I was Robbed

We went and stayed with my in-laws for christmas and spent a whole week just hanging out and enjoying company.  On friday morning my wife's sister came in and said that our van hatch was open and the door was popped open.  I figured that we must have left it open all night and went on with life.  Today we were getting everything in the car and and i noticed my toolbox was gone.  I always bring my toolbox when we go on the road in case I need to use the tools.  Anyway, I look around and realize that it was stolen and the day that everyone was telling me that the car was open was the day or morning it happened.  I have heard of people telling me before about how their tools were stolen once and how much it sucks but I couldnt ever say anything other than that sucks.  Now I know how it feels.  I made that toolbox in high school.  I collected those tools over the past decade.  Many memories are tied to those things and while they are just things, the pain of being stolen from, being violated like that really hurts.  The tools can be replaced and life will go on but I am still hurt.  I guess all I can say is farewell to my tools.  We had some great times.  I just hope that whoever they serve next will treat them well and that they will work hard.

Final 276 post!

So the semester is almost over but I still feel a lot of stress.  After Wednesday it will be way easier.  Its not the finals that are worrying me this semester but everything else it takes to get there.  I feel like if I am going to teach something when i graduate from this program, it needs to be computers and electronics.  Nothing else really floats my boat.  I just finished watching our 6th grade teaching video and i was thinking about so many things we could have done better like teach something else.  I'm really disappointed that we didn't do the spud lab like the other group.  I loved that lab when we did it last year and it totally didn't occur to me that we could do that.  It is all done now but what a missed opportunity.  I wasn't excited to teach airplanes.  Aviation isn't what is in my head all the time.  If I am going to teach in the future, its gotta be one of my passions that I teach.  i love electronics and computers.  I do that stuff for free.  I really don't get tired of it either.  I got tired of the airplane lesson before we even started and that is a problem.  I'm not in a very good mood tonight.  I have a lot on my plate and it is uncomfortable.  Maybe I should have saved this post for Wednesday night.

Week 12

We had the chance to teach Ms. Hensen's 6th grade class at Mapleton elementary this week.  We prepared a lesson on flight and we used paper airplanes to keep the kids attention.  They seemed to really like it and were interested.  The kids were forgiving to our teaching.  When we made mistakes they didn't jump all over us for it.  It was a good experience but I was not happy with the lesson.  I didn't care for it because i was bored while we were preparing it.  I don't want to teach about why planes fly.  I want to teach technology, more specifically, I want to teach how certain technologies work and be able to play around with them.  If we had a plane to fly around it would be different.  Paper airplanes just aren't enough for me.  Everything went fine, but I was bored.  As I heard about the other groups and the lesson they taught on electronics I was excited.  Lighting LED's and messing around with wires to shock the whole class sounds fun and educational.  I dont know why I didnt think to do that stuff.  That is what I like to do.  The only thing i can do now is wait for next time.

Week 11!

This week we prepared for teaching the six grade kids in maple ton when we come back from thanksgiving break.  Our group is going to teach about the physics of flying.  We are going to use paper airplanes and talk about or really have the kids experiment and see why certain styles and designs of paper airplanes work and why they don't.  I'm not really excited to teach this subject.  After hearing the one of the other groups talk about potato batteries and having the kids do that it makes me want to scrap the whole plane idea but its too late for that.  I will still be a team player and teach and act as excited as is appropriate but our lesson plan is boring.  I'm hoping that it can be over soon and we can move on. 

Week 10!

We had our last stl lesson presentations this week.  They were pretty good today.  The activities were engaging and they were things that I wanted to do so it wasn't a chore to do them.  I kinda want to talk about my woods project that im working on.  I am building the writing desk and of the three options that were available to us i thought my Paige could use a little desk when she gets older for school and stuff.  Tate and I will make something else so he can have that experience with me but I decided to give the desk to Paige.  Its coming along really well.  I wasn't making good progress on it last week and then I decided that I was going to speed up and do things my way instead of looking at the plans so much.  In the beginning you have to look at the plans because I didn't make my own plans so I was using someone else's idea and it is a little complicated but now its really coming together.  Today I cut the drawer rings to fit inside the desk and give it some much needed structure.  We have a dado blade set for the table saws but there are so many students in the class and they are all trying to use the same dado set so i just went over to the table saw and did the work way quicker because I wasn't feeling the pressure to hurry up so some one else can use it.  because i decided to go this route, Im farther ahead than I would have expected to be and Im feeling good about the whole thing.  I even had the whole thing put together as a pre-dry fit and I am very pleased with my own work.  It may not be the coolest thing ive ever made but it is by far the finest thing I have ever made.  I have never used so many good tools and machines.  I have never really had the chance to work with anything but plywood and pine 2x4s.  That is the stuff you can buy at home depot and so my work was construction site grade.  Im going on too long with this but im having fun except for the little quizzes that Dr. C has to make the class a class.  If it was just go work in the wood shop I would love this class.  As it is now, it stresses me out.

Week 9

I just finished my power point for my STL lesson tomorrow.  It is my lesson plan and I am really excited to share it tomorrow.  I really like preparing lessons that I get to present.  I just love being in the group that we are in.  The whole major is like this where we all work to benefit and uplift each other.  There isn't the competition in this program that exists in other programs.  I would hate it if we all worked against each other.  My lesson tomorrow is on power and energy technologies and I have quite the plan.  I will start with some boring old definition time.  That will be the activity that I look at and do my formative evaluation.  The summative evaluations will be at the end when i ask about ways that we can use power more wisely.  I just remembered that we have a quiz or learning adventure on the philosophers of teaching and styles or teaching.  That has totally killed my buzz but I just need to study the philosophies of the people that I remember and the teaching methods that go with those then I can get on with my lesson.  Mike is teaching tomorrow too so that will be cool.  I thought I would incorporate a vegetable tray into my lesson because they are good and vegetables are a good example of chemical potential energy which fits my lesson.  It would be better if I handed out LED's to everyone but i'm not going to do that.

Week 8!

This week has been busy so I haven't captured or reflected on much.  I finished up our lesson plan for the rov things with Nate over a Google doc.  I love Google docs.  They are so convenient for me because I can't meet with groups but I have plenty of downtime here at work so its no bog deal if I spend a couple hours on a Google doc pounding out some details for a paper or project.  We talked about technology in class on Tuesday and I thought about mechanical advantage and why we have technology and its just cool.  We have technology to make up for what we are incapable of.  I can't be everywhere at once but I have the internet to make it as easy as possible to complete assignments and other stuff.  We may not be all powerful beings that have no limits but have amazing minds that come up with solutions to complex issues and I love it!

Week 7? Reflection 7 at least.

Today I had the opportunity to go and observe two classes in the same time that I would normally only see one.  I Went over to maple mountain high school and observed Mr. Roberts wood shop class where all the kids were working on nightstands.  Utah makes all the wood shops make night stands as one of the projects because my brothers both made the same kind of thing but much better quality.  There were a bunch of kids in there working on their projects and they weren't doing a very good job because the night stands were all crooked and messed up.  The teacher said that was his slacker class.  He said it always seems to happen where one of the classes are full of slackers and kids that don't care or listen too well.  It was unfortunate but you can't get around it.  I helped out some of the kids as they were putting their panels together for the top of the nightstands.  That was a fun experience.  After Mr. Massic's prep period was over the welding class started.  It was fun to watch but most of it was out in the welding booths and you need protective masks and gloves to get in there.  We didn't stay much longer because it was already ten o'clock.  He had some interesting methods like the time clock that he had the students use to log their hours for attendance and they also get state credit for the time they put in welding.  That was cool.
I would probably do things similar but the wood shop class needs to be tightened up.  The kids being slackers isn't okay.  At the same time, you cant make kids care about the subject you teach so you can either let them stay or kick them out.
I will have to watch how I manage things with my kids.  I know I don't really like letting them get into things because they make such a mess but i just can't help trying to keep things straight and clean at home.  That is as good of an "action" as I can think of.
I also wanted to mention my experience with the other high school that I went to this week.  I wont mention names but the teacher let me know what to expect as far as pay was concerned teaching in this school district and possibly its the same in others.  It was slightly more than I make now by about $10,000 a year.  I didn't consider a career in teaching to make it big and live a fancy expensive life but I feel like putting all this work in to get slightly better pay per year than I get now seems like a bad deal.  Honestly that scared me.  I hope I don't sound greedy or ungrateful,  I just want to be able to live.  4+ years of schooling and barely making more than what you can make at an entry level position is not a good trade.

BYU Library Instruction Class

So we have to take a class here at BYU and probably all universities called technical writing if you are in the engineering school or just some form of third year writing class for all the other majors.  My gripe is this little hour long instruction is probably meant to help us but what they don't realize is that we usually try to avoid this crap at all costs.  We do not come to the library for research as undergrads and if you are a graduate student then you probably have the ability to do this stuff already.  The teacher knows his stuff but I just don't care about this library stuff.  Even if I wanted to know how to do this stuff like finding sources and do it all right and proper then I would ask for help because that is how I learn stuff.  I do not do well with this mass instruction on stuff that is pretty boring.  Anyway, maybe one day people in authority will figure out how to take feedback and design stuff before they design activities that are particular.

New Handlebars!

I got my new bars in the mail on Saturday and had them on in a couple hours.  It took longer than I wanted it to because the cables and the wires had to be tucked in and made to fit.  the cabling on this bike is a mess.  i need to make new cables for it and clean them up.  I opened up the headlight bucket and tried to stuff some of the cables in there but it was just such a mess.  The starter button doesn't always work now either.  If it is the first start of the day then you need to push start the stupid thing but if you were riding within the last hour or so then you can hold the button and twist the throttle til it decides it wants to start.  Its a weird thing.  I think I want to make some significant changes tho this bikes electrical once ive got it out of service for the winter.  Clean up the wiring.  maybe even run the cables in the handlebars or something.  The bike looks pretty bad but with the new bars it is much more sporty feeling.  I love the riding position.  Much more comfortable.  I will order some new mirrors to replace the old ones because right now it looks way too busy.  the seat will stay for a while until i can find some tubing and bend a rear hoop.  I have access to a tubing bender at school and I can weld it to the bike once I can make changes without needing to ride it home.  Im thinking I want to paint the tank grey or silver and most other things flat black.  I like the idea of a brown or tan vinyl seat.  I would like leather for a seat but that might not do so well if it was to get wet.  Still getting bad gas mileage.  Ive been getting about 90 miles out of 3.6 gallons.  Our camry got better gas mileage than that.  I don't know if I need to sync the carbs or something else but that hasn't been done since I put in the new jets so its a fair assumption.

Week 6?

I feel like its a good thing to not be exactly sure which week we are in during the semester because things start to blend together and we forget how far we have come and how far we still have to go.  Anyway, we had a good week this week as far as our training goes.  We were able to go observe another middle school on Tuesday.  Mike and I went out to frontier middle school and sat in on Jay Anderson's class.  He has a wood shop type class and they were turning ball and cup toys when we were there.  It was cool to see them get it so quickly.  He gave a demo of the way it was supposed to be.  Lead them on the path to the hands on learning and then let them go for it.  Kind of like training wheels.  The students were also working on boomerangs.  It is clever to have the kids do two projects to make up for the fact that there aren't enough machines.  I feel like when that happened to me when I was in school we ended up doing regular book work while all the other kids did the fun stuff.  We all eventually got to do the fun stuff but this way none of the kids were hating the activity.  Its hard to have an action for this one because we aren't teaching yet but I guess we can make sure to do this when we finally get there.

October 3, 2013

Capture-  Today Ben Crabtree and I had the opportunity to observe the class of Bret Christensen at Mt. Nebo Junior High.  It was a great experience.  They have this time called flex time which is about 20 - 30 minutes long and it is for remediation which I took as help with work the students are behind on.  For the students that aren't behind they get to go to which ever flex classroom they want.  Mr. Christensen teaches electronics so he asked if we wanted to teach something.  I taught about transformers.  I was understandably rusty but we had fun.  We didn't get crazy into it but it was productive.  After flex time the regular classes start and go for about an hour it seemed.  They went pretty fast.  There was a starting assignment on the board that the students worked on and then went to work on the computers to further design their ideas.  Ben and I went around and asked what some of the ideas were and tried to push for further thought development but with some kids it was more difficult.  Most of the students did fine but a few gave us the whole I don't know what to do bit.
Analysis-  As we interacted with the students, I remembered that at different ages they would have different methods of surviving.  I think these were 7th graders and for the most part they were emulating things they see.  I talked with Ben on the way back and he noticed that as well.  The ideas they came up with were slight variations on successful things or sales.  They were asked to brainstorm a business idea and make a business card and brochure and stuff like that.  At this stage kids don't seem to be really thinking for themselves when it comes to tasks that they are compelled to complete.  
Action-  I don't intend to teach junior high but if I find myself there I hope to guide kids to think for themselves.  That may not work so well and I may need to just teach older kids.  other than that observation I really liked today's activity.

The Bike runs right again!

So after a week of driving around with inner tube on my air filters, I received my new jets for my carburetor.  Switching them out only took about 20 minutes so that is cool.  Taking the carburetor off this bike is really easy.  I have a 1980 Yamaha xj 650 maxim.  The main jets in this bike are 110's and the pilot jets are 40's.  I went up to 116's and 41's.  That made all the difference.  The bike can be driven like normal again!  It seems faster and able to get up to speed faster but I cant really tell because I remember driving around a messed up bike for a week and don't remember a regular bike.  With the new pod filters on there I actually have an air filter though.  When we broke apart the stock air box last Saturday we found no filter in my bike so that is good.  I don't have any pictures of the jet change because you cant tell a difference from the outside but trust me, there is a huge difference.  I did pretty good guessing which jets to buy the first time around I would say.  I've never done this stuff before so I surprised my self.  When I put the carburetor back on the bike and just drove around on it it seemed like it needed some tuning and that worried me because its just one more thing but I think the weirdness was due to the fact that the carburetors weren't full of fuel yet.  Now I am looking at what kind of handlebars I want to get to replace the antlers I have on there now.  I'm looking at some clip-ons but I worry about their strength and If i'm too big for them.  I don't want to die because I was going down the freeway and my handlebar broke off.  Still need to figure out the seat situation and get real blinkers plus a bunch of other eBay stuff but all the extra parts aren't too much so its cool.

September 26, 2013

Capture:  I really enjoyed our second teaching opportunity today.  I liked sharing what we had to teach.  I remember from last time that the advice that I was given was to not teach to the board so I did well with that but there is still things I could have done better.  Geoff said to never apologize to the class for that little stuff like not being prepared.  It seems just natural because I could have done better but he made a good point about it taking away from the lesson and the class's attention.  It could make the students lose faith in you.
Analysis:  I think I do this, and we all had silly little things that we could have done better but, it is a way to relieve the pressure or tension from teaching.
Action:  We just need more time to practice teaching.  I feel like I did many times better this time compared to last time.  If I just had more opportunities to teach to the class then I would get better.  I get a little anxious but I enjoy it each time.  I get fired up to share what I've learned.

Bandaids

So while I still don't have the right jets for my carburetor I needed a way to still go on the freeway and get to school and back I came up with a solution.  I luckily had some pieces of inner tube from my mountain bike that were perfect for slipping over the pod filters.  I thought this would help restrict the airflow to a manageable level.  I am not at 100% previous power yet but the bike idles really well so I've got that going on now.  First gear is tough because of this jet issue I think.  Also going faster than 60mph is hard because of the same reason but it'll get there.  Happy with having a project but I probably could have picked a better time for this because of school.  Once the bike is up for winter I will take it all apart and do the big cosmetic stuff.  It will be sweet!

More work on my xj!

Yesterday I went to a friends house and spent way too long going over my carburetors by we did them and then installed the pod filters that I had ordered.  The bike sounds good but is completely gutless most likely because I've changed the air to fuel ratio and now there is too much air.  A quick Google search of the problem verifies that is most likely the cause of the sluggishness.  I should have prepared for this with the right jets the first time but I've never done this stuff before and my friend who was teaching me how to do a carb rebuild didn't know to expect this problem.  The bike still needs a lot of work but its coming along.  I almost forgot about the oil change adventure we encountered.  Who ever owned the bike before me that changed the oil last messed up the but that keeps the filter cap tight.  We tried getting it off with a regular wrench but couldn't get it off.  It was rusty and ruined.  We tried cutting a notch in the bolt so we could  try and get a big flat head screw driver in there but that didn't work either.  My friend Levi had a welder so he found a nut that fit over the ruined bolt and welded it to the end.  This gave us the area to put on a big breaker bar and use that to get enough torque to remove the stuck bolt.  It was a long day and I could hardly say it was worth it but its over now even if my bike doesn't run all that well at the moment.  I also came up with a name for the bike that I think is funny.  "The Racing Moose".  I'll decide if I make it official as I go on.

xj650 project

I needed to document this somewhere so I will do it here.  I recently got my first motorcycle!  It is a lot of fun and pretty quick to get up and go.  I havent taken it to its top speed because riding is a new thing to me but I am impressed with myself and how fast I have gotten comfortable with riding it after only a week.  I picked it up off ksl for 800 dollars and I am really excited to get going on  this project.  I need projects in my life to keep me interested and mentally active.  Honestly I am thinking about my different projects at the most inappropriate times.  Anyway,  It is in rough condition at the moment but I picked this one over the many others because I saw potential.  It is a 650 cc engine bike so it has enough power to move my meat around town and get down the freeway just fine.  Its carburetors need to be cleaned out but we are going to do that this weekend.  I say we because I made a new friend last week, Levi.  I got his number from a mutual friend and called him to see what he would charge to help me with my brand new tires.  I got over to his house and we talked about motorcycles and then he mentioned he needed computer work so i told him that i do computer work and a trade was made.  I wiped the awful windows 8 off his laptop and put on windows 7, and he is gonna help me with my bike.  He flips bikes so he has the experience with them that i do not.  Seriously he has a ton of bikes at his place.  So overall im pretty excited and cant wait to get going on this bike.  making a great little machine.

Week Three

I want to write about the different teaching styles lesson we had today.  I dont remember all the different styles that were presented but i took away from the lesson that there are many different methods of teaching because there are many different types of learners.  I keep developing this image of what my classroom is going to be like when i finally get there and how we are going to do things.  I want lots of hands on stuff and lots of fun projects with some lecture in there too just because some things need to be illustrated and discussed as a group.  I realized today that that may not do so well with all the students.  Of course some of the students might not know this about themselves so it will be impossible to just teach differently for those other students and do the regular stuff that I want to do with everyone else.  It is inevitable that I will have students that dont want to do hands on stuff and wont take part in those activities because they just dont learn like that.  That is okay.  I am going to have to have activities that play to the strengths of all the students.  I dont mean that these activities and assignments will be perfect for everyone but one activity will work with some students better while the next might be better for the other kinds of learners.  High school classes you dont generally pick so Im sure there will be kids that dont want to be in there.  This will take some thought but im sure that I can come up with stuff that engages everyone.

Week 2!

I am reading the section in the Wong book about classroom management.  The book describes what should be done to prepare for students.  Everything from the way the room is set up to the things you have on the walls is discussed.  I understand and agree with the idea that the way a room is organized will affect the level of comfort and ultimately the amount of work that can be done.  I know that I am a pretty organized person and and I like things in their places so i don't think this will be a problem for me.  The book talked about having nearly bare walls and anything that might be in the line of sight of students to the board away.  I have been in some classes where the teacher had every available section of wall covered in something.  It wasn't distracting for me but I don't know about my classmates.  I like the way Shum's class is laid out.  I like the two rows and the board but also the space around the classroom for the rest of the projects that we do in there.  Its the perfect room for a technology class.  Keeping only things that students are allowed to touch accessible was another thing that was mentioned and I remember it because here at our school we don't seem to have a theft problem and i forget that things get taken in the real world.

The First Days Of School

I read through the part in the beginning of the book tonight about the way we dress as teachers.  I've thought about this and I realize that my regular shorts or jeans and a t-shirt will not do.  I never wanted a job that I had to wear slacks and a button up shirt but I never thought I would be on the path to teaching either.  The section went on about how students will look at you and judge you based on your appearance which is normal.  I still do this.  Most of us do because that is usually the first thing we experience about a person.  I look at the way my teachers dress now and I am comfortable with the idea of dressing similarly.  I don't have much of a critique of what I read in the text about dress in this workplace.  It would be inappropriate to dress another way if for no other reason than just being distracting.  They went on about the way we act and talk to students and people in general and I could see myself saying certain types of things from both of the columns of good and bad.  Ill need to watch how I talk and act around students and fellow teachers so I don't put out the wrong impression about who I am and what I am about.  My Idea that I have for my future classroom is a really cool environment where we all get together everyday and learn something new and apply what we learn to our immediate world.  Id really like to improve the school as we go along as far as the tech goes.  Maybe my class could run the schools website and other stuff like that.  I looked at the website that my old high school has now and it looks pretty lame.  We could do a lot of cool work for free which has got to be cool for the administration.

To Start Things Off...

This will be cool because it will stick around from now on and will be a record for myself and students of the learning that went on in my life concerning training to be a teacher.  Just thought about that today and wanted to write it down.