The end

The final days of second grade were rather busy, considering they were the last days for the kids as well. On Tuesday we did a lot of busy work, preparing for their conferences being Thursday and Friday. We assembled poetry books and portfolios, writing captions that explain what exactly we did throughout the year and reflecting on what exactly we learned. There was a small amount of math and reading, but the day was mainly focused on portfolios. I basically just walked around and helped the kids put together all of their work. Wednesday was less work and more play. We started out the morning by going to an end of year assembly that the entire Lower School attended. The kids sang songs about school being out and graduating to the next grade. It was pretty crazy considering it feels like yesterday that I was sitting in that chapel singing those songs. After the closing assembly we spent the day finishing our Cleveland study at the West Side Market. All of the parents came so the teachers could really just walk around and shop for ourselves. Afterwards, we went to Edge Water Park where we had a picnic and played some fun moms/teachers vs. students dodgeball. It was a great way to finish off senior project. I really enjoyed working with the kids this past month. I never realized how much work goes into being a second grade teacher, but I'm very glad that I had the opportunity to spend time in the classroom and see for myself what the field of education is all about.

Spending some time in the Kitchen

On tuesday I walked in expecting it would be like any other day going out with the truck, but because one of the chefs is in the hospital with some nasty virus the chef of the food truck had to work at the restaurant  which meant the truck was not going out that day. So instead, I was the prep chef/ the guy who did the dirty work. I washed some dishes here and there and put things away. But then came the somewhat fun part of actually making some food. The recipes they have in their book are NOT detailed, to say the least so I had to ask alot of questions. But after a few hours I had made Sherry Coleslaw, Corn Bread, as well as Sarache Aioli (a mayo based hot sauce used on PBLTs as well as the sauce for tater tots). It was fun doing something a bit different and seeing a different side of the restaurant for once.

Monday-Wednesday

We all know Monday was our national day off so I can't blog about that. Tuesday, on the other hand, I went back to work for our second "professional" day. Since all the faculty and staff had meetings about improving things for next year, I was left with little to do. I occupied myself for a good hour organizing books in the library. After that, I just hung out in the office and surfed the web on my laptop. Wednesday, the whole group of faculty and staff are all going to the Indians game for their last professional day so I won't be coming since I am not a big fan of baseball. I guess this is it, done with senior project! :)

The Final Days

Since Wednesday's prep for the final day on Thursday, not much has happened aside from Thursday itself. Thursday I came in early, at 7:30 in order to help prep for commencement, awards and field day. First I helped  set up some things in the auditorium for the official part of the morning and then went shopping. A colleague of mine and I had to run to Dave's to buy some snacks and refreshments for after the commencement and awards ceremonies. When we came back we organized two tables filled with a variety of refreshments, cheese and cracker, fruit, and veggies and dip trays that we assembled ourselves. Following that, we escorted the senior graduates into the room where we helped them find their caps and gowns. Time flew by and it was already 11 o'clock so I had to go to my make-up AP Chemistry exam. The kids sure missed me as they were hoping to dunk me in their so called traditional field day "dunk tank", filled with gallons of water. Friday was the first professional day, and my sponsor and the director of the school left to go on a field-trip with the senior cluster so I had absolutely nothing to do.

lighting style

Today was good.  I'm excited for tomorrow, when I expect I'll get to the trickiest shot of my film: the hanging.  More on that to come Wednesday.  Right now I'd just like to highlight the shift in lighting style that my movie is undergoing at this point.  By now, we've gotten through the golden years of boyhood and adolescence for our main character, leaving him a twisted example of a full-grown human being.  I'm underscoring this shift in character with a similar shift in lighting.  While earlier I used more low-key lighting to eliminate harsh shadows on my puppets, now I'm using high-key lighting, which is all bright highlights and black shadows, with very few tones in between.  This stark, ugly look gives a sense of seediness and evil - that's why it was the lighting style of choice in old film noir movies like Touch of Evil.  So, that's the general trend of the lighting in my movie.

Thursday and Friday

Thursday and Friday can easily be epitomized by one single world: portfolios. Every year in the lower school, the kids have the opportunity to make and take home portfolios which include nearly everything they did all year. They get to cut and paste and decorate and put little captions to explain what exactly they learned in the second grade. Well, due to school ending a little earlier, and just getting a little behind, my second grade class never quite started them. So I spent all of Thursday and Friday in the hallway putting together the portfolios for them. It is actually incredible to see how much work the kids have accomplished in the last nine months, they are all really proud of themselves. I got a small break when my mom and sister stopped by to meet the kids. My class loved getting to meet them because sometimes I think that students don't think that their teachers are real people who live normal lives with normal families, so they were pretty intrigued by that. The kids were in the classroom basically all day until the afternoon when they had their last swim class (which they were all thrilled about). Because of a small mix up and a little disorganization, I only got through 3 portfolios on Thursday, which meant Friday I would be working all day on them. I turned out that it was easier to just not have the kids with me while making the portfolios, and just letting them look at them once they were finished. They were pretty bummed out but it made my job quite a bit easier. Luckily they had three or four specials Friday, so they were barely in the classroom anyway. I finally finished ten more portfolios on Friday, which means I only have 4 more to complete next week. I'm truly enjoying being a teacher although I never realized quite how much extra work and "homework" it entailed. The teacher that I am working with explained that a teacher always has homework, and that I have realized is very true.

Wednesday

Wednesday was a rather plain day in second grade. I started out by finishing assembling shape books for the kids. These were little books all about 3-D shapes, so they could learn to recognize what a 3-D shape was and looked like. After assembling the shape books, I helped the kids decorate their poetry books. They've written numerous poems this year and so I was able to help them decorate them. Eventually the kids had Chinese and then an early recess, and then it was off to lunch. We had a very quick morning. Later the kids went to art, did a little bit of their Cleveland study, which included me reading to them a fictional story about Cleveland, and then they went to science. After coming back from science we did some fraction studies. We worked on worksheets and I helped explain to them what a numerator was and what a denominator was. We used candy and cookies to explain fractions, which I think allowed them to focus on the study a little bit better. We ended the day by finishing the Cleveland book I had started reading to them, and then we had a closing meeting where we played heads up 4 up, one of their favorite games.

not much to comment on

I'm still shooting, still making progress, and still having fun.  I feel like I've already addressed all the specifics of the process, so there's not much new to add. I did have to make a skirt for a puppet to wear, so that was a little different from my normal routine.  It turned out fine, and I think the shot it appears in is one of the funnier in the film.  I'm also pleased with how my interchangeable heads are working out.  They're not perfect, but they do a pretty darn good job of conveying speech.  More to come later....

Friday

Yesterday I did not come into the office because of my make-up AP Chemistry exam. Today, I did a few different things. First, I watched the beginning of a tutorial about social media marketing. This went over the basics of twitter and Facebook, from both a personal and professional point of view. It talked about how to set up accounts, the structures of each, and key terms to know. It talked about setting up a personal account on Facebook in addition to a page for your business because it is important to understand what the client will be seeing and doing. The importance of these medium is the idea of becoming viral between "sharing" and "retweeting". Bob said that next week I would be helping to put some of these ideas into practice for some clients, so he wanted me to get an idea of the "big picture". Then he showed me what he had been doing. He walked me through a program called Basecamp, which allows him to discuss with clients in forums what needs to be done and then organize to-do lists and calendars to give them an idea of the timeline and also remind him of deadlines. Then he showed me another program called shopify. This program allows you to easily set up and run an online store. He had been working on a site that sells yoga onesies using this program. Finally, I ended the day doing some more research for him. A client is looking to set up a mass emailing system, so Bob asked me to research three potential systems' features and prices. I not only clipped their features and prices from their websites and put them in a new Evernote notebook, but I also looked at online reviews of each to see which one would be the best suited for the client.

The Past Two Days

            Yesterday morning was kicked off with a pep rally that included all of the school (Pre-K to 8). The pep rally included various competitions amongst the varying grade levels and recognition of the school’s sports teams. I even had the privilege of judging three dance competitions, despite the fact that I know absolutely nothing about dancing. I was surprised that the noise level was not as unbearable as it apparently had been in the past. Although, I have to say that the pep rally was probably not the best thing to start the day with. Getting middle schoolers to cooperate and focus in class after they had just been screaming and cheering for nearly an hour can be challenging. For the rest of the day I helped pass back graded papers and assist with a Civil War activity the eighth graders did on laptops.

            Today the whole school went to a mass in the morning for the second grade first communicates. The little girls were adorable in their white dresses and boys in their suits! We then had shortened classes with the seventh graders and had a graduation practice with the eighth graders. During this, I went back to the classroom to make student council ballots that Mrs. Muir needed for elections next Wednesday. I also filled envelopes for the Awards Day ceremony that will also take place next Wednesday. Around noon, the eighth graders came back for what they call “hang out day,” where they spend the rest of the day pretty much hanging out eating food and playing different games. It was nice to have a low-key afternoon, however I cannot say as much for the heat.

Research Mania

So today was a lot of research.  I started by trying to track down some caller we had on the show yesterday that everyone loved.  Unfortunately, we only had her first name and where she worked.  Luckily, Google (and a few good Samaritans who pointed me in the right direction) saved the day.  Then I went to watch the taping of today's show on the military civilian divide.  The Sound of Ideas is also videotaped to air on the Ohio Network and to stream online.  So I sat with the person who does the video taping.  I also sat with the person who does call screening. 

The bulk of the rest of the day was research.  Next Tuesday, Sound of Ideas is doing a show on this guy from Strongsville, Adam Perez, who left some high powered job to go on a "happiness tour" helping others around the world.  So I tried to get as much information about him as possible.  Unfortunately, many of the articles about him were in Spanish (he's spent the bulk of his time in central and south America), rendering my five years of French useless in this arena.  I next did some research on the West Side Market, who is celebrating its centennial this year.  For this show, Sound of Ideas is hoping to do on "on location" shoot.  Sadly for me, that show isn't until mid-June, so I won't get to be a part of it.  Finally, I did some research on elder abuse, which was an eye opening and horrifying experience.

caught up in shooting

I would have posted this yesterday, but I was animating until about one o'clock this morning and decided sleep would be nice.  I'm having a ball shooting the film; I've got seven shots and about 45 seconds done.  My process thus far has been to spend all day animating, and once I can't stand the notion of starting another shot, switch to putting the footage into my editing software.  This is allowing my editing to keep pace with the shooting, so I don't have a ton to catch up on once I'm done animating.  Yesterday was an exception because I spent so long lighting the last shot of the day that by the time I started filming it, it was 11 o'clock.  That's not a problem, though; it's so much fun to find new and different ways to make my characters visually appealing that time flies.

Tuesday and Wednesday

Yesterday, turned out to be a film day. I filmed a U18 team called Internationals. Although, I had planned the day for editing, the filming turned out to be useful because I had the rare chance of filming an interactive session. The coach occasionally explained (on camera) what he was doing and why. This makes the editing process so much easier because I have annotation. Thus, I don’t have to struggle trying to explain the footage using editing techniques.  This is a welcome change to my presentation. I also had a small meeting with my sponsor. We went over raw footage and the semi-finished videos I have done. He was pretty pleased with the small videos but he had a few editorial suggestions for the raw data.

As for today, I spent the whole day editing; I have done about four mini videos each is about four minutes long. Later, I will make a final video for the presentation next Friday. This video will be made from the current mini videos I have done. I expect the whole process to be done by Tuesday. So far, so good.  

More Researching!

Today, while Bob took a phone call from a client, I did some more research for him for a different project. Bob is redesigning a client's website, but it isn't a typical redesign. Rather than just giving the website a "face-lift" on the same template and server, he has to completely migrate the website. This can potentially create problems with search engines connecting people to your old site, and therefore your new site experiencing a dramatic decline in traffic. Bob has not done a complete site migration before, so he asked me to Google "site migration tips", "site redirect and seo", and several other phrases and then clip the good, informative articles into Evernote for him to look at later.

Wednesday

 This morning I again taught two seventh grade classes after I watched Mrs. Muir teach the first. The students had what I guess I would call an “in-class writing” about the material that was discussed yesterday and in their homework as well.  I have noticed that at this point in the year, any form of an assessment is highly frowned upon by the students, which to be honest, is understandable. However, as a teacher it can make running a class a bit more difficult.  Therefore, I have to apologize to my teachers if any of my “senioritis” made class even the slightest bit more difficult.

            I spent the afternoon passing out the second half of the quiz the eighth graders took yesterday and then grading them. I had the liberty of grading them at my discretion, which made me feel like I was entrusted with a lot of responsibility and well, trust. For the most part, again, the students did well. There was the exception of one question that asked the students to describe how a quote related to what happened during the Civil War. I found that this was harder for them to do, but I think it was good practice for them to have experience with this sort of analytical question. One student, however, had an excellent explanation. I‘m not sure why but this made me very excited. It was probably because it was nice to see a student producing such a successful and well-written response. However, I could also tell that she put a lot of thought and effort into what she wrote. I do not think I could have asked for anything more from the student and this consequently has been one of the highlights of my project thus far!

Make-up Blog!

So to make up for the weak blogging last week, I have decided to blog an extra day this week. Today, I returned to Craig Advertising to find Bob back in the office (only a little jet-lagged) after his trip to Venezuela. First, he showed me what he had been working on since he had gone out of town. He continued to work on the mattress store’s Memorial Day Plain Dealer insert after the client asked him to make some changes. Bob was not completely satisfied with the changes he had to make because they made the ad look more cluttered. He explained that he gave his advice to the client, but it was ultimately their decision whether to take his advice or not and they chose not to. In conclusion, he said to me, “They’re the ones paying for the ad.” Another frustration he has is sometimes dealing with clients who are so preoccupied that they don’t give him the right information to begin with, so Bob has to change his design (sometimes several times) when they correct their mistake(s). For example, Bob was creating an ad for Cleveland Plumbing Industry that would go in a magazine for commercial business owners. The ad started out as a quarter page ad, became a square third, then a horizontal third, and finally a vertical third. Because the client kept changing the size of the ad, Bob had to keep changing the layout of the ad to make everything fit. Afterwards, he set me up on an informational video about a program called Evernote. This program stores notes you create yourself, clippings from websites, images, and much more in a cloud which then syncs to all of your devices. Finally, I did some research for him using the program. I collected information for him on the Republic of China in the 1930s and 40s, Buddhist quotes, a story about Buddha and the elephant Nalgiri, Chinese use of fire weapons, and strange weapons used in Asian martial arts. Bob will use all of this information for a writing project he is starting.

Monday and Tuesday

Monday was a preety ordinary day although you can already feel the end of the year coming. The kids now are mostly finishing up with their exams. Today, however, they also had a field trip to a farm owned by one of the employee's (my sponsor's) parents. As I was walking to the parking lot to go out for lunch , the kids came off the bus looking more exhausted than I could imagine. And I thought these kids never lacked energy. However somehow they still had the strength to smile and wave and even run over to give me a hug. Today was our last music class during which we shared the types of music we like to listen to when we are feeling different things and our favorites artists. Following that, came writing and reading class, and then youth core as usual. Since it was such a nice day outside, we decided to go outside for youth core to have recess. Tuesday was a bit different. The day started off with art during which the kids watched Rio and colored in the birds on the draw in sheetes they were given. From those I actually received three drawings personally dedicated to me. I have to be honest, they were so cute I had to hang them up in my room. After that, I went to writing class to help wrap things up for the year. Following writing, we played jeopardy in math during which I managed to multi-task and also staple some class yearbooks (and also managed to staple my finger). I wasn't there for youth core today though.

A Good Day

 I had the opportunity today to teach two seventh grade classes more about the American Revolution. I can’t say that I have a favorite class (out of the six) because I enjoy working with all of them, but I really appreciate the seventh graders because they are always eager to learn and ask questions. To start off, myself and Mrs. Muir asked the students questions to review what they already know about the war. Once we finished this, I taught the students a new lesson about the Revolution as it moved to the southern colonies. I had several grumbles when I announced that they would be taking notes. I made a cheesy comment about how I knew they loved to take notes which, gladly, got them to laugh a little. I took pleasure in my small success. They only had to take about a half a page of notes, which in my opinion is nothing, but to them, of course, is everything. After this, the seventh graders were then able to start on their homework for tomorrow. Overall, it was a great morning! In the afternoon, the eighth graders took an open note quiz based on the notes sheet that I did with them two weeks ago. I started to grade them (haven’t quite finished yet) and was pleasantly surprised to see that the majority of students are doing very, very well. This made my day, because I now feel like I have successfully taught them something.

Mentioning homework above, I find it very amusing how the teenage (specifically middle school teens) mind views the topic of homework. A seventh grader questioned today “Why do we even have homework? People’s parents just do it for them.” I don’t know about anybody else, but my parents have never once offered to do my homework for me. Maybe I should get new parents. I realized after a few minutes of attempted persuasion that trying to convince the young mind otherwise was going to be a lost cause. As a senior in high school, I’d like to think that I have developed an appreciation for learning. Despite the fact that I may not always want to do the work, I have come to understand the importance of homework, papers, and projects. They are a reflection of what we (students) have learned and an indicator for our teachers as to how well they have taught us. Hopefully, the student will one day come to realize what I am now reluctantly admitting. Yes, no matter how much I may not like to do it, homework really is beneficially for learning.

Monday and Tuesday

Monday was a fairly easy day for me as a teacher. As it turned out, the kids had a ton of specials which meant that they were barely in the classroom. I finished a lot of extra work that I needed to get done, especially typing and formatting the kids' poems for their poetry books and portfolios. I also did a fair amount of grading subtraction and fractions. Tuesday was much busier. The class only had one special, Library, so they were in the classroom pretty much the entire day. I started out the morning (basically until lunch) helping them watercolor the Haikus that they wrote. Who ever would've thought I would be the one helping children paint??? Luckily it didn't take much artistic skill on my end. After a much needed "brain break," which is basically recess and one of the greatest inventions ever, the kids went off to lunch and then recess. In the afternoon we worked on our Cleveland study, finished decorating poems, and then continued to practice fractions. They made a ton of progress, especially because it is crunch time. The kids definitely have their own form of Senioritis. I can easily tell that just in the last few weeks their motivation and desire to be in the classroom has gone down very quickly. Therefore, their patience and attentiveness have gone down as well, which makes my job a little bit more difficult. Although, the kids love having me in the classroom so I've really enjoyed being with them as well. To end the day, I began assembling shape books for the second graders, as they learn about shapes for their final math lesson of the year.

On Air

Today was a really fun day.  I've recently started working with the radio department at Ideastream, specifically the Sound of Ideas (SOI) team.  It's nice because now that I've spent a few weeks learning how Ideastream makes money, I get to experience firsthand how some of that money is used.   For those of you who don't know, 90.3 Ideastream is Cleveland's NPR affiliate and SOI is an hour long radio show that features interviews with various people from around Cleveland on current topics.

The day started with me doing research on the topic for Thursday show, which is the military-civilian divide in America.  They have this nifty search engine that's like google on steroids, which certainly helped with the research.  Although, to be honest, even then finding information was a little tricky. 

After that, I sat in on the Sound of Ideas taping in the producers room.  It was cool, because a lot of the things they discussed today are things I researched last week.  In fact, the host, Mike McIntyre, gave me the unofficial yet totally prestigious "factoid of the year" award based on one of the fun facts I found on one of the books discussed today. 

Following the recording, I sat in on a meeting with the producers, the host, and a few other people from the studio to discuss the show's ratings.  My big contribution to that meeting was operating the calculator.  You're welcome, world .

So then, the producers actually let me write the promo for tomorrow's show.  The promo will be read on the air sometime today, and also a few times tomorrow.  I felt so incredibly nervous as I was writing it.  Luckily, the producer okayed it so I didn't have to die a premature death of writer's embarrassment.  Although the promo still has to be approved by the other producer and the host, so who knows, by the time I hear it tomorrow morning, it could in no way resemble my original submission.  C'est la vie.

The rest of the day I spent researching for a senior standout show they want to do in a few weeks and also researching the vast world of dementia and searching for potential angles SOI could take on that topic if they were to do a dementia-focused show.  Theoretically, I may be writing the pitch on that tomorrow, which would then get sent to my boss's boss.  Suffice to say, I'll be bringing my inhaler tomorrow in case the stress  gets to be more than I can handle.  Kidding…sort of.   

finally!

Today was a great day - I'm now two shots into animating my film.  With how long I've been missing doing it, lighting is a special treat.  It's all about highlighting the important things, giving proper balance to the composition, bringing out textures and shapes.  I'm using four clamp lights, which gives me plenty of flexibility when it comes to the amount and placement of light.  The process of lighting feels a bit like I imagine painting to be: using broad strokes to get a general concept, and then finessing and finessing until every value is just right.  It's a huge part of what makes this work enjoyable.

The other big part is bringing inanimate objects to life.  I started editing my shots as soon as I finished shooting for the day, and seeing frozen wire limbs become fluid and expressive is a joy.  I'm finally in the best part of my project.  I've got a ton to do, but it'll be the best kind of work.

Almost back in business

Sorry about not posting on Friday. My sponsor is just getting back in town late tonight, so the past few days I have still had nothing new to report. I will be heading back into the office at noon tomorrow, so Wednesday I should have something more interesting to write about. Thursday I will finally be taking my AP Chemistry exam, which I had to reschedule because it conflicted with AP Environmental. Sorry for the repetitive posts!

Friday: Hands on!

Friday I was allowed to hold and feed some babies. I only fed one because the others that the nurse I followed was in charge of had to have their heart rates and oxygen saturations monitored really closely.  When I was feeding the baby boy, he kept reaching his hand up trying to hold the bottle himself almost.  One of the other babies that I help was only about 4 pounds, that's less than I was when I was born! There's another baby that was really fun to play with because she's older and bigger.  That baby is really happy and laughs all the time, a little different from the 3 and 4 pounders. Feeding that babies is a little bit difficult because of how small they are.  You have to monitor their intake to make sure their stomachs won't expand too much and little things like that.  The babies are so small, so when you're burping them you don't think that you have to hit their backs very hard, but you really do.  That was a little intimidating because I didn't want to hurt him, but I had to hit his back a lot harder than I thought.

Today was super boring, all I did was go to meetings with Dr. Martin, and only one of them was interesting.  Hopefully tomorrow will be better, I think I am doing rounds in the morning at 9 then shadowing a nurse for the rest of the day.  I was supposed to watch a delivery some time this week, but UH has some policy that students aren't allowed to.  I wasn't that disappointed by that because a birth seems a bit graphic. That was about it for today.

Last Weeks Update!

Weekly Update:

Last week I came close to compiling just about as much information as I need for this project.  I travelled down to Medina to film an entire goal keeping session of Internationals. They have players and coaches from all over the world. The goalkeepers were 6-footers of about 18 years old. A Tunisian coach trained them.  He played as a goalkeeper in the A league and for the Tunisian national squad. In his fine crop of goalkeepers was Division 1 recruits and two US National Soccer goalkeepers. Their training session was high paced, intense and challenging. He says that his motive is to produce the best talent, and thus he makes training sessions harder than soccer matches.

While I was at Medina, I also had some time to film infield players; a British coach trained them and he was no less of a driver than the goalkeeper coach. The players were constantly engaged in small-sided plays and large game situations. In Churchill English, this means they were being trained pretty darn well. A lot of them are Division 1 recruits and they also aspire to become professional soccer players. This travel team is quite a force. They play all year round, and often play teams as far as Dallas, Texas and Orlando, Florida. Sounds like professional prep!

Currently I have about 7 hours of film remaining from the first edits I have made.  This is a chunk of film that needs editing, and thus I have stopped filming and now fixing all the pieces together. The only the challenge I am facing so far is assembling the video in such a way that ordinary people can understand it. I also intend to add a bit of fun stuff like dribbling cameos and foot-skills. 

So far the process of filming has been great, I am learning on the go and meeting interesting people.  I do not anticipate any major action this week apart from editing and thus my blogs will most like turn into weekly updates.  Adios for now.

almost

Today I was able to wrap up my crazy-detailed timing, thank God.  Not the most enjoyable of tasks.  I also got all my interchangeable heads assembled (it takes a ping pong ball and a nut).  Super glue - I'm not talking Elmer's, but actual, legitimate super glue - is just about the coolest substance in the world.  A couple drops the size of pinheads bond the nuts to the ping pong balls like they're welded; that was a great relief after unsuccessful attempts with stuff like hot glue.  I've just got to draw the faces on my heads, and then it's time to animate.  It's gonna be a blast this weekend.

Friday- a short day

To be honest, I do not remember much from Thursday since I was exhausted from my flight and a total amount of sleep adding up to only 4 hours altogether. Today (Friday) , was a rather short day since I had an AP Spanish Lit exam in the morning. I ended up going to project at 1:30, straight to my office, lunch break and then  one class until 3 o'clock. Class was crazy today though. All the kids almost knocked me over- I don't know why the extra excitement today but maybe because they had a sub. I also got a bunch of warm hugs and kisses for no reason. Following a class of affection, I went to youth core or study hall. Things went on as usual there. Here goes Friday.

Out of town on Wednesday

Well, you know, since I am such a big traveler, I was out of town for one day on Wednesday. I left early in the morning and came back the next morning, going straight to project from the airport. So I do not really have anything to share for Wednesday. Read my Friday post if you want. It might be just a tad bit more interesting.

Four Things

Instead of going through my daily routine, which wasn’t much of anything today due a very big schedule rearrangement, I’ve decided to share a couple observations/thoughts that I have had over the past couples days of project.

1.     Coffee. Having been at a school for three weeks now, I fully understand teacher’s reliance on coffee. I always thought to myself before “Wow. A lot of teachers sure like coffee,” but never thought about reasons why they might like coffee. I now know that it is a very necessary part in staying energized and focused all day long (not to mention that it is a little addicting).

2.     It is amazing what kids think that they can get away with. The other day I had a student come up to me and ask if he could use the restroom during a study hall. I of course said yes, however, he needed to give me a hall pass first. When I asked for the hall pass, the student replied, “Darn it, I didn’t think you would know!” He ended up going back to his desk to retrieve his hall pass, while I thought to myself about why, though I was new to the building, I wouldn’t know that he needed a hall pass considering I am supposed to be somewhat like an actual teacher.

3.     I actually feel like I have a purpose. Yes, yes, I know there is a purpose in being a student and going to school, but now I feel like I am actually doing something with the tings I have learned. It is nice to feel like I have an affect on the future and a student’s progress.

4.     Teaching is a blast (at least for me)! I love the variety and how everyday is always different. Helping others to learn and further understand something is always fulfilling, especially when you can tell that something “clicks” for a student. The student’s energy  (although at times can be a little stressful) is infectious and only makes everyday more enjoyable. I also enjoy that I feel like I am, hopefully, setting an example for the students around me. I could definitely see myself pursuing a career in education one day.