The Weirdest Thing Happened to Me Today...

OK, so I was walking along in the hallway, when the administrative assistant came along and handed me this little envelope. I opened it up and found this... Check.

It was pay.

Wow.

Now THAT'S cool.

All this fun and they PAY me, as well?

It doesn't get any better than that!

Well, actually it does. The check wasn't quite as much as I thought it would be. We have been working since August 15, 2005, a total of 6 weeks. I have to admit, I was sort of expecting a check that pays me for 6 weeks. No such luck. I only got a check paying me for 4 weeks. Not that I am complaining (much)! This is how it works: the school year (and the related teacher contract) goes from September 1, 2005 until August 31, 2006. The school district takes your yearly salary and divides it into 12 monthly checks, so that teachers get paid all year long. The downside of this is that the first two weeks that I worked will not be paid (essentially) until August, 2006. There isn't anything that I can do. I talked with the Human Resource Manager and the Superintendent about it. That's how it works. Get used to it.

Oh, alright.

I guess.

But, I DID get a paycheck today, which is pretty damn cool!

I See Lynn!

Lynn Gambos, one of the four Business Education people to go through Project Promise 16 (I was another one of the four) has been doing substitute work in Fort Collins and Windsor. Today, she was at Highland High for the first time, substituting for Bonnie McVey, the Business Teacher in the room next to mine.

It was really cool to see her again. She seems to be doing well with her subbing. She is in the enviable position of being able to walk away from the classroom at the end of the day and forget about all of the grading, planning, discipline, etc. I know, however, that she would love to be teaching full time.

She had lunch with Julia and I and we traded stories.

I pulled this picture of her out of my archives. The picture is of Lynn at our Project Promise Urban Retreat in Denver in the spring of 2005. I am pretty sure that she is toasting us with a glass of orange juice, but it could well be a mimosa.

We Hold a Trade Show

Today in 4th Period, we held our Trade Show.

I have four different Technology 1 Classes, all moving at different speeds. As I have never taught AutoCAD before, I am doing a ton of experimenting to see what works as a teaching method and what doesn't. In my White Day classes, 4th and 6th Period, I have decided to try a Trade Show to spread information around.

This is how it works. I grouped the kids into units of two, based upon what I thought would work. Each group was given an AutoCAD command to master. They were to research it, play with it, figure it out. I then had them fill in a worksheet that asked questions about the command: What is the command line? What does the button look like? When is the command used? What are the different subcommands for the command? and so forth. Then the kids had to complete a poster that showed all of that information as well, including a sample problem that other students would have to solve.

Today was show time. Kids set up their little "booth" around a pair of computers, with the poster taped up nearby. One kid would stay at the booth and the next would rotate around the room, stopping at each other booth in turn. At a booth, you would be briefed regarding the command, shown all of the subcommands and shown the sample problem worked.

It seemed to work fairly well when I did it today. The 6th Period class also did this exercise and took their test over the material today. They all did well, but they should, as that class only has 11 kids in it and they are almost all pretty smart and moderately motivated.

We will have to see how the 4th Period class does in the upcoming quiz. I don't think that they will do quite as well, but at least they have some of the information down as a foundation for me to build on later.

I Spend Too Much Time Grading.

On Tuesday, I had classes the first three periods of the day, then lunch, then planning period for an hour and a half. Then I have homeroom (that's the best 30 minutes of the day, you can be sure!) Then the bell lets us out of school at 3:22 p.m.

For all of my planning period, then from 3:23 p.m. until 7:15 p.m., I graded stuff. Argh! I have a ton of backed up writing assignments and projects to grade.

Then, I decided to take C.J.'s advice. She is my mentor, the art teacher that has been around for awhile. I told her about my grading problems and how it was taking me hours and hours to grade projects. She says, "Let them grade their own!"

OK, I am willing to try anything at this point. I put together a fairly complex and verbose rubric that outlined everything that I was looking for in the grading of the Web Design Class's recent project. I handed out the blank rubric, kids opened their projects and filled out their scores. The whole process was done in 10 minutes.

I reviewed all of the scores and made a few changes, some downwards, some upwards. On the whole, the kids were pretty honest about their work and how well they did.

And I saved about 2 hours worth of work.

I am all for that!

Some Good, Some Bad...

On Tuesday, the Sophmore class spent all day attending the "Party Program." This is a highway safety/drunk driving awareness class that the kids go through. Apparently, they get to see lots of pictures of crashed cars and hurt bodies and stuff like that. OK. I suppose. What it meant was that most of my classes were missing 1/3 to 2/3s of their students. I threw out most of my lesson planning and just did reviews.

And some games.

The fifth period class that I have been struggling with actually came through and did reasonably well on my surprise quiz Monday. A few of them are starting to "get it." I spent time with one young lady, who has consistently closed her eyes, shook her head and said, "I don't get it, I don't get it!" I walked her through the first problem on the test (because I am a nice guy) . Finally, something clicked in her head and she said, "Oh! I get it! That's easy!"

"Yeah, you're right. It is easy. It's been easy this whole time!" She got a perfect score on the quiz.

The problem is that the part of the class that I struggle with is taking ALL of my time. The other 7 kids, who are now almost officially a Tech II class, are sort of doing an Independent Study, and teaching themselves AutoCAD. If I spend even five minutes with them in class, the other side of the room goes straight to hell. I really need to figure something out with this. The Tech II people need some of my attention, too.

Argh.

Anyway, about Tech II, it sounds like we are good to go and we will start working on our electric car (or possibly solar powered car, depending upon which direction we decide to go) around Christmas Time. I'm excited about the prospects, but not so excited about the extra work. Jill, the teacher that oversaw the program last year, said that for the most part, all she did was supervise, the kids did all of the work. That would be good.

Now The Real Teaching Starts and I Begin to Think About Electric Cars.

OK, the first month of school is over and Homecoming is a fond memory. Now, we have to start learning.

I have already started with the 1st Period Technology I class. We did a brief review of the different skills that they have learned so far and then we had a surprise quiz (I called it a "Categorized Recapitulation of Acquired Skill Sets," they didn't get it). The kids weren't expecting it, but, for the most part, they did pretty well. Nothing on the test was all that tough, it was all techniques that they have already learned. We will start doing in-class problems each day and a quiz each week for the next month or so, until the kids have some AutoCAD skills and can start doing more interesting things like projects.

At the Homecoming Parade, one of the kids was driving this cool little electric car, with a large placard on it that said that it was built by the Tech II class at Highland High School in 2004-2005. There was supposed to be a Tech II class this year, but not enough kids signed up for it. I talked with Randy Ward, my principal, about this before the homecoming game. He says that I can run a Tech II class and build another Electric Car, if I would like.

I would like!

I have the perfect group of kids to do it, too! The "advanced" kids in my 5th Period class, who are teaching themselves AutoCAD while I struggle with their less ambitious classmates, would be excellent candidates for this project, I feel. I will talk with them about it today during class and see what they think.