Day 86: The Praxis of Pedagogy

Ok... so on Friday I postponed the auction till monday so that I could get some candy for the kids. I didn't want to give them slave chocolate so I went out today and bought some fair trade chocolate and fruit leather. 40 bucks!!! Fuckin expensive.

So anyways in all my classes we worked on storyboarding slides for the final presentation. It became very clear to me how important this was to do. They've never done something like this before and giving them a clear format on how to do this was very important. The biggest mistake that the kids made when making slides was that they wrote too much in the slides. It's funny cause so often they are told that they need to write in complete sentences and write more, now I'm telling them they are writing too much. So I made up 2 different slides, one with cue words and one with everything written out. I asked them which one would they rather view. They all preferred the one with the cue words. It makes the presentation far more interesting when you can see cue words and just listen to a person talk. Too many words and it's hard to concentrate on reading and listening. Anyways, my goals for next quarter are teaching how to research and cite sources, how to make a presentation, and how to make cornell notes. I just get so overwhelmed that it's hard.

After we did that for a while we watched more of the corporation while I stopped and explained certain parts. When I do this they seem to be far more interested in the video. This really is a TV world because they are far more interested and engaged watching a movie than anything else. Kids are reacting to the movie and talking back to it. Funny. It's hard though cause ideally they need to be able to interact with all kinds of mediums.

After school I had drinks with some of my coworkers. One of the new teachers I don't think is going to make it to next year. He gets punked out by the kids and some of the stuff he says I think is kinda racist. He doesn't try to meet the kids where they are at and just kind of has this negative attitude towards them. I just don't think that he's the right teacher for our population of students.

I got a Palm Treo 650. It was expensive, but I am now using it to organize my life. It is everything that I ever wanted and more. I feel very materialistic that such a gadget makes me so happy. But damn it's so damn cool. It's a PDA/phone/camera/camcorder/MP3 player. What more could a geek like me ask for??? I need to bring the birthday gift that I got for my friend Gina to her. I missed her birthday cause I fell asleep cause grading week/back to school/and credentialling classes were kicking my ass. Then I just never called her and it got to the point where i felt so bad that I didn't call her and go to her B-day party that I didn't know what to do. I'm a shitty shitty friend. I'll have to bite the bullet and just hope she forgives me. But I got her a book wedge light so hopefully that will make up for it.