Digital Storytelling

um. Augh? Blech? EEeek? *insert blood curdling scream?*
I can't quite think of an appropriate word or gutteral shout that would express my feelings about the digital storytelling assignment.

I decided to do "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner. I'm deathly afraid for those in my class to see it, simply because I didn't reach the level of expectation I had hoped I could accomplish. I thought this would be easy, but this was actually much harder than I expected.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSxnjty4Q6s

scratchmarks from church

The weekend was not long enough, but I'm glad it ended when it did. This weekend there was a Sunday school program for our church meeting and my five to six year old's in my Sunday school class perform their parts. We had our two hour rehearsal on Saturday at 9 am where my kids basically sat for an hour and half doing nothing. If dear reader, you are not one who commonly associates with six year old children I may inform you that this is quite difficult for children this small. By the end of the program I had to pull five boys off each other in a wrestling match in front of the pulpit, and try to catch the four girls who were picking their noses wandering in the wrong direction.

Sunday the kids performed and were complete angels. (hooray- you have NO IDEA how ecstatic I was). Suz. Stone, my teaching partner for the class sat with one rambunctious end keeping them from rocking off the chairs, and my husband distracted two of the more wild boys by playing a drawing game. One little girl D., was so adorable! She started playing rock paper scissors with me and B., another cute six year old. I don't think either of them quite understood the game, apparently 'scissors' can crush rock and paper can 'saw' through anything, but it was fun and it kept them quiet.

For the children's singing time after the program, one child was especially difficult to handle. This boy R., is incredibly smart. He's a fast thinker and can make incredibly connections to the world and whatever he is doing at hand, the only problem is he has too much energy. He loves to play and cannot focus or listen, and I think he has a hard time taking others seriously. R. was so excited after the program that he crawled around on the floor and was making loud noises. When asked to participate in class games he refused and eventually would start trying to play with the other children during the game. When the others didn't respond he would start to hit or kick them. He didn't have any malicious intent towards them and was just being playful, but he was being loud and upsetting the others. Suz. Stone and I gave him warnings to calm down, but eventually it got to the point where I needed to take him out into the hall and wait in the foyer on the couches for his mom to come. He didn't want to go and I had to drag him to a chair for us to wait. He scratched my arm and dug his small nails in quite hard. When his mom came she just said he had a hard week. He shut down completely and said he was feeling sick.

As someone who will one day teach high school, this makes me concerned. He could be just a kid who has ADHD and his two brothers act the same way. I didn't sense any actual fear or anger from R., just frustration. I still wonder if something is going on. Should I get involved?

I hope I don't have any kids similar to R. when I teach high school, unless he is in a small class. I think being around a lot of people makes R. excited or unable to focus. R. really is a cute kid and if he learns to calm down, could really go far as he grows up. He needs one on one time with a teacher or parent to help him practice on focusing on learning. Then as he learns to concentrate and focus, a few more kids could be used to create a learning group so R. can function in a regular class.

Americas classrooms have a lot of kids like R. who for whatever reason, can't focus or learn. I wish I could do something to impact their learning, so we don't lose them by the time they're in high school. Not everything I think is perfect however, and perhaps R. just needs something else entirely obvious that I can't quite think of. Anyway, that is it for my educator-in-training blogpost for today.

-Lis

UEN site frustrations

EDSC 3250 (technology class) was pretty simple for me at first. My problems in the course only arose when I missed two class sections. The first week I had a blowout on my car, the second I was in the doctor's office trying to get my sinus infection cured which had made me miss an entire week of class. Catching up since then has been pretty difficult. On the UEN site I had a hard time trying to get my culturegram up, along with other tabs. I've been frustrated a lot as I keep returning and finding that its still not working for me. Things either keep timing out on me or not allowing me to set things up the way I want to. Don't get me wrong though- this class on the whole has been fun and I am excited about starting a blog. It does feel a little weird as I've been writing in my private journal most of my life so it is a little different to be writing thoughts that are meant to be read. I think I can get used to it.

my UEN

First blog ever!!!

Hello everyone!

Things have been going well for me recently. Russ (my husband) and I have been getting a lot done! In our basement apartment up in Alpine, part of our agreement with our homeowners upstairs is that we'll take care of the yard work and clean out/redo their basement as part of the rental fee. This summer we moved most of the boxes out so we have a bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. Presently we're working on reclaiming the second bedroom but the mess is putting up a strong fight and to be honest, we're both getting tired of it. But hey- the yard looks nice and we haven't had any complaints thus far, so I guess that's good as far as apartment life goes!

Russ is having a harder time keeping up with things than I am. He works full time as a beta-coordinator for a dental software company and is doing school full time as well. I usually only see him in the mornings and by the time he gets home some evenings, its pretty late and he's exhausted. I do what I can to help out, but I honestly miss spending more time with him. However, we do get to spend our weekends going on dates, playing games, or visiting family which is incredibly nice.

Stress for me seems to fluctuate between not-so-bad and oh-my-freakin'-goodness-I-want-to-kick-something. I go to school full time and practically live at UVU doing homework, eating cookies, or trying not to sleep through class. This semester has mostly been not-so-bad compared to other semesters. Russ and I agreed it would be better if I didn't work, but rather just focus on finishing up my degree since I'm 3/4ths the way done and he's done around maybe 1/5th. He'd rather I get my degree first. I've been in school full-time since last fall and I will admit- I'm starting to get a little burnt out. I've been keeping myself motivated as much as possible but it has been hard.


Till next time!


Oh and here are some of my favorite sites-

HISHE
(a site full of funny parodies)

my dojo
(where I train in martial arts.)

StumbleUpon
(search engine full of funny things.)