Self Selected Project

This past week Jill, Kayla, Jessie, Tom, and I all got together and had a little book club about the books Maus and  John, Paul, George and Ben. We talked about things we liked and disliked for each, as well as how we would use it in a classroom. We thought that Maus might be for a lightly more mature audience and maybe more appropriate for a high school level. Just as we were saying that a lady Tom knew saw us and said how her friend's middle school class read it and loved it. But we decided that maybe we'd use sections of it and if the students wanted to read the entire thing they could. I liked that it was a a man interviewing his dad about his experiences, so it's a great source of history.

I liked JPGB because of the humor and pictures. I think it would be fun to just read it to the class and then have a discussion about each person. There is also a little true/false section in the back and you could do some group activities or class discussion with those as well. Not simply take the test but discuss it and turn it into a learning experience.  

President Truman Announces the End of the War.

Darc Kontinent Strikes Back!

So I was invited to play at Roy's Pizza's 25th Anniversary. We rocked out to some great 80s rock tunes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4WhuCu56IE&feature=youtu.be

It's only too bad you can't really see my rat tail, and yes those are leather pants.

Discipline-Specific Reading

Man this was really hard for me to remember everything. Most often we used the text book as far as reading goes. I don't remember ever reading a novel or anything that I would consider fun. That is unless you count movies as a text then we "read" some pretty cool movies. In geography we looked at some interesting graphs. In fact probably one of my favorite maps is the one that shows the size each country would be according to it's population. Just last semester in my Content Knowledge class we were shown a graphic novel based on history called Maus. It is about the holocaust and I think that is an amazing idea to use in a history class. It has pictures, it doesn't take super long to read. It is a guy getting his dad's first hand experience. That is why I liked it. I'm reading a journal about the Bourgeois during the French Revolution. That is probably the worst reading experience I have ever had. I don't understand it, the writer makes references to tons of scholars I've never heard of, there are huge run on sentences with about 15 ideas each so that it's hard to keep track of his original statement, and he uses a vocabulary that only proves the point that he memorized the dictionary. The way to cope with this is reread and take it slow. Maybe some sort of graphic organizer would help. Anyway, that is exactly the type of stuff I want to avoid, unless I am there and able to coach my students through it. Otherwise, torture.

Resting in the trenches.















Propoganda Guilt trip.


















Army pup in gas mask.

It's a Total Chick Drink

So while wandering around on a hot humid Virginian summer day, I was asked if I'd like something to drink to cool myself off. My answer was obviously yes. I was offered the typical beverages. Coke, Mt. Dew, Orange soda, and Fresca. As it just so happened I had been craving a Fresca for about three weeks at this point. But, for fear of persecution that I enjoyed a feminine soda I chose something else. I was quite upset with myself. It's totally a woman's drink.



This random woman proves this.

Effective Dimensions of Writing

I for sure do not think of myself as a writer. I would rather just tell people my ideas in person. Although it is really easy to tell something hard to hear through writing such as that you think they could improve at a certain aspect. I've always enjoyed creative writing. Sometimes poetry although I suck at it but I like writing short stories. I text message quite a lot because it's usually easier and you don't have to catch someone just at the right moment. The assignments I always enjoyed in school, and the ones I'd like to have my students do, are when I write about something I am interested in. If you tell me to write a paper on how math has evolved... blech. But if you tell me to write about the major causes of the civil war, I'll do a better job. So I hope to let my students pick aspects of history or geography that they think are cool and nurture their writing that way.

Connecting School and Home Experience

So in order to connect home with school I will use geography. I was in second grade and my teacher had this elaborate system of passing out valentines using an address system. Well I didn't know how to read addresses so I simply looked at the name of the recipient and gave them their valentine. I got away with not knowing how to read them, or so I thought. A few years later I must've been in 6th or so I had to go with a cousin to deliver flowers. Our grandmother worked at a floral shop. I was dubbed navigator. Well I couldn't read addresses so I failed at guiding us where we needed to go. However, I did learn that day. It just  would've saved me some embarrassment if I had learned earlier.

1) I suppose this experience stresses the importance of the address system and how to figure out where we are going. It's really easy here in Utah where we are on the Grid System. I can use that experience and realate it to Global coordinates in a geography class, or in just learning to read a map and save the kids some headache and embarrassment later, hopefully.

2) I guess every student live somewhere so i can teach them that being able to read a map is important. By tapping into what they know already, such as addresses, or map reading I can even relate to how important that was in discovering the Americas or Lewis and Clarke finding their way around.

OK Obviously another guilty pleasure of mine is the Snuggie. I remember watching the infomercial with my brother for the first time and making him get off an important phone call so he could see how this family at a baseball game looked like a cult. In this picture I was hiding in the basement of my in-laws with a book and the Snuggie. Sadly, I was caught.

Upcoming Concert

Good news fellow bloggers and blog followers. The long anticipated concert is coming up. Sadly not the Iron Maiden cover show that you've all heard about but a tribute to 80's glam rock. The concert will be sometime in the next month or so. We need to practice first to figure out where we are musically. I'll keep you posted.

Social Studies Blogs

http://reitzhistory.blogspot.com/
I thought this one was cool because it was history about the school this teacher was teaching at. Students can look at this as a form of there text for this unit, if that is what they are learning about. This could potentially, if done right, eliminate some of the need for pricey textbooks. A teacher can make his/her own text. This one has cool primary sources about the students' own high school. I had never thought of a blog that way before.

http://worldhistoryeducatorsblog.blogspot.com/
This blog is geared more toward teachers. It has great ideas on how to teach subjects. It shares materials and lesson plans and even points out some really great media items such as videos that a classroom might enjoy looking at. It also suggests online study groups for your students. This might even be the blog itself. Teaching is overwhelming sometimes, especially for new teachers. This gives you ideas so you aren't reinventing the wheel so to speak.

http://historyiselementary.blogspot.com/
This is another blog for social studies teachers. It's m=funny but there was a small section where this blogger wrote a little poem to, what sounded to me, was to psyche out any other teacher that might be reading the blog. He/she wants to pump teachers up for the school year. Again this gives links for maps and documents that would be potentially helpful in the classroom and ideas for teaching it. As well as cool old photos.

The two RSS blogs I am following are http://www.besthistorysites.net/index.php/19-about/79-welcome and
http://www.ahistoryteacher.com/wordpress/?p=297.

Sub-Zero temps, a hippie, and couple guitars.

Believe it or not it's like 13 degrees out near the book cliffs. My then, soon-to-be world traveling, hippie, friend and I would thaw our fingers on a portable space heater and play same gee-tar. Between chopping would and stocking would stoves. Not super typical of my style but I like it.
http://soundcloud.com/rustnroll/alcove

Required Introduction

OK, so this is my first blog. So I'm going to follow the criteria in this assignment.

1) I enjoy music, listening to it, playing it, and creating it on rare occasion. I particularly enjoy Hard Rock and Metal. I'm kind of embarrassed about it but having been have been slowly coming out, so to speak, to to everyone I associate with. Which brings me to my next interest. I have lots of things that I like that I think are embarrassing so I thought it would be funny to have a blog about my guilty pleasures, such as liking Kettle Corn. It's a total chick treat. So that's guilty pleasure number 1.

2) My discipline, Social Studies, to me just simply that I simply enjoy it. Especially history. I like stories and history has one or two.

3) What drew me to teaching this is what I said above. History has cool stories. I feel bad when people say they hate history. That means they have/had a poor teacher, I'm pretty sure that everyone likes a good movie like Apollo 13, The Great Escape, or Schindler's List. So I hope to make a small pocket of the earth like history.

4) Hopefully this blog is related to my discipline, but also entertaining to read. That's what I hope for in my teaching, that it stimulates learning, and that it doesn't suck.