..::: LessonOne :::... |
Friday, September 14, 2001
On Tuesday--nine one one, as it happens--planes were crashed into the twin towers of the world trade center as well as into the Pentagon, with thousands of casualties. I mention it here because, of course, it affects us all. Observations from class following the catastrophy:
Today there was a bomb threat, which had no apparent effect but to keep the administrators up all night. I suppose some people can't resist exerting a little power when people seem to be feeling vulnerable... Tuesday, September 04, 2001
First day of school. Our welcome back was similar to our send-off--all the locks on campus had had toothpicks shoved inside, and were then injected with epoxy. Not very uplifting. Otherwise, things went very well. It was really fun to be back here. The only real serious problem I had was that several of my classes were seriously over-enrolled. I have threee sections with 28 or more, and only 24 workstations. I don;t know if this is 'normal' and something that will work itself out, or if I shoul panic... Thursday, June 14, 2001
...arrived at school 7:45 AM yesterday to discover that all the locks on campus had been super-glued. A reminder that--exams begin today. Sigh. Friday, June 01, 2001
I got to be a field biologist, day before yesterday. 120 seniors, or so, are involved in the 'bear test' for their wildlife biology class. Among other things, this involves avoiding the bear (their teacher) for a solid week, and they employ all sorts of modern technology to aid in the attempt. Complicating matters is the fact that they have to pass through checkpoints at various times, with 'field biologists' that they must discover somewhere on campus at some time during a fifteen minute period, sometime during the week. This leaves them vulnerable to the bear… I wasn't discovered until about five minutes into my fifteen. From that point, I was absolutely mobbed. The students chanted the fuzzy wuzzy rhyme when they found me--which is an impressive thing when amplified by a dozen or so at a time. My task was to adhere a flower sticker to the number '6' on the grid they wore on cards hanging from around their necks. This project acheives total buy-in, and accomplishes the grail of complete student attention. What a fun thing. Tuesday, May 29, 2001
Today, I have learned, will be senior skip day, though many of my seniors don't seem to need that excuse lately... We've had a long weekend—somehow, they are worth SO much more than half again as much as the regular two-day variety. Another two and a half weeks remain of school before exams, and things are definitely winding down. Is it wise to have all the awards ceremonies and so forth so early? The pervasive message—as much from the school itself as from the students—is that we've done all the important work we're going to do this year. What remains? LOTS of bookkeeping… Monday, May 21, 2001
Grudge Match Boils Between Dell and Jobs Management, he has argued, tends to be about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought they could.
Monday, May 14, 2001
Twice, now—with the same student—I've said something I wished I could take back before it was out of my mouth. There is a certain type of kid I am, maybe, ill-suited to teach. The first instance of this came in the middle of the cartoon project. Basically, this student (who is an habitual truant) was having the kind of trouble using the software that showed he hadn't done the exercises I'd assigned. My pointing out that everyone else seemed to be able to do the assigned task was incredibly unhelpful—not only to the goal of teaching, but also to that of developing some kind of connection. More recently, this student was having trouble colorizing an image. He's a bit of a wise-guy, funny, but with a fairly transparent need for attention. When I went to help him and couldn't solve the problem right away, he loudly and profanely insisted that I couldn't do it either. Without thinking, I told him that he shouldn't speak to me that way if he wanted my help, and I stopped helping. He of course, said he _didn;t_ want my help, which was doing him so little good in any case... I'm awkard with this student, and I don't know why, exactly. he's really exactly the kind of kid for whom this stuff could be most helpful down the road, but I can't seem to get him to buy in at all... Thursday, April 26, 2001
This week, and into the next, we're having STAR tests--about which the school, if not the students, is very uneasy. For the first time since I've been there, I was asked to distribute meal tickets to the students taking the test. It's quite a message, really: TODAY, we're very interested that you have breakfast, because how you do on this test reflects on us. Other days, well... Friday, April 13, 2001
Projects are in: children's counting books for the DTP people, and framesets for the web design group. Thewy are ok , for the most part... The pervasive sloppiness I blame on the distraction of the upcoming break. We've had a presenter from the Art Institute this week. What a fun way to do college--all project based! I think she may get some takers from among my students.... Friday, April 06, 2001
We had Open House last night at school. One quick observation: Some of those students who moan and whine most vociferously, are also most excited to show off their work to their parents. I don't know if that provides any useful insight into how they really feel about the class or anything... except maybe to confirm that they're just vociferous, excitable kids, which of course I knew already... Anyway, Open House is a pretty fun time to be a graphic design teacher. While many of the other classrooms have been hastily festooned with construction paper projects created just for this occassion, my room is glowing with monitors showing all sorts of animated computer art, and the windows are filled with high quality, color-printed vector drawings. In comparison, anyway, they look pretty good. Heh heh. Friday, March 30, 2001
Rory's been sick for ages... It's been off and on, really, and he's been (mostly) good-humored, but, man, we're tired of this. I've been more or less sick too--nothing major--pretty much since January, sometimes better than others. What have we done to spawn such viruses? Well, okay, I guess that's clear... Wednesday, March 28, 2001
One irony about the attempt to put the tools of mass publication in the hands of those who might have alternative stories to tell: they want nothing more passionately than to faithfully regurgitate the messages of the mainstream masters of bread and circus... We may as well be writing ads for junk food, for sports tems, for cars...all these things. It makes sense, I suppose that this is what comes first to their minds when exposed to these tools--it's how they've seen them used, and it's a testament, perhaps, to the power of the medium and its techniques. Friday, March 16, 2001
I had intended, of course, for this to be a more regular thing--a journal... There is no time, though, between the teaching, the curriculum development, the credential program, the committees, and so on. A prep period would really help... Friday, March 09, 2001
A bomb threat today. This morning a note was found in the office, claiming bombs secreted aroung the campus would explode at 10:15. It is the last day of the grading period, and many of us, myself included, had tests scheduled. I won't be doing that again--sheduling a test for the last day of the grading period. My carefully designed grading plan has been blown to smithereens... What's on everyone's mind is the pair of fatal shootings at high schools in the US in the last week--one in a California community not unlike this one. The bomb threat was bogus--likely just a selfish attempt to get out of a test. But people were scared here. The threat of violence, here, in this place, is believeable. Sunday, February 18, 2001
My students are actually DOING their projects--I am surprised, really, and thrilled that it's working. There is still a bit of resistance from some corners...but hey...overall I couldn't be more pleased. Most of them are actually completing the drawings--and some of them are doing this with spectacular ability. One problem: some folks are pretty much finished already. I don't have much to recommend that they DO to their work at this point, and I've got another six hours scheduled for them to be working on this stuff. At the same time several students have really only now just gotten underway, having finally managed to chose a subject, & c. This disparity is something I need to figure out... Saturday, February 10, 2001
One, somewhat hackneyed, measure of the quality of life is the number of sunrises and sunsets one sees. By this measure, I'm doing extremely well these days: I see the sun come up on my way to work, and go down on my way home, although I don't see it at all the rest of the day... Here in Marin County time, as well as space, is segregated. In the wee hours, everyone on the road is brown. You don't see those folks much here during the rest of the day... Wednesday, February 07, 2001
Here is what happened yesterday: A student of mine was arrested. For coming to school. He's not allowed to come to school anymore because he's missed too much school.... Saturday, January 06, 2001
Lesson One: Suddenly--with a radical abruptness, really--I'm teaching a lot. There are 150 students or so who come through. 1/2 that number every day. With tutorials and lunch meetings, I have students somewhere around 30 hours a week. I have no prep-period. These are my first high school students. I'm learning quite a bit... I learned one thing, for sure, on Wednesday: Don't show the students anything you haven't seen--all the way through--yourself. I teach now—suddenly—in a vocational program, so one of my responsibilities is to introduce students to the job market and to its desires of them. One of these, one that kept coming up in our on-line job searching excercise, was that they should know how to create Flash animations. Since several students weren't familiar with this technology, I decided I'd conclude the session (with which I had been extremely self-satisfied) by throwing a quick example up on the projector, and I chose one randomly from those available at shockwave.com. The one that landed there, of course, turned out to be an animated parody of Jim Carrey answering critics of one of his movies with terrific blasts from his anus. My recommendation to other new teachers: don't try this during YOUR first week...
 |