This blog is no more

Staci decided that she would start a blog of her own about the happenings in our family. Since she is more than qualified and able, I don't need to get in her way. Also, I decided to start an Education blog as a way for me to file and hopefully organize my educational thoughts. It is something that is certainly missing from my life. So, if you are interested in my educational thoughts, go to my new blog. If you are interested in the family, go to Staci's blog.

Injured Bad

This is a funny commercial. Staci found it and I am dutifully passing it along.

The Cuteness

Tonight while I was reading with Katya, we sat in the glider chair. I don't know how she realizes things, but she is really smart. I was not gliding on the chair, and apparently, she did not like that. She sat up and started moving her body the same way we would start swinging. She rocked forward and backward until I started gliding, then when she noticed that I was gliding, she realized that she could stop rocking back and forth. She leaned back and let the rhythm carry her. When I stopped again, she sat up and started rocking back and forth. She has never done that before, and she only did it on the glider.

Google Reader

I just got introduced to a new thing by Google called Google Reader. It is so cool. What you do is add RSS feeds to the reader and then instead of checking a ton of websites every day, you log onto this thing and it shows all the updates there for you. So, instead of checking Andrea's blog every day to see if something is updated, I just wait for Google reader to let me know, and then I look at it there. Very sweet, like Katya.

The Stages of Teaching

First-year teachers go through stages (and I know that I am very susceptible to the feelings associated). The first stage is idealism. The new teacher is so full of hope and is going to make things better and touch every single student. The next stage is disillusionment. All the bureaucracy and Political Correctness and paperwork starts to add up, and you begin to feel overwhelmed with the responsibilities and the frustrations that come with it. Then, you realize that some of the students don't want to learn, and some of them are more interested in making your life a living _____.

So, anyway, after that, you either give in to the disillusionment and stop teaching, or you battle through it and enter the realism stage. In the realism stage, you know that you will not reach every student, but you can at least try. Some students will get it, but others will not, and there is nothing you can do to reach some. You can reach a couple you never thought you would. A girl that was in a few of my classes at BYU-Idaho got hired here also. She resigned at the disilluionment stage. The thoughts did cross my mind, but failure is just not an option for me. The good thing is that my vice principal restored some of that hope that gets lost so quickly. I really love this job. I am excited when I get up for work each day (even though I don't get up on time most days).

JPAS

My school district does a thing called Jordan Performance Appraisal System. It is meant to evaluate teachers on their teaching ability and give them a score based on very quantitative data. An administrator comes into a class and observes for 30-40 minutes. Our class times are 45 minutes long. The vice principal came in and observed me for about 35 minutes twice in the last two weeks. The first class she came into was my worst class. They do not behave well, do not like English, and most of them, although smart, do not act like they are very bright. They can understand the work, but for some reason think that it is cooler not to be intelligent. It is pretty frustrating, as you can imagine. The vice principal must have had a good Hawthorne effect aura about her because they were great that day. I taught a good lesson about grammar, and then did something out of our lit book. It was a good class, better than usual.

The second time that she came in, it was in my honors class, and I am glad she came in that day, because it was going to be a discussion day, and not a work day. We had a hard grammar lesson with lots of good questions and answers. We then read an excerpt from Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and then discussed how Maya Angelou is an excellent, descriptive writer who comes from an abusive background and how her background contributes to the depth of the title of that book. Each student had a selection that he or she would read and explain why they thought it was a good example of descriptive writing. It went really well and I think the students even liked it.

Two days ago my vice principal said that she needed to meet with me for five minutes and interrupted herself to compliment me on being an "excellent teacher", which is always nice to hear.

Today, she came into my classroom and talked to me about all that stuff. While we were talking, she confirmed the reasons I have always wanted to be a teacher. She said, to begin with, that I am a natural teacher, I asked excellent questions, and I engaged the students almost the whole time. She gave me a pretty good evaluation, I think. She sends the results in to the district, and then I will have an evaluation with her and the other administrators, I think. We will see how it all goes.

New posts to website

From this page the updates are "Our Video" and "Pictures":
http://www.jethrojones.com/me/family.htm
Just so you know... I am aware that there are some problems with the webpage, and I will fix them at some point. Be sure you use "Back" in your browser because the links do not exist on all the pages. "Funny Vids" is not up and running yet. And, "Our Video" is the one we made for Christmas last year.
Enjoy!

Katya, Cute Story #1

Last weekend, we were over at Grandmother's and she was holding Katya. Katya looked at me for a while then turned to look up at Grandmother. As soon as Grandmother looked down at her, Katya blew a raspberry in her face, and then stared her down.