Monday – Thursday, I observed for maybe 25% of the time and spent the rest of the time sitting with different groups of four, choosing whichever group was the furthest behind at the moment.  Wherever I sat, that group caught up, and then I could move on to the next group.  By doing this, it left my master teacher free to teach in “whole group” while I concentrated on keeping the class at a constant pace, supplying tutoring where needed.  I was also able to learn more names.

On Friday, my master teacher’s daycare provider was sick so she had to stay home with her two small children.  I was her substitute for five periods.  It was a lot of fun, and I didn’t have any substitute-type issues because: the kids knew me, I knew them (and most importantly, most of their names), I knew where they sat, and I knew the lesson that was to be taught (and the “class history” leading up to it).  This was so much better than a normal sub job!  The kids stayed on task in excess of 80% of the time (~40 minutes out of a 50 minute period) – they were engaged – and they got a lot of work done as a result.  It was a good way to end the week.

On Thursday afternoon (before my master teacher knew her daycare provider was sick), we worked on the plan for next week – the week I will begin to teach on a part-time basis.  Next week is sort of an odd week, so not an ideal week to start teaching:

• Monday is a holiday,
• Tuesday is prep for a chapter test (and I’ll be teaching at least one period on Tuesday, but it will mostly be review)
• Wednesday is “career day” where around 40 people from all walks of life will come in and talk to the school about their careers – I’m scheduled to be in my own classroom to talk about my now former career (Engineering) for three periods
• Thursday is a 40 minute chapter test
• Friday, we begin a new unit, and I will teach the first period class at a minimum, if not other classes.

The reason I mention first period specifically is because I have to do certain tasks for the State of California to get a teaching credential.  One of the tasks is to identify a class of students to work with, and then two students in particular who will need some form of attention (an English Language Learner being one, and a student with some other need being the other).  I am to teach something in this class, but offer specific help/modification to these two students to see if they will benefit from targeted instruction.  The term the teachers/schools use for this is “scaffolding.”  I anticipate that this extra attention will help the two selected students (if one of them would stop talking and pay attention!).  Of all the classes, period one is the most “mixed” or heterogeneous, which made it easier to find two target students.  Also, period one is still sort of waking up in the mornings, so they are the most attentive and least disruptive of the five periods of the day.

Monday was used to figure out how the class was arranged, what kind of students my master teacher had, and how she managed her classroom.  She takes a middle approach to managing noise and activity – allowing some of each, if kept to a tolerable level.  As a result, the classes are at a conversational level of volume during projects, but things never get out of hand.  In her five periods of classes, she has three heterogeneous groups, one ELL period, and quite by accident (due to only one class period of Geometry offered at the middle school), one Gate/Gifted period.  She has 162 students over five classes, and then 23 “repeats” for homeroom in the morning.  Her class is arranged in nine “quad” groups with seven computers on the wall space for students to use when they have computer projects due, or Study Island to make up.  Also, I noticed that throughout the week, independent study Geometry students were sent to her classroom to use these computers.

Tuesday through Friday was used to further observe, but mostly to try to get to know some of the students.  I played the role of “Aid” for a day, passing out papers and helping with in-class computer work, and then I played the role of tutor/homework helper for struggling groups for the remaining three days.  During the three days, I worked with 11 different “quad” groups of students, and learned maybe 50 names over all.  At the end of the week, my master teacher gave me homework to look over the online teacher resources of the next thee chapters of the class textbook.  In this way, I can begin to organize my thoughts about what I will teach in the coming weeks.  In the remaining five weeks, we should get through ~2.5 chapters of work.

As I reflect on the week, the student teaching part was a breeze, largely because of years of volunteer teaching in my wife’s classroom (I taught Art History to her 4^th grade students 2-4 times a month, every month for a ten year period), and because of recent substitute teaching experience.  Nothing was particularly new, but it was absolutely wonderful to be in the same class setting over a one week period.  I do like the consistency, and I look forward to the remaining five weeks (and six more weeks in the next assigned classroom).  The difficult part is that I also have three evening classes to attend over this 12 week period and that makes for some long days.  I’m really praying for stamina right now!  Between student teaching and classes alone, I logged in 65 hours this week, and this does not include any homework time, which should consume every moment of my weekend.  I expect this to be the norm for the next 11 weeks.

Well, I can already tell that I don’t have a lot of time, and certainly no time to blog.  For the past bunch of years, I’ve written almost every week day and I’ve not written on the weekends.  Now it might be the opposite while I’m a student teacher.  Saturday and half of Sunday is my only free time.  I will be journaling every day as part of my student teaching, but there is no way I’m going to transcribe that and post it.  That journal is for the college, and presumably for me so I remember the student teaching experience.

I haven’t typed anything in almost a week!  In part, it’s because it’s vacation and not much is going on.  Also, my chip finally arrived in force and I’ve been working long hours to complete it quickly.  Alas, I don’t have all that I need to complete this chip, so I’ll have to finish it after school has started.  This is not ideal.

New Years was fun.  We had some friends over and we played games until around 1AM.  My wife’s birthday (on New Year’s) was simple and low-key – just the way she likes it.

Tomorrow, I have my Elementary Technology test.  Because I’ve been so embroiled in this chip project, I haven’t studied a bit for the test.  I’m going to carve out a significant part of today to do that.  After tomorrow’s test, I can return to the chip.

Monday starts a big change in my life – student teaching.  For the next three months, I will teach/observe five days a week, and then four evenings a week, I’ll attend classes.  From when I wake up until I fall asleep, I have maybe three hours of “slack time” to take care of things and to be with my family (7-8AM, 3:30-4:30PM, 10-11PM).  It’s not a lot of time and I’m concerned that my family won’t be taken care of in the manner they need.  On Friday evenings, I’ll either have band or lifegroup, which then leaves Saturday and half of Sunday to do any homework.  I’m going to be one busy person!  I hope I have the stamina for all this.  Somewhere in all of this, I also have to write-up four major items towards getting my degree (called ‘TPA’s’) and I have to prepare for my taxes, which is a pretty big deal this year because I was involved with a start-up, I had my own business, and now I’m a student/teacher.  All have tax items associated with each category.  And because I’ve been working on this chip and doing my year-end finances (and in theory, studying), I wasn’t able to put together all the tax stuff.  I estimate that it will take three full weekends to complete and another weekend to go over things with my tax person.  That works out to a third of my available weekends!  I only have eight weekends to do all my homework and four TPAs.  Yikes!

Not much has happened over the last five days, so I didn’t bother to write.  I still don’t have a schematic, so I still can’t do my chip.  As a result, I spent my time doing year-end stock stuff early to get it out of the way, and I’ve studied a little.  Based on the practice tests, I should pass the real test just fine.  I guess I should also get a year’s worth of business expenses in order, since I’ll have no time to do it starting next week.

On Sunday, I played classical guitar throughout the service.  It was a lot of fun, and I got a few compliments on my playing (even though I didn’t think I did great – I’m my own worst critic!).  I also showed up just as service was starting; I somehow didn’t get the memo that church started half an hour earlier this week (oops).  There was a little hustling involved and my friend who was singing with me wasn’t too happy when he first saw me.  He got over it though.

Because the songs were a little low, I had the idea to tune my guitar up a full step.  The guitar sounded crisper, and it was easier to play with the tighter strings.  Alas, the added string pressure turned out to be a bad thing.  The bridge on my classical guitar began to lift off.  I was so concerned that I brought a backup guitar to service just in case the bridge came off during services.  It didn’t, but I glued it when I got home.  Unfortunately, the glue got all over the guitar and now I may have to refinish the whole face of the guitar to make it pretty again (and the 40 year old varnish looked so good on this guitar!).  It looks like I’ll have to do a lot of work sometime next year, and way too much work for a guitar I only use at Christmas!

As I reflect on the year, it’s been a very good year.  I was sad to see the startup close (and in dramatic fashion at that!), and I’m down another pile of cash for the second year in a row because I don’t have a job, but I have a wonderful family that I’ve been able to see more often and we had one heck of a summer vacation this year!   I’m excited about going back to school and I’m excited about the possibility of a teaching job next year. All-in-all, I wouldn’t trade this year for anything!

My weekend class went well, though it was poorly attended due to a lot of rain.  Christmas services were nice and full, and the place was bright.  My son and I had replaced all the burnt-out bulbs in the church earlier that day, along with the parking lot and in the gym.  In every case, we needed to use our church’s lift to get up 20 – 35 feet, depending on where we were.  It’s always fun lugging that thing around.

Christmas at home was very low key.  We cooked a lot, watched a bunch of movies and played Monopoly.

Now it’s after Christmas, so it’s time to get to studying and work.

I could either continue with the chip, or get my Adult Bible Study lesson prepared for Sunday.  I decided to do the latter, since I really didn’t have enough chip work to sustain me through half a day, and if I didn’t do the study today, I would definitely have to do it tomorrow.

I was able to finish five of the six pages I felt I would need by the time I had to go to a teacher’s lunch.  For the teachers, it was an after school celebration of Christmas Break, and the food was subsidized by the principal.  For me, it was a chance to network and spend some social time with my two upcoming master teachers.  Everyone had a great time.  Afterward, since we were near, my wife and I decided to hit a Bevmo so she could buy “bread-making beer.”  She got a variety, and I got some sale items as well.  For the next two weeks, it looks like she’ll be making beer bread and I’ll be drinking, studying and working on a chip.

I felt I had enough info to start the preliminary work on my chip, so that’s what I spent the day doing.  I built up a techfile for the process, design rules, and a basic cell that will get repeated all over the chip; all in all, a very satisfying day.  In the evening, we had a longer than usual band rehearsal because we were rehearsing for both Sunday and for Christmas Eve.  We also had four acoustic guitars on stage, which is unusual.  Over the two dates, three of us are playing at least one song on acoustic.  I brought two guitars to see which one I wanted to play.  I’m going with the classical guitar because I lack the finger strength and dexterity to do difficult Christmas songs on the acoustic, so it would seem, even though the acoustic sounds better.  I put a new set of strings on the acoustic for nothing!  I have also been asked to bring a fretless bass on Sunday, so we’ll have a couple of basses on stage.

I had a chance to substitute today, but I wanted to get cracking on the new chip.  I shouldn’t have turned down the sub job, the tech place I’m working for still owed me some clarification on how to start this project… and so I couldn’t start the project.  It now looks like I won’t be able to start until Friday or Saturday.  Gee, and I was supposed to be done with this chip by now so I can study for my Preliminary Educational Technology Single Subject Credential test, which is a pretty important test.  I wanted to study for this test in a solid two week block, rather than in random bits.  Somewhere in the next few weeks I also have to put together a year’s worth of receipts for business & teacher expenses so I can do well at tax time.  OK, so today is a study day.

No calls today, so I decided to start working on my chip.  I couldn’t do that because I didn’t have enough information to start the project and was told to wait.  I decided to print out some materials, but my printer was out of ink.  I had to go to the store to get more.  It was that sort of day.  The highlight of the day turned out to be shopping at a very packed Costco with my wife.