Finally!

I finally got around to making another post! Huzzah! Let's see... what's new in the last 9 months...

I successfully finished my first and second student teaching blocks at St. James Collegiate. They went pretty well, I learned a lot and made some friends among the teaching staff there.

Katie and I went on a trip to Minnesota after we were done our teaching blocks. It was alot of fun; we went to a Twins game, Valley Fair, Mall of America, and some of the less known sights such as the sculpture gardens, St. Paul's Cathedral, and went horseback riding too. I think my favorite part was going camping and horseback riding with Katie, it was great.

We both worked at Fort Whyte Alive this year as section coordinators as well. It worked out pretty well, I thought we were a good team at our site. I had a lot of fun, and got to work with some awesome kids. The counsellors were, for the most part, pretty good as well.

I just started back at the U of M. Classes seem like they'll be alright this term, though not as fun as in previous terms. I also got to go to my new school, which is Steinbach Regional Secondary School (SRSS). It's a huge school! Over 1300 students go there. Because of this, they have some really neat vocational programs.

I'm starting back at the U of M tomorrow... I'd much rather be at SRSS. But oh well, I'm sure I'll look back on doing regular classes and wonder why I ever wanted to do anything else.

Anyways... I guess that's a recap of what I've been up to in the last while. I'm going to go play some video games and make my lunch for tomorrow in my FANCY new lunch bag that I got from my parents for my birthday! It has a HANDLE! Amazing!

Graham

I'm hungry

I think the title of this post says it all... I'm starving! It's 5:41 on Thursday evening and I still have to walk to my car before I can go home, I'm not sure if I can muster the energy to do that.

I'm going to Brandon this weekend to visit Katie. I'm really excited, we haven't had a weekend where we can just lounge around and not do anything in quite a while. There's a pretty good chance I won't get any homework done this weekend, but I think after tonight I should be caught up enough to not worry about it.

I've decided that last term was way more fun than this term. Last term it was all new, and experiencing things we'd never done before. It seems like this term is alot of the same things repeated again. If I have to hear about metacognition or multiple intelligences again I'm gonna lose it!

I bought The Tea Party collection with the money I got from Christmas. It further reaffirmed for me that my favorite music is usually really depressing.

I'm undecided as to what medium I should use with my group for a Teacher & Tech project. We have to use some sort of technology to do our presentation. I'm thinking either a video (podcast) or a flash video of some sort. Any ideas, Babaloo?

Anyways, I'm going to walk to my car while being depressed because a) my stomach is eating itself and b) the Tea Party will convince me that everything sucks. Ahahaha just kidding.

Graham

Practicum's almost done...

At the behest of my lady friend, I've remembered that I created this blog, and that there might actually be people following it. So I decided to post here at the end of my first practicum.

It's been a rollercoaster ride these last 4 (and a bit) weeks, with lots of positive moments, and moments where I felt like everything that could go wrong, did. For the most part, I think my classes went fairly smoothly. I have a meeting with Ron (my faculty advisor), Heidi and Adam (my cooperating teachers) on Thursday to discuss how things went. Hopefully I met their expectations, but we'll see on Thursday.

I hope in the next practicum block I get to teach some different classes. These ones have been fun, but I want to get as much experience in various classes as I can, so that I can understand how they react to different types of work, and different methods of presenting the material. What works for grade 9's wouldn't work for grade 12's, for example. But I guess I'll find out in another 2 1/2 months.

I'm excited for winter break. I'm going skiing this year with my parents and Katie, it'll be awesome! I haven't been skiing for several years though, so I think I'll be pretty rusty. The solution for that: tree skiing on the first day! I don't think Katie would appreciate that, though.

Anywho, I have to go get ready for my next class, my prep periosd is almost done.

Graham

Crunch Time!

So it's crunch time in our faculty, and it's been that way for about two weeks. In the last three weeks of classes, I have a final exam, three major assignments, two debates to prepare, five reading reflections, and two or three other minor assignments. That's not to mention the usual amount of readings that are assigned. In short, we've been pretty busy for the last two weeks, and we'll still be busy for this coming week.

I think everyone is about ready to start practicum. It seems like everyone is sick of just talking about teaching and doing assignments related to teaching; they want to actually get out there and try it out. I'm also of this mind; I want to see if I can apply what I've learned in the classroom.

I'm starting to get a cold, which really sucks. At least I didn't get it last week, that would have sucked. That doesn't mean I'm happy about getting it two days before my research paper is due though...

Speaking of which, I'm going to go get some work done on that.

Graham

School assignments are in!

So I finally found out what school I'm teaching at. I'm at St. James Collegiate, which is on Portage just West of Polo Park. I'm super excited! And although I've probably driven past it dozens of times, I had no idea the school was where it is.

There was a wide variety of placements in my cohort(group of people that take courses in the same time slots). There were several for the Grey Academy, which is a Jewish school. There were also at least three people at Miles Mac, and even one at my old school, La Barriere Crossing, in St. Norbert.

There was mostly relief in our class when they were handed out. I don't think people were terribly upset about where they were, they were just happy to know where they were teaching. There were a few exceptions - one student seemed a little concerned about teaching at a Jewish school, and not really having much information on Jewish culture or rituals, which I don't think will really be an issue. Another student was concerned because they were assigned to a school which is within walking distance of their house, which means she'll know many of the students in the school. Again, shouldn't be too big of a deal as long as they maintain a professional attitude in and out of the school.

So now we play the waiting game. We meet our student advisers soon, and after that we have a Monday where we go to the school and meet our cooperating teachers. In all likelihood, we won't even know what class we're teaching or who our cooperating teacher is until this day, which is a week before student teaching starts. This is kind of nerve-wracking! But nothing that we can do about it but wait.

Anyways I'm going to go work on my technical development assignment now.

Graham

Teaching CS thoughts...

So now that I've started most of my assignments, I think that teaching CS might be one of the most applicable-to-real-life courses I've taken. Everything I've done so far, I can think of where I can use it in my teaching. I'm learning a lot in my other courses too, but they deal more with the more intangible parts of teaching. I might be biased towards this because I like computers and can see lots of places where they are useful in teaching, but I think it's good.

I've decided that I need to go down to one shift a week at my job, because it's just getting to be too much. I'd get rid of work completely, but I'd feel bad because they're so short staffed as it is. We'll see though, cause especially once my student teaching starts, I'll need every free minute for myself.

I found out yesterday that Brandon University professors are on strike, which means that Katie has no classes until at least Wednesday. For a program that is only teaching you for 9 weeks, missing one or two classes is a huge deal.

Anyways, just thought I should update my (maybe one or two) readers cause it's been almost a week.

Graham

In between assignments

It's been a few days since my last post, so a few updates...

I finally get to go out and play hockey next week. I'm subbing for a team that my dad's friend plays on, and I'm really looking forward to it. It'll be interesting to see how out of shape I am, though, I haven't played since the spring.

I had a lot of homework this weekend, and I'm going to continue to work on it tomorrow all day. I have several articles, assignments, and reflections to do; I want to try to get all my work for this week done tomorrow, so that I can work on next week's in the evening this week. We'll see what happens though.

I also got around to writing down all my assignment due dates on a calendar too, so I got to see what my workload over the term looks like. It should be not too bad, I never have more than two things due on a day.

I'm still a little nervous about my assignments. I'm not sure exactly what my profs are expecting from some of them, and one of my profs seems particularly anal about certain things. I really don't want to have to drop any courses, I'd like to be done school in two years. We'll see what this week brings.

Anyways, that's all I have for now.

Graham