First Week, Second Time Around

I engage a first period who fights to awaken instead of passively submits to sleep. I tutor a second period composed of 6 students. I welcome a third period that is eager to read science prompts aloud. I ease into a fourth period filled with competition for the higher grade. I eat lunch. I rest after lunch during my prep fifth period. I challenge a sixth period to learn how to read.

So this is what teaching is like.

***

Me: "Alright, which lab safety rule did you choose, Sagur?"

Him: "...on-only...use... mat... mat..."

Me: "Materials."

Him: "...mateereels... give-given... by... the... teacher."

Me: "Great, Sagur. Now, what could you draw that would show you breaking that rule?"

Him: "PLUTONIUM!"

Me: "...wait what?"

Support DonorsChoose.org!

Reflections at Ground Zero will have to wait, until I have the energy to stand up again. Monitoring students on my feet for hours straight is a rough routine to get back into.

DonorsChoose.org helped get me a free color laser printer for my classroom, which was an immense help in helping teach my English Learners last year, and will continue to help this year. I also scored a free poster laminator to help create paper activities with a longer usage life, to allow for more hands-on work.

I said free! I paid nothing at all, and got so much in return. Now I have a chance to give back, through the Members Project:

I'd like to tell you about a project I saw on Members Project. It's called "Help 100,000 children thrive in the classroom!," and with your support it could get funding from American Express. The best part: nominating this project for potential funding is free and only takes a minute!

Members Project is an exciting initiative that brings people together to make a difference in the world. It's simple. People go online to share ideas for projects — and ultimately vote on which projects will share $2.5 million in funding from American Express.

In 2007, Members Project provided clean drinking water to children all across Africa. What will Members Project do this year? The decision is yours. Please click the link to the DonorsChoose Members Project and nominate!

First Evening Before First Day of School

1) Everything, from lesson plans to posters, is all set up for the first week.

and

2) Personal anxiety levels are low.

If 1 and 2 are true, then 3:

3) Tomorrow will be totally awesome. Right? Right?

Olympic Gold and Research

(image cite) As the Olympics in Beijing end, I think about how much closer in proximity to the events I was just a couple weeks ago. I also think about my students growing up and succeeding as the Olympics athletes did. I think about them earning their own gold medals and breaking world records on their own.

I am busy planning totally awesome activities for the first week of school, which begins on Tuesday, and I am preparing my research study which also begins. My project is focusing on answering 3 totally awesome research questions:

1) Scores on which type of an ongoing formal assessment – multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank – better represent a recently immigrated EL’s opinion of his/her own science content understanding as measured through a weekly survey, written artifacts, and informal interviews?

2) Which classroom warm-up activity – silent reading or journal entries –raises scores the most on an English reading comprehension posttest?

3) What student grouping – tetrads grouped according to science understanding or English fluency – raises scores the most on weekly science content quizzes, an English reading comprehension posttest, and a science content posttest?

Summer: The End

Well, that was fun.

My summer odyssey took me to the library, the beach, and the ends of the Earth! (Assuming there are "ends," and Hong Kong was at one of said "ends").

I stepped out of the cabin of an airplane into another world. I left my first footprints here on the suspended bridge to the airport, greeted by an attendant with a smile and a nod. I noted the oppressive air of this climate, dripping with humidity, before a tide of conditioned air rushed past and formed an invisible barrier that led to a temperate zone past the bridge. There, I joined a moving mass of people toward customs, signs along the way equipped with dual languages to remind me where I was. Moving walkways brought me closer to my legal entry to Hong Kong, but I was already here, really. I flipped out my passport, grabbed my suitcase with all of the teacher stickers on it, and journeyed out the door toward a bus headed for Kowloon.

I flew to Hong Kong because I could, but I also flew there to see Toshiko, my guide to all sorts of fun and adventure.

I also did a bunch of research for my education research project, and am preparing a study that starts when school does, which is on Tuesday.

There is so much to write about that I must temper my excited planning fervor with some due credit toward writing again.

Summer: Day 27

Me: I'm going to the teacher store-- they are having a back-to-school sale.
Mom: Oh? How many are you going to buy?
Me: ...

I need to rethink this new usage of adjectives.

Summer: Day 23

There's this girl I used to like back in school. We talked in class but I never asked her out, despite wanting to. And then I saw her today after a long time and finally asked, and she's married. Married!

Gosh, you wait 8 years to do something you want to do, and look what happens.

Summer: Day 20

Twenty days through and I feel like a new man. Less and less of the first year teacher growing pains are apparent now, overtaken by a haze while I bask in the sun of a responsibility-free summer.

The sun was good to me yesterday, actually, and I may finally be sporting color on my body. We were at the beach for hours, so it was a gift I saw coming.

At the lounge later that night, we balked at the long line. There was a shorter, more attractive line that was reserved for attractive ladies, and with bouncers busy staring at the half-clothed figures walking by, perhaps they wouldn't notice a manly man sneaking through an incorrect queue.

Until I got to the front, where the tool of a bouncer didn't believe I was 21.

Yes, that is my ID.
Yes, I lost a lot of weight.
No, my eyes are not brown.
Yes, the DMV put "BROWN" next to "EYES" when they should have written "GREEN" or "BLUE" or "GORGEOUS".
Yes, I will sign my name on a piece of paper for you.
No, I cannot replicate my signature exactly as it appears on my ID because it's been 6 years since I got my ID and I write differently.
Yes, I will show you a credit card.
Yes, I will show you another credit card.
Yes, I will show you my college ID.
Yes, I'm positive that is my ID.

After all the fanfare, a few drinks brought about another haze that I always appreciate. Good times!

I hope I can keep having a life when school starts.

Summer: Day 16

Updates via phone:

1) I can post via phone! Oh empty joys of technology!

2) 300 pages later of my education research textbook summer marathon, I am surprisingly more in tune with the thoughts and desires of researchers than I thought. Determining alternative hypotheses to control for with my experimental research design is making my brain tickle. I didn't have fun with research before perhaps because I didn't get to do any of the fun stuff, which is planning the entire experiment out.

3) My new bookcase has just been delivered! Now I get to build something!

Summer: Day 2

My schedule for the rest of the summer includes the following (and much more):

* Begin another batch of online education classes and research for my MAE

* Create a better curriculum for a science class supporting recent arrivals from Mexico

* Fly to Hong Kong

I should be in Excessive Reading mode now to finish things ahead of time, but the following is bound to (repeatedly) happen instead:

"Astute thinking about research can greatly enhance your ability to understand published educational research and commu--

*snore*