Wk 5 - Day 22

last night we had parent conferences. the conferences were between 3:45 to 7:30 p.m. teachers had their own little stations in the gym...6th and 7th grade...the 8th grade staff was hanging out in the library. i didn't mind sitting there with my cooperating teachers...i kept jumping back and forth between the two. mrs. s by far had the most visitors while ms. b was lucky to have ~10 parents. i find it amazing that the parents that don't really need to have a conference with the teachers are the ones that attend the conference. here ms. b has the majority of lower level and special ed. students and out of ~60 students only a handful of parents showed. i don't even know how to express my thoughts on this...you'd think that if your child was failing almost all their grades, you'd show up to the conference. i just don't get it...how far should a teacher go to connect with parents that don't care about their child's performance in school?

today was a trip to the school forest. i taught a lesson on leaf/tree identification. i gathered samples of leaves prior to the lesson so i had something to show the students when they came over. the students were introduced to new vocabulary; margins, petiole, etc. and given a tree id book. after going over and discussing characteristics...the students were set loose to go and gather their own leaves and use the id book to figure them out. just to clarify...i didn't stand in front of the students and lecture...i had them tell me about the leaves and i poked and prodded their answers. i had a dichotomous key with pictures of leaves and they had to figure out the tree of origin...for students who finished early. i didn't have any real problems...3 chatty boys i had to separate.

i was able to go and help out with the ropes course a little bit too. i really enjoyed watching the students that were scared of heights try it anyway. every student that was nervous doing it... wanted to do it again. there were only two students who i couldn't convince to give it a go. the students were doing the flying squirrel...the one in the harness ran in the opposite direction of the students pulling the rope. they ended up being pulled straight up in the air and about 60 feet in the air. it was a good day...rain and all.