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!