Mondays

It's Monday again, and that means it is beginning of another dreaded week. You go to work or school (in my case, I work at a school) and still have fresh battle scars from the weekend to show off. Except in my case the "battle scars" are from working at Target on Saturday (I have like four cuts on my hands from that shift, I mean wtf?). If you are a student or a teacher, you just want to phone it in and just surviving the day is an accomplishment. Today, I was quite lucky in that my first block reviewed for their test all class and my other two were on Rosetta Stone. I didn't have to do any teaching and I feel great. I wish every Monday could be like this. With my luck though, something will blow up in my face during a lesson and I'll lose my otherwise sunny disposition. Let's hope that doesn't happen next week. *Knocks on wood*

Teacher Inservice Day

Today is a teacher inservice day at Bonny Eagle High School which is basically another way of saying that teachers are becoming students today. The funny thing is how quickly teachers revert back to the way they were as students. It is so hilarious to be in a conversation where everyone's talking about how they are mad that the proxies to let us use facebook and youtube are being blocked by the school. I personally used both all the time here as a sub (I mean there's nothing to do) but now that I actually have a class, it's been something I don't have time for.

Another funny thing is that everything's unblocked for today so I'm on facebook right now. One teacher commented that things are unblocked so we can use teaching tools but when we have school on Monday, some may be blocked again. I think that's just ridiculous.

At Erskine Academy, we (the teachers) were able to override a filter so we could use youtube, etc. to teach but here, it's not even a possibility without using a proxy. I hope that in the future BEHS will do this so the teachers do not have as difficult a time finding ways to teach their kids.

Maps

I'm in the teacher's room right now and above me is a map of the world. There is one major problem with it that I just can't get over. It's not the age, all countries seem to be correct; I mean, it's Russia, not the USSR for instance. It's the scale of the map that is ridiculous. We've all grown up seeing maps of the world and I bet we all have at one point thought that Antarctica stretched across the world and that Greenland was bigger than the United States. Obviously, that's not true. Why do we have to see this type of map? I realize that they do help us find where things are but it is quite misleading in telling me the size of countries. I honestly hate maps like this and I'd be happier with a globe that is actually to scale.

Lesson Planning

In preparation for starting my new position on Monday, I have been working on the lesson plans for my three classes for quite a few hours already. The sad thing is, I still probably have a couple more hours to go on it this weekend.

What most people, students and parents especially, don't realize is that lesson planning is a lot of work. Most people think that teachers show up to school, pick stuff to do 5 minutes before class, and go when class starts. Unfortunately, that is not the case. An entire class during my practicum experience at UMF was devoted to writing lesson plans. The ridiculous thing is that even though it was a bunch of work and took about an hour to plan each lesson with material in hand, we actually were only eased into the world that is lesson planning. If the material is already set up for you, to write the plan and make sure you are doing a good job explaining things takes an hour or so. If, like in my position right now, you have to come up with everything from scratch or pretty much near it, it takes at least two hours.

Another pitfall of lesson planning is the element of time. You can have the best lesson in the world planned but if you finish with 20+ minutes left in class, you're doomed. The caveat is that no matter how hard you plan, something will not go as planned. The students could be learning the material so well that you can blow right through it, or they will have no idea what's going on and you have to spend more time on the material. My high school Spanish teacher told me when I was volunteering after graduation that it is always better to overplan. The reason is that you can always cut something out, but if you're not prepared, you can't add an extra meaningful activity.

And that is another problem as well. You may have a great idea for a class activity, but if it doesn't reinforce past learning or introduce something new and meaningful to the class, then you can't really use it in the classroom. When I was student-teaching I went to a bullying/harassment seminar of some sort and the speaker had us do an activity where we used pipe cleaners to create a symbol of how we identified ourselves. I thought it was a great thing to use in the classroom, but my mentor teacher asked me how it was relevant to our unit. I realized that there was no way I could put it in context of the unit and that the activity would then cause more harm than good.

Planning lessons is an endeavor that most teachers hate to do. However, once you have planned lessons for a class, the good news is that rarely will you have to make new plans for that class again. Veteran teachers only need to worry a day or so in advance since the only preparation they need is to make sure that there are enough photocopies of assignments or other things of that nature. However, for someone like me who is new (planning-wise) to the classes I am teaching, I need about a week or two to make sure everything is set up so no foreseen problems arise the day of the lesson.

I personally can't wait until the day comes when I only have to follow my own plans instead of creating them as well.

I just finished Craig Ferguson's memoir "American on Purpose" a few minutes ago. I enjoyed the book immensely and I like Craig even more than I used to.

I first saw him on The Drew Carey Show and I thought he was funny, but never paid too much attention to him. I mean, he wasn't really the star of the show or anything. In college I started watching The Late, Late Show every once in a while because I saw him and was like, "Oh my god, he played Mr. Wick on The Drew Carey Show!"

He is so funny and is seems so real on the show that I started DVRing his show and watching it the next day. He has quickly become one of my favorite actor/comedians. In fact, when I get home I will be watching the show and enjoying myself!

First Teaching Job

Today I officially was told that pending the paperwork, I would be the long-term Spanish teacher substitute at Bonny Eagle! After almost a year of sending applications I finally have a legit teaching job to speak of. Obviously, it's not a permanent job but it will give me stability and I will get valuable experience in the classroom for when I apply for jobs for the next school year.

I'm pretty excited about the chance to have my own classroom and I can't wait to start.

Atlantis

I just finished reading a news article that says scientists may have discovered evidence of Atlantis off the the coast of Spain. This officially means that there is evidence of Atlantis being in like 5 million different places. If we include Spain, there are thoughts that Atlantis are in about 26 different places. Now I do believe Atlantis truly existed but obviously people need to come to a consensus on where Atlantis actually was. These places in the western hemisphere or far east obviously were cities like Atlantis but please don't say it was the true Atlantis described by Plato.

In my opinion the ancient city was in the Mediterranean somewhere. I mean Plato was Greek after all, why would he write about parts of the world he knew zero about? Also, when it comes to Atlantis possibly being in the Americas or the far east, the tsunami in Japan the other day just goes to show what can happen to an area when a strong enough disaster hits.

I could probably write more on my thoughts on the subject but my monday night shows are on and I'm quite distracted.

Mass Effect 2 Is Awesome!

I just beat Mass Effect 2 on the XBOX for the 6th or 7th time earlier and I just can't believe how it keeps me wanting more. Events can differ so much from one game to another that it piques my interest time after time and I don't play the same game twice (of course, unless I really wanted to). I have only one achievement left to reach; it's the only game I've ever played in the 4 or so years I've had the console that I've come this close with.

I've got another save from Mass Effect that I will be importing soon so I can play it over again!

My Annoyance With Sports Games

I have an XBOX and I aside from Mass Effect I play only sports games. I love getting my sports fix but all games I play have two major problems: the AI and the infatuation with "User Control".

I have found that the majority of games have an AI that is just plain horrible or seemingly non-existent. European football is one my favorite sports and I just can not bring myself to play FIFA. In earlier versions, FIFA was just terrible in terms of what my players would do if I wasn't controlling them. I'd give up 3 to 5 goals a game because my defenders just wouldn't move when there was a player coming right at them. It usually didn't matter though as the game's AI was so pitiful I was able to exploit it and win games around 5-4, 4-3, etc. For those who aren't aware, real football matches usually don't have more than 3 goals. There is also no strategy involved in the game. I recall seeing something on collegehumor that was showed what the game would be called if the name was the most said phrase. For FIFA, it was "That Was Absolutely Lucky! No Skill Involved." Skill/strategy is something that should be used to win games, not dumb arcade-style luck.

The thing with user-control is ridiculous as well. With the quest for full user control, they are making games 10 times more dificult to play. The reason I stopped playing MLB games was mainly because of this and it's why I am extremely frustrated (but somehow still enjoying) NHL 11. I happen to have double-jointed thumbs so it's quite difficult to do exactly what I want with the little joysticks. I can't stand that if you want to be able to use buttons instead of the sticks all the time, it makes the approach amazingly convoluted and annoying.

Right now, I play NHL 11 all the time and because of my difficulties with the sticks, I can't pass even close to where I want. I aim 5 feet towards the guy at my left and somehow it goes 15 feet diagonally to someone on the other team. I mean, what's with that? In older games you'd aim a pass near a teammate and it would just go the teammate instead of the next county.

I could ramble on more about this stuff but I just wanted to get that off my chest.

First Post

I decided to start a blog since facebook doesn't seem to let me ramble on about stuff in the way I would like. I'm not going to talk about my life unless something hilarious happens but I plan to just write my musings as I go along through life.

Comments are totally welcomed and apreciated and hopefully I'll be able to update this as much as I can!