Dividing my efforts to 'just get by'

Is being a full time student, really being a full time student? Do I really have the time in my day to put in 3 addition hours of homework for every one hour that I'm in class? Take my day for example. I'm in class 26 hours a week. 26 class hours x 3 hours per class = 78 hours of time required in addition to class attendance to meet the requirements of the course. Now, take the course requirement time, a combine 104 hours weekly, and divide it over 6 days. We come out with just over 17 hours a day, leaving only 7 hours left in our day. What do full time students do with that 7 hours a day? They eat, sleep, spend a brief moment resting and then walk to and from class. They work upwards of 20 hours a week, or 4 hours a day, to help offset living costs. The single students try to oblige our religious and educational leaders and date often in hopes of finding a spouse. Those that are lucky enough to find a spouse have now become a mediator/negotiator between 'spousal time' and 'anything else time.'

24 hours is not nearly enough time in a day. If I were to have one Christmas wish come true this holiday season, it would be for an additional eight hours in each day.

I often wish that I had a little more whit in my writing... this is a pretty cool idea that could really come to life if I had the verbal skills to shape it. The thought came from connecting two things that Geoff had shared with the class. The first was when he had offered an A grade to those in his psychology class that went above and beyond. None of the students got an A that semester, because they were complacent with simply fulfilling the requirements of the course. Later Geoff said that kids will rise to the occasion. If you ask them to do 15 push ups, they will struggle to get 15. Take that same kid to do 25 push ups and he doesn't struggle until the last few. He was completely capable of doing the 25 push ups, but 'rose to the occasion' of 15. We do what is asked of us.

And now I'll try and tie everything together.

I only have 24 hours in each day. 10-14 of those hours are spent staying alive - eating, working, sleeping, etc. 6-8 more of those hours are spent attending class, leaving only a few hours available to do homework, pay the bills, run an errand or two, or spend some never enough time with my wife.

(Bringing it home...)

I would really like to be able to spend 30 hours designing my home for our Google SketchUp project. I would love to be able to compile an extremely extensive Teaching textbook. I would have loved to spend more time mastering the different Adobe tools. But there just isn't enough time! So we students 'Rise to the Occasion' and do the minimum required for the grade and then roll our time over to the next task.

Maybe in heaven, or Hogwarts, we'll be able to manipulate time and excel in all of our assignments.

Jeff Dude

Jeff worked in the industry for several years before going back to school for his teaching degree. The defining thing that stood out to me as he spoke to us for 45 minutes was his love and passion for teaching. He put his heart and soul into his classes... it wasn't just a paycheck to him...

Jeff paralleled several things that our professors advocate. Both he and Geoff mentioned that middle school teachers have a greater influence on the kids. Geoff explained that it's not the quality of teaching, rather, the state of life that the kids are in. They're young and malleable, receptive to good teaching... A state that leaves kids as they grow up. Returning to a child like state has a little more significance now...


Teaching Grade school
I was only nervous when Geoff came around to my station while I was teaching. :) The rest of it was cake. The kids were great. They responded well, did what was asked of them, had some fun, and produced a few good looking cereal boxes :)

Reflection 10 - Teaching the Elder's Quorum

This last week I taught my Elder's quorum a lesson on Teaching. We had been hitting home teaching pretty hard the last few months and so I wanted to bring a fresh angle to the table. My lesson was taken directly from my Geoff's lectures. It's funny how we don't really appreciate how well something is taught until we try and recreate it ourselves. I did notice, however, that I was instantly a better learner when I decided that I wanted to reteach what was being taught. I used several mixed methods of presenting information to break up the monotony of a typical EQ atmosphere and also used group work to give everyone a chance to participate.

Jerry is a middle aged man with several mental and physical handicaps. He is allowed to attend church when accompanied by a full time staff from his 'halfway home.' Jerry had no fear of speaking up, whether invited to or not. His hand came up every time that I asked the class a question. In the beginning I honored his hand raise each time and called on him to speak. His comments weren't always related and he was incredibly difficult to understand. I felt a little foolish when I couldn't fully validate his comments by summing up what he had said or agree/disagreeing with him. Soon I learned that if I wanted the flow of my lesson to improve I would have to stop calling on Jerry. I felt a little bad, not calling on him as often... But the flow of my lesson improved dramatically.

I think that as a teacher facilitates learning that there has to be a structure with boundaries in place even during an 'open ended' style lesson that is so prevalent in the modern LDS Elders Quorum.

Assessing my own teaching

This week I watched videos of myself teaching. It's always a little awkward watching yourself but I'm glad that I did. The overall feel that I now have after watching myself teach three times to my peers is that I really need to improve the flow of my lessons. I have awesome ideas and plenty of excitement, but the way that I structure my lessons and introduce concepts has got to be revamped. I need a process that helps me to shape the overall lesson of my plan. Maybe a good idea would be to start by asking myself the ultimate question, "What is it that I want these people to learn?" Or feel, see, know, etc... I also know that I need to pick one or two ideas and expand them more, versus slamming 10 ideas in and jumping all over the place.

Edutainment... is good?

Something that I've been thinking about a lot lately is the balance between Content and Entertainment. I read a KSL job add that was asking for an 'Edutainer' to give English lectures at a boarding school. It surprised me because they came out and called it as it was. They were looking for someone to entertain, and maybe slip a little bit of content in. For some reason in my mind the term "edutainer' had a negative vibe to it, something that American education has digressed into. Now! I may be changing my opinion of it's place in modern education and instruction.

Reason 1. Entertaining an audience with the motive to teach them something could be translated into capturing the audience. If no one is listening or even cares than what's the point of going through the rest of the lesson or lecture? Gong says that a teacher's success is measured by the efforts of their students. If your students aren't into what your teaching than you're toast...

Reason 2. If I'm entertained, I'm motivated. In today's lesson with Carissa's candy sculptures and Rashel's bumper chairs I had an enormous amount of positive energy towards learning! Each lesson left me wanting more! I wanted to design what my flower bed in real life could look like and then develop a new energy to run my house.

Reason 3. Pedagogy is the art of teaching. Teaching often isn't as simple as 'One plus One equals two.' Each teacher is on a journey to becoming a better teacher, and refining their presentation skills along the way.

STL 5 - 20 min lesson

I thought Charades went really well! The class got into it and seemed like they were having a good time. They had a chance to get out of their seats and participate in something not so ordinary. Charades brought a lot of positive feedback.

Though I did work on the speed of my speech, I blew past a lot of good discussion. Todd made me nervous with an answer that I wasn't expecting. From there I was just trying to get through the material and done with the lesson. I should have asked someone else the same question and brought up a little more class discussion. Todd's answer was simply, "Yeah..." I could have fired a follow up question asking him why he thought, 'yeah..." And then I can ask others what they think and why!

Another good comment that I want to address was the fact that once my charades activity was done, I didn't return to it for class discussion. It would have been great to use the Dam and Corn Field as a framework for discussion on environmental impact from technology.


PE Teachers...

Just because you're a succesful coach does not mean that you'll be a successful PE teacher. I took a exercise Wellness class at BYU-I from a man so large that he couldn't hardly jog a lap, let alone the 6 minute miles that he required of us. Most of his lectures were side tracked with stories of his glory days and his personal philosophies - regardless of what the book said. Now here's the kicker. The tests were written according to the book, contrary to most class instruction.

I'm experiencing a similar thing right now in a coaching class that I'm taking from BYU's Track and Field head coach. Though Mark doesn't lecture wellness blasphamies, his mid-term wasn't very consistent with his lectures. Instead of asking us to describe a phase or technique within in an event like he did each lecture, he hands out a 50 question bubble sheet test that asks very specific questions that Mark mentioned in passing. And, without a textbook to refer back to and so much variation in the articles we're collecting from the internet, consistency is impossible.

Tomorrow we'll get our scores back. The nice thing is that Mark bailed the whole class out by saying that we could argue for our answers. And that questions largely missed would be thrown out. :)

html=death

For three days now we've been working on HTML coding. I've never really been exposed to the language before and was pretty much completely lost the entire lecture that Andrew gave on day one. A few connections started to happen on day two when I got to play around with dreamweaver on my own. Finally I jumped on Lynda.com and went through their basic html tutorial to be able to piece together a workign three page website. I probable put in five or six hours of work for a smurf-blue-barely-passable website.

So! A few things that I would have done differently, had I taught HTML to myself. Start with the wire frame. I need to see the overall picture before I can start visualizing what goes where and what to type when. From the wire fram pull out a column of HTML coding to the left, and CSS coding to the right, explaining how HTML and CSS interact. Then I would get into the dirty with specific codes for headers, columns, links, etc. I just didn't have a very good overall picture of what the heck was going on when I was supposed to be learning it.


Disciplining my Neighbors

I'm finding that the same skills and tactics taught to manage a classroom of children are useful in managing the adults around you. I manage an apartment complex for families, mostly students, in Orem. There are 32 units divided up into eight fourplexes that are built around a cul-de-sac. There are certain rules and regulations that the owner likes us to encourage tenants to follow. Rules such as: pay your rent by the 5th of the month or you'll be charged a late fee. Or: don't park in the circle or you'll be cited for a parking violation. As soon as I let a few people get away with parking in the cul-de-sac it seemed like the entire complex was parking in the circle. I couldn't all of the sudden tag them all with parking tickets... that just doesn't seem fair? So! I decided to turn over a new leaf, and bring along some consistency. I posted a parking notice on everyone's door saying that we would begin enforcing the parking regulations the following Monday (today). I printed up a bunch of parking violation warnings and plan on citing each car that I see parked in the circle, even for only a moment. :)


Elders Quorum - Picking on Richard

Our presidency thought it would be a good idea for the elders to review the Priesthood Ordinances from our handbook. We don't carry around our misisonary hand book in our white shirt pockets anymore so most people are pretty rusty. This last week was my turn, and I thought it would be fun to talk about dedicating homes.

I put together a little handout that would have made any RS president proud that included instructions and suggestions for dedicating one's home. I had this awesome anticipatory set mapped out in my mind where I write on the chalk board, "I want my home to be..." and then list a thousand things that the body of the quorum shouts out to me. I wrote my sentence on the board:

I WANT MY HOME TO BE:
-
-
-
-

I looked around the room to see who was following so far and called out Richard's name. I fully expected him to be on the same page as I was and be able to participate in my little activity. Instead, Richard says, "Yeah?" It took me back for a moment, thinking, how could you not understand what I'm asking for? So I gently asked him to fill in the blank after my prompt, "I want my home to be..." Next I called on someone else for additional help. They knew right what to do.

I learned two things from this. First off, I should have vocalized the question, "What do you want your homes to be." And second, it probably wasn't a good idea to randomly pick on Richard.

TSA

The TSA's were a joke.

A visit with Bill Valora

Mr. Valora made fun of the kids, criticized their work, made public their faults, and each one of them loved it. He gave out attendance tootsie rolls and prefered that his students address him as Bill.

Bill taught an Intro to Motors class. Most of his students were freshman, although there were a few upperclass students as well. The kids were divided into pairs and assigned a motor to dissassemble piece by piece. They stood at a workbench with a board full of tools and buckets to place parts. I really liked that Bill stopped the class periodically to give instruction and remind the kids of certain procedures. He would then wander around checking work over shoulders. This usually led to another lecture moment where he explains to the class how to do, or not do, what a certain student had just done.

Bill's second period was a basic metals class. The kids had previously finished a project and were now starting on a new one. Bill started with a mini lecture in class, taking care of a few house keeping items and basic instrucitons. He drew an orthographic view of the dust pan that the kids would be making and explained a few basic procedures. Class moved out into the shop where the kids gathered around Bill's workbench. The rest of the class period Bill explained and showed how to correctly make a tin dustpan. The kids seemed to follow along fairly well for most of the lecture, but honestly I was quite bored. All the information was knew to me because I'd never worked with sheet metal before, but I still had to stand there for an hour and watch some dude make a box. Not very exciting.

I need to figure out a way for effective 'active learning.' Where we do a small demostration and then let the kids try it. Then we regroup and move on to part B. Dr C is famous for having hour, two hour long lectures in his woods class. The information is good, but I have to stand around a table saw for so long that everything that he's said has now run together and I can't really remember anything. I really think that he could break his lectures up a bit to be more effective.

Visit Two

Mr Jorgeson's metal shop

Mr. J was first an automotive dude before becoming a drafting teacher at the high school. Then when they cut his program he moved to the middle school to fill the shop position. Now he teaches middle school metal's 7 periods a day. At first he didn't like it, working with younger kids in a program that he didn't really have a passion for. Now three years into it he's established some consistency and modified the class to his liking.

I noticed that the girls generally did better than the boys. The boys didn't pay attention to detail and were sloppy with their cuts and welds. The girls, however, were almost perfectionistic with their projects. With the exception of a few that were scared of the spot welder, most girls had better looking boxes than the boys. It's funny how a few short years later that the high school tech classes are stereotypically weighted with boys.

Mr J said that he got a raise when he moved to the middle school. In my mind that was completely opposite. So - I called my dad again. In his school district it didn't matter what school you taught in. The pay scale was contigent on your level of education and years of experience.


Camera

This week I got to check out a really nice camera from the school. At first I was afraid to touch any buttons for fear that I would mess up the settings and not be able to return them to normal. I was surprised initially how difficult it was to shoot pictures without some sort of automation. It took several moments to focus on the shot I wanted, and then took several adjustments to get the right lighting. I think that it's a good thing to be able to manually tweak the settings to get a special shot, but automatic settings and focus do me just fine for the type of pictures I take.


Doc C Open House

Doctor Christensen invites his students over to his house for an opening social, of sorts. I really liked the approach, allowing students to see their professor on a more socialable level. Doc C appears to be a somewhat humble man, and often will try to level the playing field, encouraging students to be teachers and teachers to be students alike. When teaching kids in public schools, however, there does have to be some line drawn. I really think that there is a difference between being a 'friend' and being a positive mentor and educational facilitator.

A day with Mr. Hunter

Terry Hunter is a middle school teacher at Oak Canyon Middle School in Lindon, UT. He has been teaching middle school for over 30 years. I asked my dad, also a middle school teacher, how someone could last so long at that level. His response, "I work with rowdy rotten 7th and 8th graders every day, and I love every one of them."

As per assignment, I visited Mr. Hunter's classroom for a couple hours to observe his teaching style. I took a few notes and had a good time. :)

Notes:

After passing back their latest test, Mr. Hunter asked students to raise their hands according to the scores that he called out. "32, 31, 30, 29, 28, 27..." Then he had students stand up, "26, 25, 24... You that scored 26 and below failed."

- The kids didn't seem to mind the public display of their performance. Maybe it was because they were used to it. I'm betting that some below par kids would try to improve so that they weren't publicly embarrassed, however, some excelling students may not want to appear too smart in fear of losing cool-ness. "Bunch of smarties," one girl said to her friend who scored 32/32. "I am not," the girl responded as she sat down.

"10 seconds to be seated. 10, 9, 8, etc."

"You have one minute to put your folders/calculator/etc away and return to you seats. 15 seconds! 10, 9, 8, 7..."

-It was nice to know what was expected of the kids and how much time that they had to be seated.

Mr. Hunter had a lanyard microphone that projected his voice over a set of speakers mounted on the walls. It was really cool. Cheap, easy, effective.

There was cool stuff all over the classroom. Astronaut posters, model planes, flags, rockets, trusses, bridges, etc.

Activity: Build a cylinder 3" high and 1" wide using a piece of paper and glue. We tested them in class two days later to see how much weight each could hold and it's efficiency rating.

Follow up questions after a stress test activity. "How many of you are better technologists and engineers now? Technology is the science of improving life."

Job Shadow: Kids take a day off and shadow someone in the work force, usually a parent or relative.

Discipline: Students carry with them a Blue Sheet that records their behavior. Teachers mark their blue sheet when they break rules, are disrespectful, tardy, etc. The Blue Sheet is then calculated in with the students finally grade at the end of each quarter.

- I asked several of the students about their Blue Sheets and what they were for. Most of them could only give me partial answers and said that they were overall confused to their purpose. The system seems to be effective, however, because no student wanted to have their sheet filled out. Mr. Hunter didn't give warnings before marking their sheets, so the rules that they had broken must have been known expectations with zero tolerance.

Mood shift. Mr. Hunter was more irritable with his second period than his first. The kids were a little more rowdy and didn't perform nearly as well. Mr. Hunter was quicker to fill out their Blue Sheets and gave the class two 'strikes.'

-Again, the students had no idea what the strikes were for, just that they were bad?

I Love It, I Love It Not

Bro. Wright gave a 'holistic' lecture in class today, and it was the best lesson I'd had at BYU. When you can change your mindset or have a paradigm shift to an Apotheosis viewpoint, then all all people matter and all information becomes pertinent. "I was born of a god, therefor I am a god (in training), and I need to learn this and love that and ultimately - become." There comes about a very urgent need to improve! You can't remain mediocre when on the quest for greatness! You have to raise the bar and start pushing yourself on all levels!

One of my football coaches in high school coined a phrase that relates to this idea. "Tough Skills." When we asked Coach Baker why he was wearing a sweatshirt in the middle of August, his reply was, 'Tough Skills." The same response came when asked about his flip-flops nearing December. Baker was stepping outside of his comfort zone to increase his ability to handle adversity. Bro. Wright suggested we choose an area to improve in, like waking up 15 minutes earlier for additional scripture study. Not that we need an entire overhaul, or are even capable of a successful one, but that we can evaluate where we stand and improve upon our standing.

A few other notes that I took from his lecture involved the framework for good Reflection: Capture, Critique, and ACT. When we intake information it needs to be concise, complete, correct, and connected (to something else). We can then analyze the information for its value to us and apply it to hypothetical and realistic situations. Finally we put the information into practice and act upon what we've learned. Search, Ponder, Pray. (2Ne 4:15, Mosiah 1:6-7, Moroni 10:4-5)

Either you love it or you hate. If not then you're indifferent and you don't remember it. That is why you need a Framework for Knowledge.

- Purpose: Understand what the problem is.

- Central Message: What are the themes?

- Validations/Applications: Where will this work? Where is it represented?

- Values: Where does this fit in with my beliefs and rational?

If you can address every piece of information as if it were life saving, then you will love it and recall it with ease.

Week 2 Reflection - Teach Something, Consistency

'Teach Something' was an assignment where we chose something that we were an expert at or knew about and taught it to the class. I wanted to present something exciting and practical that would (hopefully) be different from everyone else. After shifting through a few ideas Wilderness Rice seemed to be the answer.

I presented rice as a cheap alternative to expensive Emergency Essentials food storage packages. Rice is healthy, abundant, lasts forever, and is very affordable. A 50lb bag of rice can easily sustain a single person for six months!

Power Points make every presentation easier, so I put together a few pictures of my wilderness experience to give some background. Then I pulled up a custom spread sheet that calculated how-much-of-what and the total cost. Turns out you can save yourself literally hundreds of dollars.

I felt like the presentation went well. The information was simple to follow and very useful. I know that I have an active and aggressive teaching style. I often feel that I'm attacking the information and burning through it as fast as possible. Some of that is from nerves, usually a few minutes into a presentation my pace will slow down. Another reason is that I feel like I need to capture my audience and entertain them. Golden information is rarely the only reason that someone is paying attention to you.

Overall presentation - I give myself a 4.5 out of 5.

Teach Something, round two. This time we had to choose our topics from a list of Technological Standards found in our online textbook. I chose Standard 7 because it involved the use of energy and power technologies, which highly interest me. I wanted to involve this hydrogen cell that I've been learning about at home and show everyone that it's totally possible to make your own hydrogen energy that could one day fuel the world! But I failed miserably and gave a terrible presentation.

First off, I had three different angles that I came in at which confused people and killed my flow. I started the presentation by saying that I was going to talk about HHO Energy and showed off my fuel cell. I then went to a PowerPoint presentation to show a few quotes from the book. In the presentation I had a short video of a fuel cell in operation, which was more of a commercial than instructional. Then finally I ended the presentation with a picture of the lighted earth. It was really bad. After I had talked myself silent in front of the class, I finally said that I was done and sat down.

What I should have done was first talk about hydrogen as the fuel of the future and a few of it's uses, then reveal my cell and show that anyone can make one basically for free.

Maybe next time.

3 out of 5.

Harry and Rosemary Wong offered a thought about consistency:

Just Think...

• Just think how much easier life would be if the teachers supported each other with routines that were consistent from classroom to classroom.
• Just think what the achievement of these students would be if this were the prevailing culture of the school.
• Just think how effective the schools would be if this were the prevailing culture of the entire district.

I think that the spread of the gospel and general church growth can be partly attributed to global consistency. Manuals, conferences, ladders of leadership, etc all make it possible for our world-wide church to be on the same page and make learning eternal truths that much easier.

A school district programed with a similar core structure would have enormous benefits. Granted that every individual has their own style, consistency could be established through core expectations and program structure.

A potential barrier (especially in a public setting) could be individuals who wouldn't conform, either because they simply don't want to or believe that their way is better. Group collaboration should be the answer, establishing the best standard, followed by consistency.

Week 1 Reflection - Starting a blog

For one of my classes we have to write a 'Weekly Reflection' covering teaching styles and content in relation to Technology Engineering that we observed that week. The easiest way is to build a blog and have our instructor, Dr. Wright, subscribe to it.

Hands On: Our first day with Bro. Shumway was not a typical first day experience. Instead of handing out a syllabus with rules and deadlines, he passed around a single wire, battery, and light bulb. He charged us with the task of simply lighting the light bulb. After everyone accomplished the task we watched a video of MIT graduates face the same problem. A third of the students surveyed couldn't figure it out. :)

I really liked having an active first day. It communicated to me that we were going to have an active semester, which I prefer. The Wongs suggest in their book that the first week of school be set aside to establish rules, expectations, patterns and routines. Bro. Shumway covered that on day two. :)

Finding Home

I transferred to BYU and changed my major. I always knew that I wanted to be in the education field, but I was struggling to find a major that really called my name. First, I studied Spanish Education at BYU-Idaho. I thought that Spanish would be a smart move, having just returned from a Spanish speaking mission. I attended three straight semesters in Rexburg before deciding to take a break from school and work full time.

I worked as a field guide for a Wilderness Therapy Program for troubled teens. We'd wander around the desert with a few rations of food storage, trying to address everyone's debilitating behaviors. I probably learned more about myself than I did anyone else.

Coming back to school I knew that I no longer wanted to pursue Spanish. I declared PE when I transferred to BYU and took a few Summer classes. Two weeks before Fall classes were scheduled to begin, my wife directed me to the School of Technology website. I loved what I saw and instantly started aligning my 'just-for-fun-on-the-side-projects' with my academic goals. I set an appointment with Sister Harmon in advising and scrambled to piece a Fall schedule together, resulting in having to quit my current full-time job.

Electronics, robotics, video editing, wood working. :) Awesome.

Everything seems to be falling into place. I'm actually excited for all of my classes. For now, I'll describe the feeling as simply coming home.