So far...

          January is nearly half gone. My work sample should be a nice solid draft by now, but it's not. I'm struggling with it. I've had a few issues with it. However, I'm feeling better about it as a whole right now, I just have lots to do with it still.
         Originally I wrote a rationale for my second work sample topic (American Revolution) instead of my first. Oops. So then I wrote one for a work sample/unit on Earth and space. As I was writing I was really concerned my topic was too vague. Indeed, it was. So back to the drawing board I went. Now, my topic is the solar system. I have a nice outline of my lessons, and I'm excited about it. Sadly, there's still much to write. Not surprising considering a work sample is huge! I've got a bit over a week to get it into a good looking draft. I'm nervous about it, but I know I'll make it happen. I'm very excited to teach it though!
         In my personal life, it's been kinda of an eventful weekend. My little sister left for her semester abroad in Senegal on Saturday. She got to Dakar, the capital of Senegal, this morning and she should have met her host family by now. I'm really going to miss her, but I'm so excited for her to go on such a fun adventure! I got to see both of my best friends this weekend. One came over with her husband from Madras, and the other drove the 30 minutes from Clackamas. We went out to breakfast, played games, went shopping, got haircuts, and got some wonderful pedicures. It was a weekend full of so much laughter and fun. I'm so thankful for both of those ladies :) It was definitely the pick me up I needed to get through the rest of my work sample.
         Now to get through the rest of my work sample! As much as I love my students I'm really hoping for a snow day tomorrow. I need to get so much work done, and I don't think they'd be disappointed about having a snow day. Everyone do a snow dance for me tonight!
         

My Poem

I originally wrote this poem in the fall of 2011, in my undergraduate Learning Communities class. During the summer of 2012, I edited this poem for my graduate Learning Communities class. It is supposed to describe who I am and where I come from. Poetry is not something that comes easily to me, but I think this poem gives a realistic glimpse into my life and childhood. I hope you enjoy it! 

July 2012

Where I am From

I am from a place where white is the color less frequently seen.

I am the descendant of the Preston name. From Michael, who is from Jud.

I am from Mormons who founded cities.

My roots grow from fields of mint and bales of hay. From juniper as far as one can see.

This is where I am from.

We scrub the floors on our hands and knees and fight over who must vacuum the hardwood.

I am from lunchtime in the secret spot, sailboat races and sunburns.

Where I come from there are games of Scrabble and charades, and a cat with a crooked tail.

I am from “fend for yourself” nights.

I grew from tights and leotards, bobby pins and buns.

I am from ballet shoes and softball cleats. Dance recitals and All-Star games.

From horseback rides through drive-thru windows and racing lawnmowers at dusk

From mudding, guns, and long summer nights riding shotgun in trucks.

I am from tubas, trombones, and bass guitars.

I am from a house where the horrific noise of a newly learned instrument is the favorite sound of my band teacher father.

I’ll always remember, “Have I ever told you how much I love you?” I can never hear that enough.

I am from “No matter where you go, there you are.”

Podcast

This is a podcast that I completed for my Educational Technology class as part of my MAT program at Pacific University. My partner Aimee Stanaland and I chose to research Victoria Woodhull. I am the voice of the interviewer, and Aimee is the voice of Victoria Woodhull. Please check out the podcast below. Thanks! 

The end of the term is near

          Wednesday...Wednesday was rough. I can't share details, and even if I could there would just be too much to go over! To put it quite frankly, yesterday chewed me up and spit me out. Thank goodness for my besties and my boyfriend. I don't think I could survived yesterday without their support. Also, my MAT cohort is amazingly supportive. It's true that they are the only ones who are really aware of what you're going through because they are going through it as well. I'm a lucky girl to have so much support in my life.
          I'm thinking that what happened yesterday was just magnified by all of the stress that I was already under. The end of the term is next Friday! I have presentations, papers, lesson plans, and the like due on various days between now and then. Oh, I also have to take my Civil Rights Exam on Saturday. It's something I have to pass in order to be licensed, so it is important. I just wish it didn't cost so much money.
          On a more positive note, I'm still loving every minute with my 5th graders. They make me so happy. No matter how tired or stressed I am, I adore spending time with them. We started working on fractions this morning, I did have a bit of a minor mishap though. There was a part of the lesson that I accidentally skipped a key part of the lesson. There was a warm up section in the beginning that involved cubes, and how to divide it into pieces that create fractions. I have no idea how I missed that! I reviewed the lesson for a while before the kids got to class, and I thought I had been really thorough when I was reading. This is something I'm going to have to fix immediately, I can already tell you that I'll be reading every little piece of the lesson even more carefully. However, I am proud to report that I got everything done in my desired time frame! Yay! That's definitely been one of my struggles. Now I just need to consistently achieve my desired time frame. At least through all of this stress, I can tell that I'm improving my teaching.
          My students were quite naughty when I went to pick them up from PE yesterday. They were talking in line. Several boys thought I couldn't see them once they rounded a corner, so they began running and one of my students fell. After checking to see if my student wasn't hurt, I explained that this was a reason why we only walk in the hallways. One of my boy students got some spiderwebs or fuzz onto his shoe, and the whole class lost it. It was the most ridiculous hallway trips I have ever had with them. After multiple warnings, I took away $10 Duck Bucks from each student. I really hate taking away money from them, but it is truly effective.
         Immediately after taking collecting the money, we went into our reading lesson. This was the first reading lesson that I got to teach. I usually do the vocabulary lessons from the story they will read on Tuesdays, and then my mentor teacher reads the story with them on Wednesday when I am not there. Too many of the students needed to finish their unit math tests that they started Wednesday morning, so my mentor teacher had them finish their tests instead of starting the reading lesson. Our goal for the reading lesson was to identify important events in the story. I read the story out loud for the students, and we would stop every few pages to write down the important event from the 2-3 pages we had just read. Something my mentor teacher said she should have told me was to let the kids discuss the important events with their desk partner before discussing it and writing the event as a class. After the first event she cut in and told the class to discuss with a partner first. This worked well, and I can see why she does it in every reading lesson. Overall, the lesson went pretty well and the kids were much better behaved.
       
         Something I almost that I almost forgot to tell you were several  reasons why I love my students.

1. They HATE when I'm gone. Last week I went to a preschool for one of my classes, and my students were so very disappointed that I was gone. When I came back on Tuesday they had so many things to tell me! 
2. They like the silly things I do. I have been slacking on writing my personal trivia on the whiteboard, and yesterday they begged me to start doing it again. I love doing trivia, but I'm going to have to get super creative if I'm going to be able to do trivia all year!
3. They actually like me. Even though I had to take money away from them only an hour before the end of the day, when they were ready to be dismissed they all wanted to talk to me and tell me things. As we were walking out of the classroom, one of my girl students hooked her arm around mine and said, "Come on Ms. Preston, you're coming home with me! You're not allowed to go anywhere else." Definitely made me feel loved. I adore these kiddos.

         Even though I have been beyond busy, I was able to put up our tiny, fake Christmas tree. It's so adorable! I even found a tiny tree skirt at Target that was the perfect size. Someday we'll have a house and we can get a real tree, but this will work for now. Isn't it cute?!

Christmas Tree 2012
Do you like the bottle of sparkling cider in the background?
What can I say, I love Martinelli's!

        I was really hoping to have my little sister take some pictures of my boyfriend and I for some Christmas cards, but I'm just not sure if that will happen at this point. She's been taking a photography class at Lewis and Clark College, and she's been getting quite good. Look at this wonderful picture she took of our dad. It seems to sum him up quite well.

Photo credit to Kaylin M. Preston

          Only one week until the term is done, and there is still so much to do. It's hard to believe that grad school will be over in only a few months, it's been such a crazy ride already. Mid-January is fast approaching, and I'm looking forward to it because that's when I will get to be in my classroom everyday instead of just twice a week. Until then...I just need to make it through this next week. I WILL do this.

Adding Glitter

I love glitter. After I outgrew my Barbies, I wasn't much of a girly girl. However, the older I get the more I love girly things. Pink, glitter, bows, nail polish, sewing, etc. You get the point. I saw this fun picture on Pinterest that showed how to add glitter to the plain double insulated Starbucks cup. Here is the the link I found that has directions on how to add glitter to one of these cups. But, I didn't really like the idea of spraying glue into something I was going to drink out of, even if the glue wouldn't even be in the part of the cup where the liquid would go. Then I had an idea! I have seen glitter card stock and foam at craft stores, and I thought it would be a safer way to add glitter to my plain cup. 

Insulated cup before. This is a venti size. 

So, off to Joann's I went. I adore that place. I found some beautiful hot pink glitter foam and took it home. I started cutting it up as soon as I got home, because I was so darn excited. Well, there was one little issue:

The foam was so thick that the cups couldn't fit properly together! Look at all that space between the cups in the above photo. Not what I was going for. Onto round 2. A few days later I was at Michael's and found some purple glitter card stock. My excitement for this project returned! I cut up my card stock, and nervously shoved it into the outside cup, and voila! Success! 

I love it when you finally get something the way you want it to look. And the best part...I can change the paper out if I want a new look! I got some very cute glitter owl paper to use when I get over the purple glitter. Hurray! My students noticed my cup, and it got their seal of approval too! If you have one of these cups, then try this out! Easier than having to spray glue into a cup, and you can change it with your mood. Go add some glitter to your life! 

Oh, grad school.

 I've been MIA for a while. Many apologies. I'm a grad student, you can't blame me too much. I've been teaching, grading papers, taking tests, doing projects, and sometimes I even get to sleep! This craziness is going to continue until December 14th, so I'm hoping I can survive. The picture below depicts how I currently feel. Thank goodness for the funny things you find on the internet! I can survive another term of grad school, right?!

By the way, I'm already as pastey as this guy! 

Friday Art

My finished mask! 

          Friday is a wonderful day of the week for most people. The standard working week is coming to a close, and there are two glorious days of adventure or lounging ahead. I adore Fridays for this very reason. However, I happen to have class on Fridays. Fortunately for me, the college purposefully gave us less rigid classes on Fridays. So what are my less rigid classes? Educational Technology and Expressive Arts. Pretty fun right? Pretty fun, indeed.
          If you're reading this then you are reading one of my assignments for my Technology class. Surprise! I tried creating a website instead of a blog, but it was a major fiasco. I ended up having to buy a new operating system, and beg my parents to send me the discs of all of the Office systems. It was just a bad situation. So, a blog it is. In my tech class we have also learned how to create a movie using iMovie. My partner and I created a video called, "The Blair Ghost Adventures." Basically, we went into the boiler room and went "ghost hunting" a la the Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures. We really do have a ghost on campus. She actually resides in the office where I work. Her name is Vera, and she happens to be quite friendly.
          In Expressive Arts, we've done quite a few fun things. One week we read several books about hedgehogs, and created our own band after reading the story "The Happy Hedgehog Band." Another week we focused on Aboriginal art. The past few weeks we have done masks and tie-dye. Mask making was a two week process, but a very fun one.
          The first week of the process consisted of the actually formation of the masks. Our class spread out allover the floor, and got our supplies ready. We had to slather our faces with Vaseline beforehand, but it made the mask not stick to your face. Definitely worth it. Then we used warm water and strips of plaster to create the masks. The plaster is pretty easy to make smooth. All you have to do is dip your finger in some more water to smooth out what you have already created. If you want to create your own mask make sure to do several layers of the plaster to create strength.
          For the second week of mask making we decorated our masks. I chose to make an ombre design on my mask since we had to mix our own paint colors. It allowed me to get exactly the colors that I wanted! Then I added a very cool feather piece that I found at Joann's. Finally I topped it all of with rhinestones surrounding the left eye. It's a pretty good representation of my personality I think.
         The following week we did tie-dye projects. Many of you have probably created some sort of tie-dye shirt during your years. One of the reasons I liked this particular tie-dye experience was because the dye was placed in squirt bottles instead of large buckets. This was so much more manageable! I would definitely suggest this method instead of dipping the material into a large bucket. For my project, I bought a canvas tote a Joann's. The picture I had in my mind was a bullseye design with navy on the outside, yellow in the middle, and hot pink in the center. Here's what I got...

Not exactly what I had in mind. Terrible? Absolutely not. But I'm sure you've had a picture of a project in your head, and then it doesn't turn out exactly how you want. Instead of navy, yellow, and hot pink I got royal blue, greenish/yellow, and red. A couple of issues happened. I don't think that I tied the rubber bands tight enough. See how my blue and yellow ran into one another? So sad. Also, my professor and I apparently have a different idea of what the color magenta/fuchsia is. I think it is a hot pink/purpley mix. He thinks that it is red. Hence, the red in the center of by bullseye design. Another issue may have been that I used 100% cotton canvas instead of just 100% cotton. Perhaps this was an issue. Regardless, the experience was fun and I now have a cool new bag. I think I'll give it to my mom.
         So hooray for Friday art! I would suggest that you all get a little creative throughout your week, and what better day than Friday? We will be doing more body movement in this class for the next few weeks, but once we start art projects again I'll post some more pictures of my handiwork. It's Friday, go get crafty!

The forming of my mask, not for the claustrophobic.

Ombre pink, rhinestones, and feathers. That's definitely me.