So you would think that I was a very productive person. I had a to do list with real adult responsibilities on it and I have completed or initiated all of them. I did my state and federal taxes all on my own ( I hope that works out for me), I went and got a consultation with for my wisdom teeth ( which I'm thinking my tax refund will be paying for :-\), I figured out what I need to do to get my MD Teaching License, and I got new tires and got my car to work semi-normally for the time being. I CAN'T SEEM TO DO MY GRADING THOUGH. I sit and stair at my computer. Sometimes doing meaningless things and some times just staring as if that was acceptable. It is entirely unacceptable. AND what is worse is that I have SOOOO much work to do for grad school that I have been putting off because I have been trying to stay afloat just teaching. BAH. So why am I staring at the computer with not a care in the world for what accumulates to hours a week.
If you have an answer let me know.
For now I guess I'll keep kicking and trying to stay afloat and possibly try to sneak some work in there somewhere.
And then when I finally try to get work done I don't have enough time left in my free period or whenever so I have to stop and do something else like teach or help someone and it takes me FOREVER to focus again. I think it might be a sickness!
My goal tonight is to grade all of my 6th grade Social Studies work.... there is a lot of it. I can do it but not if I keep staring at my screening like it might do my work for me. Wish me luck!
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Senioritis
I am quite done mentally with grad school. I have reached a stand still as far I'm concerned with motivation. I am simply doing what is required and basically nothing more when it comes to doing graduate work. I somewhat regret this current status because there are many things that would helpful if i could apply myself more but I am just really sick of having to do school work and neglecting my school responsibilities.
I can't pin point anything that would make teaching so much harder than student teaching aside from the amount of time that I have to spend on my graduate work. I think I am really ready to commit my time to my work and I am not being given that opportunity yet because of my commitments to my graduate.
So how can I do this? Suggestions would be welcome!
I can't pin point anything that would make teaching so much harder than student teaching aside from the amount of time that I have to spend on my graduate work. I think I am really ready to commit my time to my work and I am not being given that opportunity yet because of my commitments to my graduate.
So how can I do this? Suggestions would be welcome!
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Do you ever really get to that place where you have lots of time in your life free??
So as far as my life goes right now I am too busy even to think ahead more than hours at a time. I work on a day to day, hour to hour basis much of the time.
Twice this week I had multiple experiences of running out of either my house or my classroom after printing a grad school assignment in order to get to my college in time for the grad class to turn in the assignment I had just printed. I have always been a procrastinator to the fullest and a last minute person, but I honestly am in awe of how stressful grad school work is as far as trying to stay on top of it.
I am hopeful that after may when I am done with grad school I will have more time to relax and be less busy and stressed, but then I thought about it more and... will I really ACTUALLY have more time or is that an illusion??? Will I just be rid of the grad school work only to take on a big project at work and be busy all the time then. In a sick way do I like being busy and stressed? My sick answer to that question is: probably. :-\
I think that is why I don't generally like complaining about stress and I just deal with it, because in some sort of twisted way I seem to enjoy being immersed in activity and expectations that I am striving to meet. It is a crazy life. Is it a good thing? Or should I think about becoming de-stressed in the future???
Twice this week I had multiple experiences of running out of either my house or my classroom after printing a grad school assignment in order to get to my college in time for the grad class to turn in the assignment I had just printed. I have always been a procrastinator to the fullest and a last minute person, but I honestly am in awe of how stressful grad school work is as far as trying to stay on top of it.
I am hopeful that after may when I am done with grad school I will have more time to relax and be less busy and stressed, but then I thought about it more and... will I really ACTUALLY have more time or is that an illusion??? Will I just be rid of the grad school work only to take on a big project at work and be busy all the time then. In a sick way do I like being busy and stressed? My sick answer to that question is: probably. :-\
I think that is why I don't generally like complaining about stress and I just deal with it, because in some sort of twisted way I seem to enjoy being immersed in activity and expectations that I am striving to meet. It is a crazy life. Is it a good thing? Or should I think about becoming de-stressed in the future???
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Hmmm....
So I made this blog for my grad class but I think that means that it may be all too appropriate to use it at this point in my life when grad class combined with everything else is driving me crazy.
Everyone says that the second year of teaching should be so much easier. I am confident that it would be... if all I was doing was doing was teaching but this year I have this nasty thing called a practicum for my Administration and Supervision Masters Degree. IT IS INSANE. Not only am I, as always, one of the youngest members of my grad classes but for the first time in academic work I feel like I might really be overwhelmed. Now this is not entirely true because in the back of my mind I have not given up and everything will get done, but I more than usual recently I have just honestly been so overwhelmed that I can't handle it.
For instance a full time job is time consuming and sometimes tough as it is. But now I have to balance that and all my work for my graduate class, 300 hours of Administrative and Supervisory experience for my practicum, AND a second grad class that I have to take this semester as well. I feel like just when I thought my teaching was going to work out well and when I was getting more comfortable in the classroom I have been overcome with work and have lost my footing. And when I get like this it is hard for me to distinguish why i am upset.
Am I upset because I have so much work? Am I upset because I behind in my grading ( AGAIN), am I upset because most of my best friends live over 5 hours away from me? All of these things seem to jumble together which makes it extremely hard for me to sort it all out which leave my life in a jumble.
What do you do when your life just seems to jumble itself together and you don't know where to begin to sort it out?
Everyone says that the second year of teaching should be so much easier. I am confident that it would be... if all I was doing was doing was teaching but this year I have this nasty thing called a practicum for my Administration and Supervision Masters Degree. IT IS INSANE. Not only am I, as always, one of the youngest members of my grad classes but for the first time in academic work I feel like I might really be overwhelmed. Now this is not entirely true because in the back of my mind I have not given up and everything will get done, but I more than usual recently I have just honestly been so overwhelmed that I can't handle it.
For instance a full time job is time consuming and sometimes tough as it is. But now I have to balance that and all my work for my graduate class, 300 hours of Administrative and Supervisory experience for my practicum, AND a second grad class that I have to take this semester as well. I feel like just when I thought my teaching was going to work out well and when I was getting more comfortable in the classroom I have been overcome with work and have lost my footing. And when I get like this it is hard for me to distinguish why i am upset.
Am I upset because I have so much work? Am I upset because I behind in my grading ( AGAIN), am I upset because most of my best friends live over 5 hours away from me? All of these things seem to jumble together which makes it extremely hard for me to sort it all out which leave my life in a jumble.
What do you do when your life just seems to jumble itself together and you don't know where to begin to sort it out?
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Blogging in education reflection...
3 Blog reviews:
1. http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=46439&newlimit=25
This blog is created by Mary Bernhardt. It has been updated quite frequently if not daily during the present school year. This blog appears to be a way for this teacher to communicate with students about assignments and a place for students to check on assignments each night. One comment I would have though is that this blog has been used since Sept. 2006 and I could only see one students comment that was not responded to by the teacher within the blog. I think if a teacher is going to go through so much trouble to update this blog each night I would think it might be important to try and have the students communicate with them through the blog as well. It also doesn’t tell a person outside of the class community exactly what this blog is. I am assuming that it is for a high school English class. But there could be more of a title to give someone an idea of exactly what this blog is for or what one might find if they read the blog. There isn’t even an initial blog post explaining its purpose to the students.
2. http://cpeppler.edublogs.org/
This blog appears to have been created by a teacher who was excited to use new technology that he/she learned about in a book on blogs, wikis, etc. It seems that the teacher did actually use a blog with a summer school classroom but as far as this personal blog it seems that in the past few years there isn’t even on average a post per month. The purpose of this blog I think for this teacher is to share what they are doing and just a lot of things that they are learning in books, article, in the news, etc. and see if anyone has anything interesting to respond to these thoughts with.
3. http://blog.teachervision.fen.com/
This blog is a middle school math teacher who is kind of just throwing out ideas about how to teach certain lessons in math classes and what worked. I especially liked her entries that are reflecting on what worked or didn’t work and how she corrected what she had done or what she did that was really a success.
Brainstorming about how I might use a Blog:
I think if there was a network of teachers that were all teaching the same subject matter it would be more than beneficial to be a part of that type of blog. As a first year teacher I am constantly struggling to keep track of all 5 of my classes each day and sometimes that doesn’t even touch on being able to focus in on the material in each subject. I think it would be helpful for me in terms of getting a frame of reference on how to teach particular things that I haven’t taught before and figuring out if that might work in my classroom.
I like the last blog that I reviewed. I would be helpful if the posts were even more frequent but I really liked how it was very reflective. Blogging is an excellent way to be a reflective educator and assuming that you have well meaning people reading and responding to your blog posts it would be a great way to get input and constructive criticism when needed although if you have spiteful or mean people it is possible that you might not want to know how those people would respond to how you teach or a decision you made or even mistake you may have made in teaching.
1. http://classblogmeister.com/blog.php?blogger_id=46439&newlimit=25
This blog is created by Mary Bernhardt. It has been updated quite frequently if not daily during the present school year. This blog appears to be a way for this teacher to communicate with students about assignments and a place for students to check on assignments each night. One comment I would have though is that this blog has been used since Sept. 2006 and I could only see one students comment that was not responded to by the teacher within the blog. I think if a teacher is going to go through so much trouble to update this blog each night I would think it might be important to try and have the students communicate with them through the blog as well. It also doesn’t tell a person outside of the class community exactly what this blog is. I am assuming that it is for a high school English class. But there could be more of a title to give someone an idea of exactly what this blog is for or what one might find if they read the blog. There isn’t even an initial blog post explaining its purpose to the students.
2. http://cpeppler.edublogs.org/
This blog appears to have been created by a teacher who was excited to use new technology that he/she learned about in a book on blogs, wikis, etc. It seems that the teacher did actually use a blog with a summer school classroom but as far as this personal blog it seems that in the past few years there isn’t even on average a post per month. The purpose of this blog I think for this teacher is to share what they are doing and just a lot of things that they are learning in books, article, in the news, etc. and see if anyone has anything interesting to respond to these thoughts with.
3. http://blog.teachervision.fen.com/
This blog is a middle school math teacher who is kind of just throwing out ideas about how to teach certain lessons in math classes and what worked. I especially liked her entries that are reflecting on what worked or didn’t work and how she corrected what she had done or what she did that was really a success.
Brainstorming about how I might use a Blog:
I think if there was a network of teachers that were all teaching the same subject matter it would be more than beneficial to be a part of that type of blog. As a first year teacher I am constantly struggling to keep track of all 5 of my classes each day and sometimes that doesn’t even touch on being able to focus in on the material in each subject. I think it would be helpful for me in terms of getting a frame of reference on how to teach particular things that I haven’t taught before and figuring out if that might work in my classroom.
I like the last blog that I reviewed. I would be helpful if the posts were even more frequent but I really liked how it was very reflective. Blogging is an excellent way to be a reflective educator and assuming that you have well meaning people reading and responding to your blog posts it would be a great way to get input and constructive criticism when needed although if you have spiteful or mean people it is possible that you might not want to know how those people would respond to how you teach or a decision you made or even mistake you may have made in teaching.
Internet Class...
So I've never created a personal blog before. This is my first one and clearly I am creating it during a graduate class. You might say " What are you doing in grad school if you're not even going to pay attention?" I would respond by saying " THIS IS MY ACTUAL CLASS ASSIGNMENT! I am paying attention. :-p"
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