Wk 2 - day 7

today was rough for everybody all the way around. the referendum for the school district didn't pass...again. the people around here can be very selfish and rather uninformed and tend to remain to stay that way. the referendum was for a $23 million dollar loan/grant...something like that and it would NOT raise property taxes at all...i just don't get it. i can understand completely people voting against it if it raises their taxes, but i don't understand the vote against it when it doesn't. the referendum would have been a great benefit to the science departments and now the science teachers are very worried on what's going to happen next. mrs. s was very upset and i don't blame her one bit.

the other big event that happened today was vandalism. a student came into homeroom and told ms. b that he caught a 7th grader taking a rock and keying several cars...including hers. all in all, eight cars were keyed. i don't think any teacher was targeted, it was just a random act. luckily for the teachers, since there were two witnesses, it has become a legal matter. otherwise, the teachers would've been out of luck for compensation. mrs. s said that was nothing...when she worked at the high school, her car was stolen and totaled by a student. ms. b has the student who vandalized her car in her classroom. she acted very professional towards him...you would've never known by her behavior that this student had offended her. i would like to think i would've been the same way, but i'm not so sure...i would've been too mad.

ms. b's class is a day behind mrs. s. usually they team teach, but i don't see how it's going to be possible and they don't either. ms. b flew through the milk lab handout (the example lab report) and i just wonder what the students are retaining when she works through it so fast in an effort to catch up to mrs. s. mrs. s stated that ms. b is probably going to have to skip a lab/lesson in order to catch up to her. i don't know...i think i would just do it on my own and teach a pace that's best for the students, but ms. b has many more years of experience and knows what she's doing.

i taught 6th period today...cosmic object lab. it went very well. i was a little nervous for the first minute...if that. i know i would've been more nervous if i didn't have teaching experience before. i put up a picture of a favorite snack of mine from taiwan that the students would've never seen unless they'd been there. i used the picture to reinforce how i used the scientific method every day there to figure things out as simple as food. i couldn't read the chinese writing on the food stand and sometimes i didn't understand the answer (in chinese) when i asked what it was...so, i experimented a lot in figuring things out on my own. lots of hands up and guesses as to what it was which is what i wanted. this led into the lesson on how they had to imagine they were from a distant galaxy and found a round orange object. they need to use their observations skills and take detail notes and drawings of the object. they worked in pairs, used scales, colored pencils... and went to work. i felt the students were interested in the lab and were very productive.