Saturday, March 30, 2013

Remind 101

I heard about Remind 101 from a couple of my teachers in my credential program but I hadn't really given it much thought when I heard about it because I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to have enough control over my class to use it this spring. However, in light of the large number of students that have cell phones (I'm willing to bet in my bio class almost everyone has a cell phone that can get text messages and I know everyone has one in my anatomy class and even within that, they have smart phones) I think this could be a very useful tool.

This is a free service (you're charged by your phone company for text messages but most people have unlimited text plans) that I can set up to send students reminders at any time of the day I choose. I can even set reminders to be sent at a specific time (to the minute!) and day. I set up accounts for both of my classes. I can't wait to tell my students about them. It is so cool. So many of my students just don't use their planners and don't know when things are due and I am sure that they look at their phones very often....I really think it will help them to not have the excuse of "I left my planner in my locker" or "I forgot to look in my planner" or I don't like to use my planner."

It's so easy to opt in to receiving reminders. By the way, you can get reminders either as texts or emails or both. Students and parents can sign up. I think that I can get the parents more involved with this service as well and I could see some parents being happy to know what their child has due. This is a no-opt out technique because now when the parent asks what the student has for homework of if they need to study for their quiz, they can't say "I don't have any homework or a quiz." I also think that the email option is good if people don't have cell phones. I mean, it's obviously not exactly perfect but seriously, everyone has a cell phone or access to a computer with email. Ok, maybe not everyone but I feel safe saying that about my two classes.

It's also really cool because I don't need to know their invidual numbers or emails and they don't know my personal phone number. You just send a text to your classes' phone number (424) 277-6948 and in the text section where you type your message, you just write @class code (I created codes for bio and antomy) so it would be @3bioehs for 3rd period bio and @6ap for 6th period anatomy. They even have a remind101 app. I'm not sure what it does since I don't have a smart phone...

Friday, March 29, 2013

Mendelian Genetics and more

Today is Friday, fianlly! yay! I just wanted it to be the weekend so I could sleep in and wrap up my work on my PACT. I am almost done and then I just need to carefully go through it for necessary edits. I also need to do an article review for my science teaching methods action research project because the presentation of our findings thus far is on Weds while I'm in Hawai'i. I also need to apply to more jobs as a few have deadlines in April and that is approaching on Monday.

In Bio, I was teaching a lesson about an introduction to Mendelian genetics and a student (so happens to be a member of my peanut gallery) raised his hand. When I called on him, he asked me if there is any way I can teach Chemistry next year. I told him that there are no jobs for me at all at Eureka High. This caused an outcry from the whole class! I said, I'm going to have to move. "What, where, we're all moving there!" Not even joking, those are exactly the words another student piped up with. At this point, Tera joined in and told that the students that is why I have been going to job fairs and that I'm going to be going wherever I get a job. So, then the student who first asked the question very seriously asked, "Can we get a class picture on the last day of school?" I assured him, that of course, yes we could get a class picture. I also told them that I would keep a blog of my first year of teaching and they could follow along with me and my first class. Then another member of the peanut gallery said, "No, we're your first class!" To that I said, true, and I already have a blog about you guys. Then they all wanted to know if they were in it. Then I told them that I would put up our class picture in my new classroom and then I thought about privacy rights and I said that maybe I couldn't put it up in my classroom. They were ready and willing to sign a petition (everything is solved to them with a petition) so they could be on my wall. But then Tera did say that it's probably okay if it's not on the internet so everyone calmed down and we went back to the lecture.

I'm going to miss those little boogers when I leave.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Who cares if it's a choice?

Today in my science teaching methods course, we were talking about controversial topics. We got on the subject of AIDS/HIV and how it is becoming more prevalent in people ages 13-24 because of a lack of knowledge of it and the risks for contracting it. As many people are aware, it is more prevalent in men who have sex with men. OK so now we're on the homosexual topic. My teacher asked us how we would respond to a student who asked, "Why are people gay?" My immediate knee-jerk reaction was to respond with, "Why are people straight?" However the context of the question is that it was asked in an information-seeking manner.

We read this article:
http://www.nabt.org/websites/institution/File/pdfs/american_biology_teacher/2000/062-05-0326.pdf

I challenge everyone reading this blog right now to go to this link and read the study. It is written in pretty plain English and doesn't have too much embedded vocabulary. I think the implications are clearly understood without a biological background. If you think this is bogus, do your own research and comment below your findings refuting this articles claims.

When I get my teaching job, I am going to make a class set of copies of this article and if the question comes up or students are picking on other students for being gay, we're going to read this article not only to dispel any misconceptions but also to practice reading scientific literature.

We also talked about within this context, the difference between advocacy and information. It is important that in giving students information, you are not advocating something. For example, showing students a brain scan  comparison of a meth user vs non-meth user is information but showing them a picture of an extremely emaciated person is advocacy. My job as a science teacher is to give my students the information they need to make informed decisions, not make their decisions for them. If you give them a right and a wrong choice, that's advocacy.

That's what I learned today and whether or not this research sways anyone's opinion who is reading this, I really don't care. I don't care becasue, even if being gay is a choice, who cares? M.Y.O.B. is what I have to say, not to my students but that's how I feel off the record of the classroom. How much does it really affect straight people? Also, if it's a choice, then when did you decide to become straight? When did you tell your parents you were straight? (see how ridiculous those questions are from the other side?)

Monday, March 25, 2013

Oh, Monday how soon you come around again...

Today was so hard to wake up. I got home from my drive back up from the bay a little bit after 12:15 in the am. I'm finally getting better. It felt like I was sick forever!

Today was kinda cool. I helped one of my favorite students with her math homework (really they're all my favorite, just some of them behave in ways I'd rather them not) . She's in Algebra I and I know that she struggles with it. We worked for the whole lunch period while I helped another girl who was absent all last week make up a meiosis simulation. After school, the girl with the math came back in and I helped her through almost all of her homework, another girl who was absent last week as well made up her meiosis simulation and I helped a 3rd student clarify the difference between haploid, diploid, chromosomes, doubled chromosomes, chromatids, tetrads, crossing over, and mitosis versus meiosis. I do feel for them on this unit, mitosis and meiosis together can be a little bit confusing but I think that the two go together. Sometimes I think that if my students were paying attention the first time I taught things it would be easier. I mean I re-explain it to them the same way and then they just "Ahhh...I get it!" Miraculous! Hahahahaha!!!

It was cool helping that student with her math homework because I was able to explain it all to her and she really seems to be getting it. I hope she does well on her test. I mostly just emphasized that you need to write down all the steps. When it says to use slope and a point on the line to make an equation in slope-intercept form, write slope-intercept form y = mx + b so you know what you're going for.

I also spent a lot of time, the entire evening, applying for jobs. Or at least making sure I know what each job I'm applying for needs. It's so much easier with all of it being online. However, staring at the computer is a problem! I applied for I think 7 summer school jobs in the central valley, east bay and south bay regions. I found a job in Vista, San Diego. I applied to Los-Gatos Saratoga Union (Saratoga High). I am almost done with my app for Palo Alto Unified (of course they can't use ed join like everyone else!) lol. Basically just searching and applying to as many places as I can. My job wish list on edjoin has 17 schools. Oh yeah, I applied to a job for Chico Unified yesterday that was due today. It says that the "district viewed" so that is sort of exciting. Even though obviously they're going to view all the applications...

Saturday, March 23, 2013

VIP at the Job Fair

Today was the Santa Clara County Office of Education Job Fair. There were districts from Santa Clara, Saratoga, Mountain View, San Jose, Los Gatos, Gilroy present. It was a very productive event in all.

I had my packets all set for the 11 districts that had high schools. My packets included a cover letter, resume, printed ed join app, letter of rec from Tera, Ron (my supervisor), and Daryl (my Bilingual methods teacher), my letter of good standing (that I will finish my credential in June), CBEST and CSET passing cards with a business card on top. I left mom and dad's about 8:20 am and was pulling up at the County Ed Office just before 9am. A friend who is a fellow candidate in HSU's program is going for math and is from Campbell also went. We met up before going in and that was nice to walk in with someone. She really wants to work and live in Monterey (who doesn't?) but her mom dreams of her moving back home and working for the Union School Dist. like she does. She left the fair rather early, around 11am.

There were so many people there! It was overwhelming at first! A lot of people were multiple subjects and the Single Subject people were mostly Social Science and English. While I was waiting in line for the Morgan Hill School Dist, the lady in front of me was a Special Ed person and she told me that she knew a science teacher for Campbell Union Dist who was retiring and so I gave her my business card and also went and had a short (5 minute, 5 question interview) which I think went well. Morgan Hill didn't have a job but the lady actually "chased" me down (I was in heels so it was like a slow speed chase...) and pulled me back to get me an interview slot. She told the interview scheduler that I was "dynamic, interview her." I ended up cancelling that interview because I got one at the same time with Santa Clara Unified and they actually had an opening.

I waited for Fremont Union for about 30 minutes and had a short screening. The lady looked at my resume and wanted to know about PEERS (Switzerland research proj).

So back to my job interview...I stood in line for the Santa Clara Unified School District. Ok, so I'm at the front and the guy came to me, shook my hand and brought me over to the corner where he was interviewing people over a cow. Not a moo-moo cow, I mean, yes a moo-moo cow but a moo-moo cow replica (it worked as a table for him). He said, "I hope you're not afraid of cows." Of course, I said that I grew up in Livermore, so no, I'm not. lol. He looked at (my cover letter was on the top) and he literally only read where I wrote my address. He asked me, "Are you a lumberjack?" I promptly answered, "Yes, I am." Turns out, he went to HSU and even did his student teaching at Winship Middle School which I was able to say that it is reopening for the fall.

Get this small world thing....the girl standing right across from me, talking to a different recruiter was also and HSU alum (class of 2011 Enviornmental Science). The guy started talking about HSU and his wife went there, one of his girls, and and his son currently plays football there.

Summary: he gave me the final interview for the district of the day. I interviewed with the vice-principal of Wilcox High School. They have a biology opening. They even have a school garden! It was a good interview for a preliminary one.

So that's the long, short version of my day.

Oh, I completely forgot! Dad's friend, Lee, is the HR director for the entire county. I found him and got to talk to him for a bit. He even was walking by where I waiting for my interview and came by and personally congratulated me and wished me luck. I felt pretty cool, having the HR director of the entire county come by and personally wish me luck on my interview.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

"Taking the Day off" Thursday

I have been sick now since last Weds...I've just had this hacky, seal/dog cough thing. I lost my voice over the weekend/earlier this week it was really bad. I finally took today off to rest. Of course I couldn't just sleep all day so I actually made my day off rather productive. I spent most of the day preparing things for the job fair this weekend in San Jose. There are a ton of high schools in the Santa Clara County school system! I am also working on getting my resume finished up and looking fabulous...Quite the task! In addition, I was able to clean out my car. Impressively enough, I only had 4 jackets, a few loose papers, a chip bag, 2 diet coke bottles, a diet coke can, and lots of sand in all. That's from not cleaning out my car since probably the beginning of Feb. That would include 2 trips to and from the bay and many days of teaching, and a week of running a kids camp.

So my day off turned more into a work day but at least I got things done that I needed to. Still need to tidy up my room. Just odds and ends mostly a few clothes on the floor and that sort of thing.

Monday, March 11, 2013

Monthly Monologue

Today was an early-out for students so teachers could collaborate. What this boiled down to today was what Tera calls, "Monthly Monologues." I had such a hard time staying awake as I was already tired. Basically the principal gets up in front of us and rambles about stuff. I'm not really sure what he was talking about...Could not pay attention.

On a more positive and much less boring note, I am enjoying presenting my prezi to my students. They are in total awe. They think it is so cool! I love it. They all want to know why I made it and why I'm not using a power point and I was like, because this is like 1,000 times cooler. :)

I think that my students are starting to get a little bit too comfortable like they are trying to ask me questions to derail me and get me off task. I need to rein them back in so we can get down to work and focus on them learning what they need to.

Here's an example of one of my student's work. This is their weekly bioterm assignment. They have to define, copy a sentence from the textbook, create their own sentence and draw a picture to represent the bioterm.

Friday, March 8, 2013

Introducing my students to prezi

Today was a pretty good day and after this week, I'll settle for ending on a pretty good day. I got to present the prezi I made for my Bio class about meiosis. It was really cool because the kids were really excited. Many of them had never seen a prezi before and they were like, "whoa, this is cool, or what is this?" It felt good to get to use something I've made, finally. I didn't get much further than the introduction of the presentation but I think it went well and I'm finally starting to feel much more comfortable.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

15 minutes of fame

The last 2 days have consisted of filming for my PACT teaching event = nerve-wracking! I'm so glad the filming part is over!!

Wednesday: I had to film the first clip of my 2 part series. I have to show my students collecting data. I chose to do this on the mitosis lab. Students were looking at prepared slides of mitosis in the onion (Allium) root tip.

 I didn't really like how the clip went because I felt super rushed to get the video done by the arbitrary timeline that HSU has set...Like, I had to push my class faster than Tera's class just to make this video.

It's all done and uploaded and now I just have to analyze it) It went fine...I'm just a perfectionist and have ridiculously high expectations of myself and obviously as all you reading this know, I am my own worst critic. I was just so stressed...I can finally relax now. I have a prezi all ready that I made myself (it's a model of Tera's power point) I'll include it if you want to look at it. It's about meiosis. I'm not finished because we're not going to finish it tomorrow (Friday) and then I'll have the weekend to finish it.

Thursday: Today went much better...I got to have the class share their data using a data table I created. I have found that when I create something, I feel much more comfortable teaching it. That's why I'm excited to use my meiosis prezi because it will be the first thing I created that I get to teach. We'll see how it goes....lol

I have to say that watching videos of my class/teaching is hilarious!! So much goes on that I see and either can't react to or don't see at all. Like I needed a volunteer to help me and I had so many hands raised. I chose a student and then in the video you hear at least like 10 students go, "Ah man!"

Meiosis Prezi:
http://prezi.com/2kjw5ylqfxxk/meiosis/?kw=view-2kjw5ylqfxxk&rc=ref-9863803

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Tired Tuesday

Today was a tough day. I was so tired! I don't even really know why, I blame the weather. I am very photosensitive. I also think it's kind of the slump before Spring break. I'm so ready for a break, the week of April 8th can't come soon enough for me. I have so much to do in the next 4 weeks. Luckily my PACT is due on April 7 so I will have that all done. yay! Can't wait for that to be over.

I just felt like I was super off today. We're working on a quick overview unit of the skeletal system in anatomy and I really don't like it because I'm not comfortable with this part because this is definitely something I never learned in any of my schooling. It's hard because students were working on a lab packet that had 4 different skull views and cross sections to label which of course I am nowhere near close to memorizing and the students just want the answers given to them and then they ask me things about the packet like why is this page number missing and I'm like...um, I don't know...lol Luckily they're pretty understanding but it's just an uncomfortable feeling to not know something they expect you to know but they're students and they don't know that a biology degree in the generalist category that I have has very few classes I had to take about animals, let alone humans.

I'm filming for PACT tomorrow so I gotta decide what to wear tonight. I had a dress all picked out but now I'm not sure because I was having static cling issues but that could have been due to the fact that I hadn't shaved my legs in a Humboldt County minute and so maybe the hair was collecting static electricity.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

PACT teaching event

Tomorrow will be the first day of my PACT teaching event...oh boy, here we go. I have to film 2 x 10 min video clips to show my students 1) collecting data and 2) analyzing data. I'm filming tomorrow. They are going to be working on a mitosis lab. Wish me luck!

Friday, March 1, 2013

Close Calls

Today at lunch a student was hit by a car. It was pretty bad, bad enough to send her to the hospital. She was in a crosswalk and other cars had stopped and this lady didn't stop. We received confirmation from the administration through email during 6th period that she is conscious  talking with the doctors and after initial tests, she appears to have minor injuries. It's already on our local news...along with a stabbing that occurred last night near the plaza in Arcata.

Last Sunday afternoon, a girl who also goes to my school was almost abducted. She was able to get a rather accurate and specific-sounding description of the man. She was walking near the high school and a man in a van tried to get her to get in his van. She fled to a church and he attempted to follow her.

I hate hearing about this stuff because I am always so afraid it's going to be one of my students...