Shabam School

Inspirational Keynote Speech

shabam — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 03:05:29 +0000

I saw this and thought "wow". This video is awsome. I'm not going to say a whole lot about it, but this fifth grade student knows what it takes to be a good teacher. Hear it in his words.

Lesson Ideas: Calendar

shabam — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 23:02:43 +0000

I've been learning a lot over the last couple weeks and have seen some great and creative ways to teach concepts such as the calendar. My kinders make calendar each month that they get to share with their families. On this calendar they mark important dates and are encouraged to mark off the days each morning. This helps to teach time concepts that are hard for many to grasp.

Each month they are given a sheet of construction paper, folded in half. On the bottom half a calendar is attached and on the top half they create a picture, following directions given by the teacher. They learn some art concepts, how to follow directions, and time concepts. In September, when the calendar is sent home for the first time, a simple letter to the parents is attached to it, explaining what it is. Below is the note my cooperating teacher sent home with her students:

Dear Parents:

Each month students will make a calendar for home. Our first one, of course, is arriving later in the month, but others will come home at the beginning of each month. This is a wonderful tool for home use. The abstract concepts of yesterday, today, and tomorrow are developmentally difficult for children to grasp. We discuss these terms daily at calendar tome, and your reinforcement at home is helpful. Corssing off each day is very helpful for students to grasp the passing of time. You may wish to put special family events on this calendar, practice days of the week, count by ones, and work with the concept "how many days until".

Now, you would want to put it in your own words, as using your own words makes it sound more natural and parents are more likely to respond (I think), but I really like the idea. Attached is a picture of the sample I made. Notice that the dates are colored differently. Pink is days that there is a special event (Back to School Night and Back to School Picnic). Orange is early dismissal and yellow is no school (conferences).

Happy Labor Day!

shabam — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:01:45 +0000

Its here. Tomorrow we have students. I'm excited for my first day in kindergarten. As I said last week I met many of my students. Tomorrow I'll only have half of them. Then the other half on Wednesday. This allows the kids to ease into school and the teachers to get to know their students.

I wanted to help my CT set up the classroom. I need to do this for my classroom and in helping to get things set up, I will be able to get to know the classroom, where things are and what not. It will be much easier for me to get around and help the students.

I was not able to do this. The first week she was working, I was working full time trying to get my summer job wrapped up. The next week, I was wrapping up the loose ends, so missed one day. I stopped by and chatted on Monday (a couple hours) and spent most of Wednesday (noon to 8pm). I was going to come back on Thursday, but Elizabeth was not feeling well and needed me home to help out.

FundRaising Ideas: Getting Away From Candy

shabam — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 06:04:18 +0000

With the year beginning, we need to think about fundraising ideas and how to get the money the schools need to keep running. My school, and many others around the country, are going candy free. This means that using candy for a fundraiser is not in alignment with policy.

Candy and cookies have been a staple of school fundraising for so long, what are we to do? There are many options, but you might have to be a little more creative. Some organizations, such as ezfund.com have many options for your fundraiser. You can choose from healthy snacks, to knick knacks, from soy candles to pencils. They even have consultants available to help you along the way.

Group fundraising can be for any size group, from the underwater basket weaving club to the entire district. You can offer prize incentives to the students, or encourage them to do it for the good of the school. How you run the fundraiser is up to you, but sometime during the year, you will probably have a fundraiser. That is, unless you are in one of the schools that do not allow fundraisers :S Not sure what to do in those cases...

New Student Night

shabam — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 05:34:29 +0000

On Wednesday, my school had a new student night. This event, arranged by the PTA is to give new students a chance to see their new school. It is mainly meant for the kinders, but all new students are encouraged to attend.

The kinder students all have one teacher, plus me as their student teacher. Since their is only one teacher, there is no wondering which teacher they will get. They are also usually a little more nervous about school and meeting the teacher before hand will make that transition a little easier.

At first, I thought it would be an event that every teacher would want to attend, in order to get a chance to meet some of their new students. Then I found out that the students don't find out who their teachers are until a few days later. I thought, well you can still meet some of your students, making it a little easier when the year begins. It was pointed out to me that most of the students have been in the same school since kindergarten, so the teachers have already met all but the brand new students.

I think I might still like to go, as a teacher, but I can understand why only one other teacher was there, besides the kinder teacher, myself and the principal. I also might decide that I'd been working on setting up my classroom non-stop all day for the last few days and I need some time to go relax with my family before the students all fill my desks and demand my attention. I'm not sure which way I'd go. Maybe we will see in a year, if the school I get hired at has a similar event.

Learn English From Home - English Language Learners Supplement

shabam — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:04:57 +0000

If we have students who are in our schools English Language Program they are getting services to improve their English skills. Are their parents? Improving their language skills is a great way to improve their career opportunities. As teachers, it is not our responsibility to get them better jobs, but we can suggest programs, if they are interested.

I was recently introduced to an English Language Program that I think could be a supplement in a persons quest to learn English. If they are in the US, they may get plenty of face to face opportunities to practice their language skills, but not a lot of chances to learn new vocabulary, grammar rules and the like. Taking lessons on-line is a great way to gain these skills.

If you check out their English School, they have a placement test that will help you get placed in the right place in the program. You don't want to start from the beginning if you are already speaking and reading English, but you also don't want to be placed so advanced that you can't get along in the program.

They have two free English Lessons that you can try. I'm not an expert in language training, my training in SIOP lasted less than an hour, so I really have no background, but from the little bit of SIOP I received, I only saw a little bit of this powerful way of teaching, using props and expressions, in these lessons. It is really too bad, because otherwise it looks like a great program.

Federal Grant Money: TEACH Grant

shabam — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:46:42 +0000

The federal government has a lot of grant money for students, especially for teachers. A grant my university just hooked up with is the TEACH Grant. It is a little stringent to get on board, but it's more free money.

To qualify you have to be in a teaching program currently, plan to teach in a high needs field in a poverty school for four years. If you fail to meet these requirements, the grant will revert back to an unsubsidized loan. Well, I would be getting unsubsidized loans if I was not getting the grant, so no problem there.

Once you meet the requirements and get accepted, then you have to remember to keep in contact with the grant people. You have to notify them within 120 days of graduation that you either have a teaching job that meets the requirements or plan on getting one. You then have to notify them once a year that you are still working on it and get your administration to sign off that it is a high needs field, in a poverty school, and you worked full time.

It isn't really that much work, just a lot of remembering to do the paperwork. Write it on the calendar. If you use an on-line calendar, set it up to send you an email reminder. For $4000 a year it is worth it. If they had offered it last year, I would have been able to max out at $8000 for a graduate program. If you are working on an undergrad in education, you can get up to $16,000 for your undergrad and another $8000 for your grad work.

Testing for Licensure

shabam — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 04:36:40 +0000

Well, school is fast approaching and I thought I should go over some things and make sure I'm ready for the quickly arriving term. Class registration, check. Contact placement for student teaching, check. Meet with teacher, check. Attend teacher in-service days, check. Buy cool stuff to go with the unit I will be teaching, check. Take Praxis II and Orela standardized test... whoops.

Well, looks like I'm too late to take them this summer. I'll have to take them in October. I better do them early, or I'll be so swamped with the new term that my head will not be able to deal with testing. I should have taken them early in the summer while I was still in teacher mode and had the full years worth of information firmly planted in my head. Now that the summer heat and Oregon rain have worked it all loose and it has all become overgrown with weeds, I need to go and take those tests.

Off to the library, I guess. I need to brush up on my material. I'm not going to suffer the embarrassment of saying I failed after the embarrassment of admitting I forgot to take it in the first place. I'll let you know how it goes... that is, unless I'm too embarrassed to tell you. :D

Paying for college

shabam — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:46:23 +0000

Paying for college is one of the most challenging tasks one faces when making the choice to head back to school. It is hard to pay for it and if you are not lucky enough to have the money it is often such a huge hurdle that you may feel that you can't get past it. There are many options. You can get financial aide, scholarships, private loans, ask you parents to pay for it, work while you go to school, and more. Each has its drawbacks and each has its uses.

Financial aide can be a great option, but if you make too much money you don't get it. Their are also limits on the amounts you can get, meaning that if you have a family, home, or other debt considerations, it might not be enough.

Scholarships and grants are awesome, because you don't have to pay them back. They are a lot of work though, and you are not guaranteed to get anything from them.

Private loans can be higher interest and like subsidized federal loans, the interest begins right away. If you need the extra they are a great way to go, allowing many who could not otherwise go to school to do so.

Asking your parents is a good option if your parents can afford it and are not going to try to hold the money over your head.

Working is also a great option. If you work at the college or university you go to, you might also get a reduced tuition cost. This can save you a lot of money, but since you are working, it can also prolong your college stay.

I used a combination of many of these for my degrees. My undergrad, I started our with financial aide and I worked. I was not serious about school in the beginning, just taking a class here and there, so it was not a big deal if I was taking a long time to get a degree. After a while of this, I became more serious about school. I applied for a few scholarships and got nothing. I continued to work and get financial aide, but I did not want to have a lot of debt when I finished school. I ended up with a job at the university and was able to cut my financial aide down. The job paid alright, but I was getting my tuition at 25% which was huge. 13 years after I took my first college class, I got my Bachelors.

Now I'm working on my masters. Right out of the gate I got a good grant that helped out. I also got full financial aide and sold some property in order to fund school. Then we started this recession, prices of everything skyrocketed and now we are way behind in our budget. I got a couple of scholarships this year, but my parents have no money so I can't borrow from them. I'm now thinking that I might do some private loans.

I was very afraid of these for a long time. Then I came across Next Student and their Student Loans. I'm still worried, but the interest rates are lower I was expecting and it might be enough to extend our living expenses enough to cover us while I finish my education. Ideally I would get no loans and start my teaching career next year debt free, but that is not realistic. Even if I got full ride scholarships, the limit financial aide puts on that is not enough to cover the house and my wife and daughter. Our savings is dwindling and we will be broke by the beginning of spring term. We need to do something.

One thing I liked about Next Student is that they realize that private loans are not the only solution. They don't try to make you think they are. They have a scholarship search area, so you can search for scholarships and perhaps cut down the amount of loans you need. They also have a loan repayment calculator, so you know how long it is going to take you to pay off the loan they give you and several other loan options.

You can consolidate your loans with them at a lower rate, you can get your federal loans, plus loans, and the entire gambit of school related loans all in one stop. Now, if you don't need the extra loans, don't get them. No one wants you so far in debt that you can't get out, least of all those loaning you the money. They want to get it back eventually. But if you need the money to finish school and get that better job, go ahead and do it. Your future is important and sometimes we have to make sacrifices to become the greatness God intended us to be. Weigh your options and choose wisely. Only you know what the best option for you is.

Looking forward to returning to school

shabam — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:52:29 +0000

Fall is coming soon. This summer has been very busy for me. Perhaps I'm a little stressed about all that I have not gotten done this summer, but I'm looking forward to the hectic fall and hoping that some of the hectic summer will just fly away when it starts. I will not be able to work on my summer to do list once school starts, so there is no need to worry about it, right?

What is your summer to do list like? Mine includes cutting down a tree and some dead bushes, chipping them up, pulling wood paneling off of part of the kitchen, repairing the walls, painting, adding cabinets and counter top. That is the most important things that need to get done this summer. That will allow us to have a reasonably clean house and yard. The mulch from the chipping of the brush will be used in the yard as we cannot afford more bark mulch at the moment. Maybe some day we will have all the mulch in the yard match, but not for now.

I should mention that we are doing some fun stuff this summer too. On the 22nd, and 23rd there is a big festival here in Portland, called CityFest. There will be a kid play area for Emma, live music, and more. Best of all, it's free. Will be great for our very small budgets. We will have to pay for bus fair, as parking will be a nightmare, but I think we can afford the $8 it will cost to ride the bus there and back.

I also do enjoy working in the yard. If I did not, why would I run another blog dedicated to such activities? We have talked about taking a trip to the beach as well. I'm not sure we can really afford it, but we do need the time together, away from the house. Grandma has volunteered to take Emma for a night, which will give us some much needed time to bond together.