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.