Man, so I realize no one writes stuff here, so no one probably reads it.  That will not deter me.  I had a great moment today!  One of my students came in excitedly saying, "Miss Cunningham! Guess what I did yesterday?!" I asked her, and she told me about how she went to a talk the day before on a new underwater camera.  The man speaking talked about the index of refraction of water and how that was the key to designing the lens he used, and how the lenses were oriented in the camera.  She was excited that she understood what he was talking about after learning about lenses and indices of refraction in Physics.  She even got to explain some of it to her sciencey mom.  Made me feel good to be a teacher.

Lessons from the Valley

OMG... It started already. How time flies!

Courtney brought up an interesting point at the end of her blog entry. I reported to my first day of planning in the Valley on Thursday. I was really excited/anxious to finally start everything, but one recurring thought was going through my head most of the week "What on Earth should I wear?" Finally, the morning of, I decided to err on the side of caution and I put on some bomb gap black slacks and a quasi-dressy white shirt. I thought I looked pretty good. A product of having awesome female family members who seem to always buy me clothes that match. I nervously dressed myself and took the glorious 7 minute drive over to the Valley for my first all staff meeting.

I knew I had made a mistake as soon as I stepped out of the car. I watched in amusement as other teachers rolled up wearing various assortments of flip flops, shorts, tank tops, athletic clothes and generally comfortable garb. I looked like I was getting married or going to court. The first thing that my cooperating teacher told me when I walked into the social studies office was "Wow, I should have told you that we were casual today." "Yeah, I said, I thought it would be better to be over dressed than under dressed." I nervously walked to the other side of the school and waited for the meeting to start. It was my responsibility to find out and I never asked.

The principal is an awesome guy. Obviously I have not spent much time at the school, but I really like listening to this guy talk. He had a powerpoint for the first meeting and went around and introduced all of the new teachers in the building and finally after he went through all of them, he posted a slide showing the names of the three student teachers in the Valley this fall. I was the second listed of three. The first one was not there, and when he read my name I stood up and smiled and waved. He then smiled and said "It looks like you got the dress code." To which I replied "I guess I will just be the awkwardly overdressed student teacher today." It got a good laugh, and it was an interesting way to introduce myself to the entire staff. I walked around the rest of the day as "awkwardly overdressed guy." I am happy to be known for something rather than the other two student teachers who I do not think have showed up to the school yet.

The moral of the story is that you should definitely follow Mrs. Cohourtney K-Ballz lead and find out from your cooperating teacher what the dress code is on the first day of meeting.

School starts on Tuesday. I get the Freshman for like 10 minutes before they head off to orientation. I do not know why, but this whole student teaching thing is scaring the crap out of me. I am sure I will get over it as soon as I get used to the surroundings, but as always I seem to be putting a ridiculous amount of pressure on myself to be the best student teacher ever.

Hope everybody kicks ass this week!
I hope that we all regularly update this page as I bet a lot of really amusing things are going to go down this semester.

Mrs. K-Ballz returns to Brighton

It's weird, at times I felt like this summer was moving way too slowly, but looking back on it, it went too fast! Wasn't I supposed to learn Spanish and re-learn chemistry? Oops...

I had my first meeting with my cooperating teacher last week. Those of you that were at Overland Trail last year met him- he's a really cool teacher. He already seems like an awesome mentor- providing me with all kinds of resources and opportunities (although he already has me nervous about meeting parents on back to school night!). He just got all this training on working with ELL's, which is awesome- that's his big priority this semester- turning around his teaching style to reach them better. Sometimes our program feels so theoretical/fluffy that it will be nice to finally get out and teach- ya know what I mean?  

Teacher prep week in 27-J starts Monday. Is it sad that I'm excited to decorate the classroom any way I want? Gus told me to wear shorts and flip flops. No one tell Kanesha, K?  :-) 

-Mrs. K-Ballz

1 week till go time...

This is going to be a super lame post, seeing as it's relatively late for those of us in summer school, but I wanted to put my thoughts on this summer schedule out there...

It's not cool that summer classes end the Friday before student teaching begins.  I'm pretty excited to have 2 days off this summer... but I'm going to use them wisely - camping trip in the Sand Dunes? I think so.

I hope everyone's having an amazing summer, and I can't wait to hear how student teaching starts up!

xoxo

Teren

Halfway home....

Hello fellow cohortions. Today is July 7th, or 7/7 if your down with not using words. I don't know about everyone else, but I have less than a month left until I have to report to the Valley for my indoctrination into all things social studies. I don't know if it is just me, but I am so unbelievably excited to start teaching like every day. I do not think that I have ever talked about anything as much as I have talked about teaching. This includes Matt Holliday (my baseball hero), zombies, candy, magic bronco shoes, my man room and the word "hello." I could go the rest of my life never saying anything about teaching ever again and I think I would be ok. You all know me, so you know that is not going to happen, but it is a nice thought. I am so excited to go and do. I might go down in flames or I might be riding a fiery chariot across the sky, but I won't be "reacting" to an article. It is going to rock. I look forward to the possibility of sucking as much as I look forward to hopefully not sucking. I look forward to returning to campus a changed man. I might even grow a soul patch.
Also, in case anybody is curious, here is an update on my summer:
-I turned 25. (that is a long time to survive natural selection)
-My wife turned 25
-The Apex Blazers (my track team) continues to dominate the state at being awesome and running really fast.
-The Arvada Bulldogs (my high school Cross Country team) are fighting a daily battle to meet me at 6:30 in the morning with their over zealous coach instead of succumbing to the pillow monster.
-The Rockies record when I go watch is Ben Hershelman-0. Otherwise they are not mashing as expected.
-I banished my cats from the man room. Now I have a glorious cat-free sanctuary.
-Watched seasons 1-3 of the office.
-Convinced three 8th grade girls that they are not cool enough to be different.
-Screamed "Friendship always wins" at opposing track teams as their runners pass by.
-Wrote this blog.
-Wondered what everybody else is up to.

Just One Word

Hey Cohort... So I don't know how the language and literacy across the universe monday night class is going for you english types, but I am going to go out on a limb and say that the SS/SCI/Math people totally rocked the roundtable discussion tonight. I love this cohort. I have one word for everyones badass teacherieness:

praxis day!

happy being done with the praxis! just one more hurdle cleared on the way to unleashing the cohort onto the public school system. i felt as though it was slightly harder than i predicted, but that isn't a bad thing. it made me actually think during the two hours where i couldn't drink whiskey (but vodka was okay!) and couldn't read anything which wasn't either printed in the test booklet or on the inside of my eyelids. but the proctors, oh, the proctors didn't have to follow the rules...
also, i find that i am chomping at the bit to be back in class. because, seriously, lets do this shit. i think that some of the books will be interesting, i think that the experiences will be good, and i'm sick of only having the fall semester about which to think.
other things concerning today:
2 bloody marys at the buff was one too many. what the hell am i supposed to do now?
having the internet in one's own home is an amazing luxury.
saint james hotel!
i need to run into people later
either way
!!!

2008!

It's January 1st and I'm pretty excited about it.

My two best friends and I concocted what MIGHT be the best dessert ever eaten. We devised a way to create dessert sushi out of mangoes, kiwi, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, fruit rollups, rice krispie treats, pomegranate, and those little sugar crystal things (we chose orange so that it would make a good substitute-Tobiko).

It looked like this:
http://photos-a.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v166/19/31/46302884/n46302884_30972904_987.jpg

http://photos-a.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v166/19/31/46302884/n46302884_30972908_2008.jpg

Tasty, right? I thought so.

Today we're having stuffed cabbage and black-eyed peas, because apparently they're good luck on New Year's Day.


Two more days in New York, then back to Boulder!

like an old man easing into a warm bath

happy holidays! holy like wow! i'm a really big christmas fan, and so i've been loving the past week. i've made christmas cookies, gone shopping, listened to cats meow "silent night" (along with over 15 other christmas classics!)... i think the snow helps. frontloading also helped, now with only a presentation tomorrow and the oral final next week, i can turn my attention towards happier things. like sleigh bells.
so, i took kringla to work and sold it today. i wasn't sure how it was going to work out, but i made $20 selling two and a half dozen cookies. i'm going to call it a pretty decent success. because, i mean, that more than covers ingredients, and i enjoyed the time in the kitchen, so i don't really count that as labor... so, you know, profit!
anyway, only two more class periods to go. then it will be tomorrow. and then it will be tomorrow afternoon...and that will be awesome. dances will be danced. songs will be sung. shots will be chased.
i really hope jeff's surgery went well. worst time to get injured ever.
also, holiday party at Keri's. huzzah. but will there be eggnog? do people actually enjoy eggnog, or is it just tradition, like haggis? i mean, generally i have about a cup and a half of eggnog every year. while drinking the first cup i think to myself "man, i really enjoy this. why don't we have this all year?" however, when i go back for the refill, about two sips in it hits me. "oh, that's why..." and then i set it down and go and feel kinda queasy for a couple hours. and this happens seemingly every year, without fail. you'd think i would have figured it out by now, but no.
and i'm off!
marko

Hooray!

For getting an extension on Kevin's paper!!!!
Up Next: An Extension on my sanity!
After that: The amazing story of how Mark Olofson became Marko... where did the "O" come from? My best guess: He stole it from chuck nrris or a zmbie or the entire state of Clorado. Also possible it came from a Vlcano.