit.
  Okay, time to get back to work. I will try and post a picture of my project soon, so you can see the final project that is if it travels well to survive.

Short Weeks are Always the Crazy One's

 So even though this week was a shorter week, it has been jam packed. Today I was observed again by supervisor and video-taped. Overall it went pretty well, it was a little hectic, but I am glad it is over for now. I ran another review activity, this time we did Bingo. We are having a quiz tomorrow on Biochemistry, which was a tougher unit for them to understand, so I was looking for an activity that really helped them to prepare. So I talked with my roommate from college who is a high school Biology teacher and she suggested Bingo. So I created a Bingo table and came up with 24 words, and then I either provided a definition, structure or question that would lead them to one of the 24 words. Whoever had Bingo received 5 extra points on the quiz tomorrow. I was definitely not as nervous for today, which was quite a relief. I think I did okay, the students were a little more chatty than usual, but overall the activity ran smoothly and I was able to get the whole class involved and participating.
  Last night I had my seminar course, which ended up really interesting. We had a guest speaker, who was the resource officer at Burnt Hills Ballston Lake School District. He is a New York State Trooper, that his main job is to patrol the school district and schools, to get to know the kids, to be someone that they know and feel comfortable talking to. He is the eyes and ears for the school and I can see why the kids like him. He is very down to earth, will tell you like it is and his main concern is the safety and well being of the ~2400 students that he is responsible for, which is quite an undertaking, but he seems more than happy and qualified to meet the challenge. It was extremely helpful as a future teacher and current intern to hear what he had to say. He was very insightful and forthright with his thoughts and experiences. I was very glad to see that they have this type of resource to help keep the schools safe. New York State after Columbine, allotted $14 million to provide resource officers to school districts in New York State. There are approx. ~100 schools that have received this opportunity and many schools are on the waitlist for one. Some school districts use their local police agencies to provide an officer for their school.
 Literacy Thursday, was a little different than usual, but it was nice to try something different. We had been reading about incorporating picture books/children's books in our classrooms, so we all had to bring in books for ourselves and others outside our content, that another classmate could use. I chose one that talks about what happens to a hamburger (digestion). It has a lot of great pictures and shows exactly what happens in each stage, in a simplistic way, that students would understand. We broke up into small groups and had our classmates make suggestions on how we could incorporate writing assignments for our students utilizing these books. It was a great activity and I walked away with some great ideas as to how to use my books for a lesson plan I have to write this week. This class has really challenged me, always pushing me to think of relevant ways to incorporate literacy into my classroom, which in science is so important.
 Let's see, Friday evening I attended my first Science conference, which was held at Siena College (my alma mater). In NY there is an association called STANYS, which is for science teachers in NY. Our local Eastern STANYS organization held a conference for our region Friday evening, offering a variety of options of sessions that we could attend to learn more about particular science topics. I chose one on the brain and the other on science literacy. The brain one, was very interesting and they distributed a lot of materials that we could take with us to use in our classrooms. Then there was dinner, which was an opportunity to chat with our colleagues. I was able to catch up with my fellow UGC science graduate students, which was a lot of fun as usual. Then there was a keynote speaker from RPI, that gave a lecture on Global Warming.
 Then today, I took my first of the three state teacher exams, required for me to receive my initial teacher certification. This one was the LAST, which is the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test. It is a four hour exam that consists of 80 multiple choice questions and one written response of 300-600 words. Luckily it was an afternoon exam so I was able to sleep in and be mentally prepared. Overall I hope it went okay, it has been a long time since I have sat for a long exam like that, so it was a bit draining. Results come out next month, so wish me luck.
 Well it is time for bed, but thanks for checking in. As I mentioned before, if you have any comments, questions, topics you would like me to talk more about, please post a comment and I would be happy to respond!

*Below I am attaching some pictures I have had, of the new UGC building taken at night. It really is an impressive facility and offers a lot to the Graduate students.

I could get used to these three day weekends!

his week went by so quickly, I can hardly believe it is the weekend already and a three-day weekend at that! So excited to have another three day weekend.... starting to get used to them, which probably isn't so good. I decided like I may have mentioned to take advantage of my three day weekend and work at my old job on Saturday, at the Environmental Lab to make a little extra money which is always good to have.

  As far as school this week, I think things went pretty well. Instead of a quiz Wednesday, I gave my students a Crossword Puzzle which would test them on their knowledge of different Kingdoms, Phylums and Classes in our Classification unit. Overall, the students did really well and I actually made a couple questions extra credit, so some of them were really excited to see they had earned extra credit points. We started a new unit on Tuesday, Biochemistry. This unit has been the toughest so far and the students do not seem to be thrilled with the difficulty and a lot of notes, so it is taking a lot of extra explaining on my part for them to begin to understand.

  Grad classes were pretty intense this week. On Wednesday night, in my seminar class, we had a guest speaker come in and do our SAVE training which is required to substitute and for NYS teachers. The speaker comes in to talk about at-risk students, students who have been abused or are being neglected. She gave us an idea of what to look for in our students and what the intervention steps were and that we as teachers are mandated to report any abuse that we suspect. It was kind of an overwhelming presentation and some of it was kind of hard to hear, but I am glad that I now am equipped with this information so if god forbid, I ever come into contact with a student that needs my help, I know what to do to get them the assistance they need.

  After Wednesday's class I went to the Times Union Center to see Keith Urban and Sugarland. What an amazing concert, I had a great time with great friends and amazing music. Sugarland was phenomenal, Jennifer Nettles is so unbelievably talented, I wish they could have played the entire time. Keith Urban was good as well, didn't have quite as many uptempo songs as Sugarland, but what an amazing voice and not so bad to look at either.

  Thursdays literacy class, was a little different than usual. We had read prior to class the usefulness of Children's books in our classrooms, so we had a discussion and then went through a book in class. We had a variety of tasks to complete, but were shown first hand, how a children's book could be integrated into an adult classroom, even at the graduate level and promote so much thought and creativity, quite a neat exercise.

  Next week will be busy, I have my supervisor coming in again next week, will probably need to videotape again and have a few larger assignments due.

  Time to get back to work!

*Below are a couple of photos from the concert that I thought were fun and worth sharing!

Once again if you have any questions, comments or suggestions of what you would like to hear about, post a comment!

Whirlwind of a week

  Just wanted to check back in and update you on what has been going on for the past week. So far everything is going about the same with the internship. Still getting comfortable with the material again and getting used to classroom management. The past two days in lab have been fun because we are doing a lab on Pond Water which the students seem to enjoy. One of the Biology teachers collected water from a local pond and we have the students prepare slides with the pond water to view the organisms that live in the pond under a microscope. They get really excited when they see things moving like a paramecium, hydra, water mites, and different types of worms as well as algae. When they see something move they get excited and call either myself or my mentor over to show us. They have to observe these organisms, draw them and identify what they are. A student today said "I love this lab, my favorite so far!" Which was nice to hear. It was nice to hear her enthusiasm. Other than that, no tests/quizzes this week. I did create a review sheet for the topic of Classification we have been working on and will be giving it as an in class worksheet grade, kind of like a quiz but they can use their notes. So hopefully it will go well and the students will find it helpful and do well. We started on the topic of Biochemistry, which is an area that I would not say is one of my most favorite, because I am definitely not the best chemistry person, so it is taking some extra review on my own and preparation, but in the end I think it will be fine.
 This week is getting busy; I had to write a lab for my Graduate Class using materials I could find around the house. I ended up finding a lab on the internet whichI tweaked, and made a lab handout with questions. The area I had to pick from was genetics so my lab was on Protein Synthesis. I have a hard time with activities like these because I am not a "think outside the box" type person and that is what this class helps us do, which will be good in the end, but something  I am struggling with at the moment. Hopefully I get better with time, because I think it is valuable and important, but certainly a weaker area for me.
   So excited for tomorrow evening, on a fun note. After student teaching, work study and night class, I am going to the Times Union Center to see Sugarland and Keith Urban (huge country fan)! I bought these tickets before I started classes and it is going to be a super long day, but I am sure well worth it. Everyone needs a break now and again right?
Speaking of breaks, another three-day weekend this weekend! Columbus Day is Monday, so I will have three days to get work done and regroup. I will actually be working at my old job, at an Environmental Lab on Saturday since I have the extra time and can certainly use a little extra spending money (I keep expanding my teacher wardrobe, oops:).


  Okay, time to get back to my work study job, thanks for reading and I will post again soon!

 **PS if you have any comments or questions about UGC or the MAT Program, please post a comment and I will be happy to respond!

Phew, glad that is over....

So today was my first of many days that I was to be observed by my supervisor and video-tape my class. I must admit I was very nervous about today and how it would go, but overall I am pretty happy with it. Today was a big day for review, because I am giving my students their first test of the term so I had to make sure I provided an opportunity to review a lot of the key concepts that will be covered on tomorrow's test. Review days are hard, because it is not new material, so the students sometimes are not as focused or willing to participate because they have seen the material already. So I created two review sheets. One was a conversion handout to help them practice converting millimeters to micrometers and micrometers to millimeters, the other handout was a crossword puzzle. I had them work on the conversion sheet first, which didn't go as smoothly as I had anticipated. The students had a lot of questions, so I was moving from student to student trying to help them. Most of the time they just didn't know the answer off the top of their head and wanted my help, but when I talked it through with them, asking them questions, they realized they did know how to do it, they just had to walk through the steps to get to the answer. Once this started to happen I felt a little better. My first thought was OH NO, this isn't going well, but in the end it worked out okay. So once they got through the conversion chart and moved on to the crossword puzzle things seemed to move along well. They seemed to actually enjoy it and didn't have too many questions. So overall I think these worksheets helped them prepare for their test and were a great first observation for my supervisor because I had a lot of interactions with my students, which I enjoy. After class was over, my supervisor and I met and he asked what I thought I did well in today's lesson and what I thought I needed to work on. After we discussed this, he broke down what he thought I did well and made a few suggestions as to how I could make what I was doing better. So overall, I thought a really good first meeting, took some of the pressure off. As far as the video-taping goes, we have to video-tape ourselves teaching every two weeks and then have to view the video and critique ourselves. We had to do this over the summer as well, and though none of us looked forward to this, I always found it to be really helpful. I was able to see more clearly what I did do well and little things I could do better or try to avoid.

Yesterday I gave my first test, which we did a lot of review for. I was even a little nervous for the students, because they seemed stressed out over the idea of the test. Even though this test was only 10 more questions that the last quiz. Anyways, I was overall fairly pleased with the outcome.

Something that I am currently planning that is in the works, is the Urban Roundtable seminar. This was something that was started last year per the request of a now UGC grad, that was placed in an inner city school district. She wanted the opportunity to hear stories and get advice of teachers who teach in these districts and to be able to talk to her classmates that were going through the same experiences. This year, myself and a fellow classmate, Tricia, were asked to plan this discussion that will be held one Friday every month for an hour in the later afternoon. Our job is to recruit teachers in Urban districts, book the room, invite our classmates and then run the evening. We are currently trying to get the first event planned, so wish us luck! I think it will be a great opportunity to hear from the experts, experiences they have had, and how they dealt with it and handle obstacles they handle on a daily basis. Plus, it will be a nice time to catch up with our classmates and counts towards our required Professional Development.
Anyhow, glad it is Thursday and the weekend is around the corner. So far so good, looking forward to relaxing a little this weekend.