Last day of learn and seve!!

Today was my last day of learn and serve EVER!!!! i was so excited. As usual there was agian noone who needed any math help so i got stuck, again, runnning her errands. She made me run to the attendance office and back and then to the copy room and back and then to the main office and back and i was getting so furious. I was really upset and i just did not want to deal with that anymore. When i finally got back she had me record all her records for attendance. ugh i was realy uoset but did it anyways. Finally someone came in and needed help with math so i got a chacne to help her out. She did really well and understood by the end of the assignment what she had to do and what was required of her. She also informed me that she had passed her math test last week which is a huge success for her. I was so happy and Mrs. Mauro suggested that she thought it was becasue of the fact that i had helped her with all of this last week. the student agreed and also admitted to her that she had also gone home and studied for the test as well. this obviously would also have a positive effect on her grades and test results

December 1 learn and serve

Today i got a chance to work with danielle again. She hasnt been there the past few weeks due to a fight she was in..this seems to happen a lot in this school. Anyways, this student came to me and really needed help with her assignment so i tried my best to try to help her understand her assignment and her notes. it was kind of a funny thing because whast she was working on we had touched on in my foundations of mathematics class in college. i helped her out with truth tables and she slowly seemed to understand it just like every student normally does. I helped her with her homework and by the end of the paper she was doing it all on her own! i was so happy that she understood what she was doing. We went over it again just to make sure she fully understood what she was doing and then i startd to help her study for her upcoming test. After this is was just about time for me to leave and i was very happy to do so because Mrs. Mauro wanted me to start working on some of her paperwork so i was really excited to skip out of their fast as i could.

Learn and Serve Nov 24

Today i also got a chance to work more and more with the burn student. There was a lot less commotion today so he really got more of a chance to work one on one with me. He is not a poor math student by any means but he just really needed the help to get back on track and keep up with the rest of the students. The teacher in this resource room seems to struggle with math as many people do and she seemed to just leave me in charge of teaching him his material. He grasped it very quick today and he recieved good grades on the homework that we worked on the week beforehand. i was very proud in how far he came in such a short amount of time and that i had helped contruibute to his success. After he left, again there were not any math students so i jsut walked around the room and tried my best to help out the other studetns in the assignments that they were working on such as english papers and the students getting ready for the global final in january.

Learn and Serve November 17

Today in Learn and Serve we were very very busy. We had many students who needed my help and i felt like i was running in fiften different directions tryign to help everyone. At least it was better than running errands the whole time. I helped some kids out with their geometry assignment and then i helped out others in trigonometry which is by far my favorite math to work with. The studetns all seemed to have the same problem with understanding what the teacher was trying to explain to them. They all told me the same thing, "We dont understand it in class but when you explain it, it makes so much more sense!". Well im glad i could help! Most of thes tudetns finally seemed to grasp the content more and more and they slopwly didnt need my help as much except to check over their work to make sure they did it correctly. I also got to work with another new studetnt to the class. He is the star basketball player and he has been assigned to Mrs. MAuro's room more and more lately because of the fact that he has a bad injury. He was cooking at his house and he burned himself on very hot grease and has second degree burns all over his hand. This caused hiim to miss a lot of school so i got to help him out in all the areas he was struggling with. He seemed to catch on very quickly but i felt as though i had to teach him every lesson because of the fact that he was not attending class. It was fun to play the role of teacher but im sure it ha not been a fun ride for this particular student.http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED498986&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED498986

learn and Serve November 10

Today in Learn and Serve it was kind of a quite day. Again we didnt have many students who needed help woth math so iw as pretty much her assistant for the day. I ran her errands for different students and delivered different notes to people. It felt like it was a complete waste of time and i was not happy about it at all. But me being the quite girl i am when it comes to situations like this, i did not want to say anything so i just did as i was told. The last period that i was there she did finally have someone who needed a little math help. Her name was Danielle and she was a new student to this special ed class. She was just placed in this room and she had just met mrs. mauro as well. She was a really sweet girl and didnt understand the math that she was doing in her class so i tried my best to reexplain her notes to her and she actually understood what i was telling her and comprehended it. I also helped her out with her homework she nedded done. We worked together on the first two and then she ended up doing the rest of the assignment by herself with limied and finally no help from me at all. It felt really rewarding when she told me that she understood it so much more when i explained it to her then when her teacher had tried to teach the lesson to the class

Learn and Serve Nov 3

I felt that this Learn and Serve was not a very productive one for me in dealing with my content area. Being in a resource room, you have different kids coming each day and they bring different work with them each time so the chance of getting a student who needs math help is very high. The teacher does try to tell them that on Tuesdays they need to bring math but somedays there is just no students who need help. Welcome Today!! There were no students who needed my help in the two hours that i was there so the teacher had me orghanize and create a binder full of all her attendance sheets. I had to fill out a sheet for each student with theri name, student ID number, parents name, home phone number grade, teacher name, classroom number and extension. For all 25 students she has throughout the day! What a bore. I then had to go through attendance sheets and record what days each student was absent and then the teacher will go back in and record exactly why they were absent.

Learn and Serve Oct 27

This Learn and Serve was a great experience for me in my content area. I had a chance to actually work with some students that actaully needed help in Math. I had one student who was new tp the resource room and she really grasped the ideas that i was telling her. It was so rewarding to hear her say how much more she understood the way i explained it than when the teacher explained it. I was so happy i could help her. I also helped a student out with his test that he needed to take. i sat with him and helped him out through some little knots that he came across and voerall he seemed to do quite well with the test. i felt really well when i left this placement today and like i had really accomplished something and really helped out these students and there lives! It was such a rewarding experience to feel!

Learn and Serve Oct 20

Today i was very reluctant to get up and go to Learn and Serve. Just had no ambition and im sure we all know the feeling quite well. When i got there i was very upset to find out that Mrs. Mauro was out sick and there was a substitute teacher. ughhh talk about upsetting lol. But anyways i stayed so that i could get my hours in and not be behind. The sub did give me an option to leave but i decided on my best judgement to stay since i had already gotten up and driven that far. I really had nothing really to do seeing as how the teacher had no clue what was going on. I helped a few students here and there and basically that was my day! Pretty easy and i got my two hours that i needed in!!!

second week of learn and serve oct 13

This week instead of being scared of what to expect i was really excited to go and see what new students to work with. When i got there, she was shocked to see me becasue of the fact that it was columbus day weekend and i had no schoo0l! she was very impressed that i had come! :)This week Patrick was again there and trying to get out of doing all his work and Mrs. MAuro had to keep him on track. She said that they had finally had a meeting with the school and have actually enrolled him in some normal classes and that he isnt with her all day anymore in the resource room. She said that he is in an art class that he loves and that he is also in some sort of acting class which he is doing awesome in! this was suc great news for him. Again i worked with him with some of his math and with another girl named Danielle. She is such a gorgeous youung promising girl who has so much potential! she is in 11th grade and was working on trigonometry...my favorite math of all! we worked on some problems together and really hit the ground running on her assingment! after some much needed explanation, she really understood it and was just completely overjoyed! Mrs. Mauro also had me work with a stident named elias toward the end of my time. he had a test that he had missed bnecuase of being absent and she wanted me to just sit and observe what he was having trouble with andd try my best to help him out. He is technically an 11th grader as well but he knew none of the basic math skills at all. He finally gave up and told the resource teacher that he was not ready and needed to study more and i told her what i had observed about his math skills. We will see what happens with him next week!

http://www.math.com/

First Day of learn and serve!

Today was my first day of learn adn serve and ive got to say that i was suppppper nervous!! i have been placed at Niagara Falls High School before and i liked the teacher i was with but i didnt relaly like the atmospherer of the school itself. Going in for my frist day i was expecting that it was going to be really crazy, especially since i was in a resource room that was for all the special education students. The teacher that i was assigned with is named Mrs. Mauro. She was over and above so nice to me and made me feel so comfortable in her room! i absolutly loved every minute i was there and it flew by so fast. In this room she had about 3-4 kids in there at a time. One of the boys that was there was named Patrick and he was a ninth grader which she said that the school didnt know what to do with him so they just put her in her classroom for the day! he seemed like a very sweet boy but has a lot of difficulties. He has ADD and OCD and a lot of other challenges that my pkacement teacher did not tell me about. His mother also has IDD and is not really apart of his life when it comes to schooling. I got the oppurtunity to help him out with geometry assignment and get him through the class assignment that he had missed. He retained the knowledge really well but just had a hard time concentrating on what he was doing. This is a really fun placement and i reallly look forward going back next week. My teacher is a sweetheart and is so much fun to be around. She introduces me to the students as a "math specialist"lol. It made me laugh but it also made the kids really respect me and think that i knew everthing! lol this will be a really fun placement and i look forward to going back next week!

http://www.nfschools.net/nfschools/site/default.asp

today in class weee

Today in class we got to interact with the adults from oppurttunities unlimited. WE took them around campus and took pictures that represent good and bad work habits to have. Once we did that we came back to calss and did different stations. We had one station where wefilled oput a form about different level of intelligences. WE also had a station to build a fort and one that we played with play-doh. We also had a station that we wrote a story as well. I personally did not get to that station. i feel that we did this because each station had a differnet intellegent. The building the fort was something that was more bodily and makes you get up and move around. The play-doh station was a good one to try to look into your self and try to make a model of something that represents me. The intelegence station helped you to maybe realize what inteleggences that you may be stronger or weaker in. I dont know what we were supposed to do in the story center but im pretty sure it was a way to try to show things through writing and storytelling.
i had a great time during this experience. It was great to be able to interact with these people because a lot of us have not had a lot of interaction with adults who have special needs. At first i was a little reluctant to participate but my group all felt very comfortable which in turn made me feel inturn secure. We were partnered up with Melissa who was extremely quiet. She hard;ly talked at all but we kept on her trying to make her feel more comfortbale and wanting to interact with us a lot more.

she stoops to conquer

Act 1:

follies pg 1
disscretion pg 2
pewter pg 3

superfluous pg 4

squire pg 9

Act 2:

militia pg 15

quarreling pg 16

extravagant pg 17

attentive pg 16

impudent pg. 18

Act 4:

constance pg 51

elopement pg 51

rogue pg 52

prudent pg 53

entreaty pg 54

Act 5

peremptory pg 66
rebuke pg 72

thicket pg 74

levity pg 74

contrievences pg 82

This is an interactive activity that helps the students to have a much more interesting way to experience a vocabulary lesson and the play as well. This was a challenge to put myself back into the highschool mind set and to find words that would be a chanllenge to them. It also was a challenge and still is to find the right music to associate with each character. My audience is a high school class and they enmjoy a lot of the more modern music and can a lot of the time relate to them so this is an AWESOME way to get them to relate to the characters also!!

week 8 post

Three things that you need to know when talking to parents.

First you need to know how to talk to them in a polite and respectful matter and take their feelings into account. THese are their children and they are the most important thing in their world. THey do not want to be talked down but instead want to be approached with respect when something is not going well. You also need to keep in mind about the history and background of the student. Everyone comes from a different type of family background and those neeeds need to be kept in mind. Lastly you need to have some of the child's work to show the parents how they are doing. You cannot just say that they are not doping well in MAth becasue they dont know their fractions but you need to have proof and show them which part they are struggling with.
After watching the video, "Home-School Communication: The Parent Teacher Conference" you need to make sure that you try to get inormation out of the parent on how the child is doing at home. you need to make sure that the paretns are trying to work on any of their skills that need help at home. You also need to tell teh parent the differnet things that you as a teacher and as a class are trying to do to make sure that their child succeeds. The parent is giving yuo insight in what they are doing at home and you as a teacher need to give the same respect and show them what you are trying to do in the calssroom as well. A parent teacher conference is more than just talking about what the child is struggling with. It is also a chacne to telll them some of their strengths. No paretn wants to here for a half hour about all teh bad things. you need to try to bring in as many good poiunts and strengths as you can. Telll them that although they may be struggling at Math, their Social Studies skills ahve gone through the roof. Or that they are really becoming more social or something. Try your best to bring in some strong points of the student and to let the parents know that you see their strengths just as they do.

entry #2

There are many great teachers out there in our country, and there is scertaintly good teaching going on in the classroom. SOme may ask, Then why is there a need for special education services? The reason for that is because every student learns very differently. Some kids are exceptionally smart while others take a little longer to learn and understand the material. Although there are great teachers in the work force, there is no way that one teacher can handle teaching children from every range on the spectrum in one classroom at the same time. These children need special attention and no matter how well the teacher teaches, there is still almost twenty other kids in the classroom that need her attention as well. Sometimes the teaching styles just wont work for certain students and they need more one on one time that a teacher of a class of 30 some kids, just cannot give him or her. Just because special edducation services are needed, does not mean that the teacher is any less of a teacher or does her job to any less of her duties. It is simply because there is such a vast range of students out there that all need individual help.

The six principles of the public law 94-142 are as follows
~ZERO REJECT- this section of the law says that all children, especially those that have disabilities must be provided a free and public education. No child will be discriminated against or turned away because of the abilities or disabilities that they may or may not have.
~NONDISCRIMINATORY EVCALUATION-this section says that every student who may be considered for a special education program must be tested to see what their abilities and disabilities are. This also must be done in accordance to the childs cultural and linguistic background meaning you must adapt the test so the child has a fair and accurate way or showing their abilities and disabilities through the test. If you do not do this, you are not getting the full picture of what the child really needs.
~IEP- this stands for an individual education plan. Every student who enters a special education program must have an IEP telling about their abilities, disabilites, and what the plan is to help them succeed. This also includes the level that the child is on in the classes and what goals they have to accomplish by the end of teh school year.
~LEAST RESTRICTIVE ENVIRONMENT- this says that the child deserves a right to be in the least restrictive environmnet possible. Nobody wants to be felt like they are being left out. Children with disabilites have enough to deal with, they do not need to be excluded from all the other children as well. THis is also helpful for the children who are not disabelled. If they have a student with disabilities in their classroom, it makes them more aware of them and that everyone is different and they learn to accept them the way they are.
~DUE PROCESS-this is a legal procedure to make sure that the enducator and the parents of the child are making all the right decisions and doing everything they can for this child to have a fair chance in learnign and making sure everyone is accountable for that childs learning.
~PARENTAL PARTICIPATION-this states that the parents are welcome in every discussion that there is about their child and the plans that the schools and educators have for him. THey have access to their childs record and are to be present in the discussion of the IEP and can have a say in evey process there is to deal with their child in the special education system.

entry #1

Parents who have a child who has a disability have many obstacles they need to face and cope with. Two of the major crisis that the book outlines is "symbolic death" and hte second is the chore of daily providing for the child. "Symbolic death" is basically described as a death of the child they were expecting or the child they were planning and hoping for. Many parents react in many different ways when they find out that their child has a disability. Most of the commmon emotions are sadness, anger, guilt, and even denial. THere are support groups out there to help many parents deal with the shock that comes from having such a life altering thing happen to them. THese groups are also out there to help witht the second obstacle the parents have to deal with. Providing for these children can be very difficult to do and requiers a lot of work. Some of these children have trouble dressing themselves, eating, or even simply communicating with their parents. Not being able to communicate is something that can be very frustrating as a parent to have to deal with. The fact that this will be in their day to day life is something that can often weigh parents down and sometimes even the whole household.

Children with a very cultural diverse background can also have a hard time when they are faced with a disability, either learning or physically. The text mentions a certain situation in which a family is from a culture that emphasizes a strong masculine role in the household. If this is the case, the family, and especially the father, will not respond well to a female therapist or any type of professional. He will not have that strong masculine role any more and that could cause some amjor problems. Also, it will weigh heavily on the father if his son will never be able to grow up to be able to fulfill that masculine role.
SOme other situations that children from diverse cltures is the ability to even charaterize them as exceptional. If we get a student that is an immigrant from another country, how are we to know if they are performing above, below or right on track to the kids from their home? Our standards could be higher or lower than ours and it is difficult to tell where exactly the kids are.